Dead of Night
wasn’t the first British horror film, but it was the first truly significant one,
both serving as a pioneer of an important tradition of portmanteau horrors
(though one that wouldn’t really take root for another twenty years when Amicus
found its niche) and enduring in terms of influence, and yes, scariness. The
resolution to the film’s wrap-around segment is a cold sweat-drawing nightmare
that is still scary today. You can’t say that about too many other movies from
or before 1945.
Historically significant and very closely knit to its own historical
context, Dead of Night is a movie
ripe for analysis, but its unusual format and unusual creation—four different
directors were responsible for its five segments and wraparound—also indicates
there’s an interesting making-of account to be told too. Writers Jez Conolly
and David Owain Bates are a lot more interested in the analytical side in their
new book on the film for the Devil’s Advocates series, though some interesting
backgrounds on the filmmakers and actors, as well as the histories of the
film’s sundry elements, work their ways into the text too. So we get quick but
edifying run downs of the legacies of portmanteau films, evil ventriloquist
dummies, seasonal spook stories, pop-psychiatry thrillers, and even teen horror
movies. We also get discussions of the role the sets’ architecture plays in the
film’s crushing air of entrapment, the significance of main character (and
architect!) Walter Craig’s Welsh nationality, and most importantly, how the
film is a clear product of World War II Britain that also takes odd measures to
deny that fact.
While largely analytical works can be tedious reads, Conolly
and Bates find so much to mill through in Dead
of Night that their study never has a chance to stagnate. In fact, this is
the rare analytical book I’d describe as a brisk read, as it picks up and pokes
through so many ideas across its slim 113 pages.
