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"Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

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"Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

Old 09-26-12, 11:44 AM
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"Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11






Dead of Night (1945)



Selected by Mister Peepers



IMDB ENTRY

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These "October Horror Movie Challenge" threads are for the discussion of the films in the 31 FILM SUBSET list.

MAIN THREAD | LIST THREAD

The plan is for everyone to watch this film on the October day in the thread title, and to start discussing it the morning of the following day.
You may start discussion early if you want, but the preferred plan is for this to be as much of a group exercise as possible, with all of us viewing it "together" and discussing after.

Of course, you are totally encouraged to participate in these threads even if you haven't watched the movie on the designated day.
Even if you haven't watched it in years, or are not participating in the Horror Challenge, please feel free to chime in.



Spoiler tags are unnecessary in here, so if you have yet to see the film BEWARE OF SPOILERS.

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Old 10-09-12, 10:57 AM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

A friendly reminder that TCM will be showing this within the next day or two.
Old 10-10-12, 02:53 PM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

Originally Posted by Mister Peepers
A friendly reminder that TCM will be showing this within the next day or two.

I just checked their schedule on TCM. It is showing tonight at 12:30am CST/1:30 EST.

Thanks for posting that this would be on TCM. I prefer DVR to Youtube anyday.

Also note that The Innocents (1961) is showing right after Dead of Night. I highly recommend this ghost story.

Last edited by Spiderbite; 10-10-12 at 03:03 PM. Reason: edited to add the time on TCM
Old 10-11-12, 04:09 PM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

What happened to that kind of theatrical English accent? Nobody in the UK speaks like that anymore, certainly not in films.

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Old 10-11-12, 11:03 PM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

Wow, I was expecting a dry, boring British murder mystery, but this was a classic of spookiness. You can see how this film has influenced countless horror films and television shows. The mirror and ventriloquist sequences were particularly creepy.

The film started a bit slow but became more and more intriguing as it went on, and I wondered how it would all tie together at the end. I feared that the payoff wouldn't be there, and it may just be a sloppy anthology of spooky ghost stories; but the ending was the best part! I also appreciated some of the dry humor, particularly during the golfing story.

Did the golfer's slow descent into the lake remind anybody of Sansho the Bailiff?

It's interesting that of all of the modern, gruesome horror movies full of gore and jump scares this month, I feel like this movie is the most likely to give me nightmares.

Excellent pick for the night, and one of my favorite discoveries of the month!
Old 10-11-12, 11:09 PM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

I always record horror movies from TCM that I haven't seen before in October, and this movie is an example of why I do that. So many classics out there just waiting to be discovered. I really enjoyed this movie. It was so well made on every possible level, and until this month, I had never heard of it before.
Old 10-12-12, 03:11 AM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

Good movie, I couldn't figure out how they were going to pull all the stories together. The ending was very freaky.
Old 10-12-12, 07:14 AM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

I watched this before and remember being very pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting much, but got perhaps my favorite anthology film. The ventriloquist segment is particularly good.
Old 10-12-12, 09:52 AM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

Originally Posted by Gobear
What happened to that kind of theatrical English accent? Nobody in the UK speaks like that anymore, certainly not in films.
Indie films still occasionally do. I watched a pretty bad one about a month ago on Netflix and a lot of the reviewers mentioned how hard it was to understand a lot of it.

Glad people liked this film. I ran across it a couple years ago and like some others, I wasn't expecting much but it didn't take long to get me sucked in and then it certainly didn't screw up on the ending.
Old 10-12-12, 10:26 AM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11


Great British horror anthology film that pretty obviously impressed the Amicus guys. The film’s wraparound story is probably the best ever, and the individual stories are entertaining, even if some of them fail to make much of a lasting impression. The nightmare sequence at the end is the best thing about the film--it has the most accurate depiction of dream logic that I’ve ever seen. Dead of Night won’t give you nightmares, but it’s a classic nonetheless.
Old 10-13-12, 11:47 PM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

I liked this movie a lot, didn't care for the golf sequence but the ending was awesome especially the dummy wow.
Old 10-18-12, 07:10 AM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

It took me three tries to watch this. Not because it was a bad movie but I kept watching it so late that I was falling asleep during it (I have had this issue with all kinds of movies this year. I must be getting old and can't take watching films too late nowadays). I watched it again last night earlier and third time was the charm. The ending of this movie is totally fantastic and it made me start the movie over. I then rewatched all of the scenes over again except for the stories. Doing this really makes you respect the movie even more in my opinion.

The set-up is perfect and re-watching the confusion on the main character's face and hearing him explain what and why he is reliving this is even more gratifying and spooky when you know what is coming at the end. Excellent ending and I love the way this dream is on a never-ending loop even shown thru the ending credits which had to be unique in its day.

I didn't find the stories particularly spooky (and the golf one is just plain silly, but then again, they explain in the movie why it is there and why it is silly) but this is a perfect case of the ends justifying the means.

My rating: ***1/2 out of ***** (and extra half star for the ending and execution).

ps. And I love the little odd bits of English dry humor sprinkled here and there. Example: The young girl telling her mother that she cannot go because the Mr. Craig is supposed to "hit her savagely." The mother simply and hurriedly replies, "Oh, well, I'm sure he can hit somebody else instead. Now, come along, dear!"
Old 10-20-12, 09:22 AM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

Whenever there is a different horror movie on Netflix with the same name as the one we are supposed to watch in the subset group, I try to check it out too whether it is a remake or not.

This one is not a remake but appears it was a made for TV anthology one-shot. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075917/



I rather enjoyed the three little spooky stories on this dvd. All written by Richard Matheson, each has a little charm. One is a time travel story with a very young Ed Begley Jr. The interesting thing about this time travel story is that the convention of the time travel is very similar to the way Matheson wrote it in his own Somewhere In Time. The second story is a vampire tale with the always great Patrick Macnee. And the last one was my favorite which dealt with a creepy little kid coming back from the dead. Very well done and enjoyable and reminded me of the ghost stories I used to read when I was a kid.

There is an additional hour long haunted house story that appears was from a failed TV pilot in the extras section also called Dead Of Night. It looks like they were going to try for a series but I have never heard of it. It was contrived and fairly dull. It was done by Dan Curtis of The Night Stalker fame and seemed very similar in its approach (though duller unfortunately).

My rating: *** out of *****
Old 10-20-12, 03:16 PM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

Originally Posted by brianluvdvd
This one is not a remake but appears it was a made for TV anthology one-shot. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075917/



I rather enjoyed the three little spooky stories on this dvd. All written by Richard Matheson, each has a little charm. One is a time travel story with a very young Ed Begley Jr. The interesting thing about this time travel story is that the convention of the time travel is very similar to the way Matheson wrote it in his own Somewhere In Time. The second story is a vampire tale with the always great Patrick Macnee. And the last one was my favorite which dealt with a creepy little kid coming back from the dead. Very well done and enjoyable and reminded me of the ghost stories I used to read when I was a kid.
I've gotta agree with you on this one, Bri. That third story, "Bobby," scared the absolute bejeesus out of me when I saw it during its original airing back in '77.
Old 10-28-12, 09:03 PM
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Re: "Dead of Night" Reviews/Discussion - 2012 Horror Challenge: Day 11

This trivia tidbit from imdb.com, if true, seems fascinating...
Cosmolgists Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi, developed the Steady State theory of the universe, an alternative to the Big Bang, after seeing "Dead of Night". They said that the circular nature of the plot inspired the theory.
...and according to University of Oregon the Steady State Theory is...
The steady-state theory is a view that the universe is always expanding but maintaining a constant average density, matter being continuously created to form new stars and galaxies at the same rate that old ones become unobservable as a consequence of their increasing distance and velocity of recession. A steady-state universe has no beginning or end in time
Dead of Night is one of the final 3 subset films I have left but looking forward to it.

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