Endless Night - 1972 film review

Endless Night is one of the very best books that Agatha Christie wrote in the last fifteen years of her life. I think it's under-rated, perhaps because it re-uses one of her earlier ideas for a plot twist. But it does so in a very pleasing way. Not an easy book to adapt for the big screen, though, and the 1972 film version is not, I think, widely admired.

But when I saw it as a student, I enjoyed it, and when I watched it again the other night, I enjoyed it all over again. This was the last film directed by Sidney Gilliat, a talented director whose previous work included the film of Green for Danger, and a writing credit for The Lady Vanishes. He does a fairly good job of handling the plot twists, though of necessity he has to make various changes to the story structure. One or two scenes are a little clumsy, but overall I think it works.

Gilliat had the benefit of an excellent cast. Hywel Bennett, who plays Mike Rogers, a drifter who marries a rich woman, is excellent. At around this time, Bennett was a bankable actor. He was charismatic, and very good at playing ambivalent characters. He'd have been superb as one of Ruth Rendell's amiable sociopaths - what a shame this never happened. And he was very good as the homicidal doctor in the 70s TV version of Malice Aforethought.

Two contrastingly beautiful women, Hayley Mills and Britt Ekland, play crucial roles in the story, while George Sanders is suitably suave as the family lawyer, and Peter Bowles plays the likeable cad with his customary gusto. This is an eerie mystery, about an apparent curse, a magnificent house, and a diabolical murder scheme, and it all makes for good entertainment.

Twisted Nerve - film review

Twisted Nerve is a controversial film from 1968, a horror story about a psychopath in sub-Hitchcock vein. It combines a number of excellent ingredients with some questionable taste. It's almost always a mistake to judge films, or books, from the past by the standards of today, but even in 1968, I think there was something rather disturbing about this movie, not least in its rather dodgy (and, I think, unncessary to the plot) science about the nature of psychopathy and its relationship with disability. It's directed and co-written by Roy Boulting, but much, much darker than the Boulting Brothers' usual fare.

When I first saw this movie, as a student in the Seventies, I was startled to find that the lead character, played by Hywel Bennett, was an ex-Oxford man called Martin. To say that I didn't identify with him would be an under-statement. Not only was the young Hywel Bennett conspicuously handsome, he was playing a character who is seriously disturbed and very dangerous indeed.. A weird, baby-faced guy with an affluent but troubled family background, he becomes obsessed with a pretty young librarian (Hayley Mills) and concocts an elaborate scheme which involves him conning his way into the large house in which her mother (the superb Billie Whitelaw) takes paying guests, and contriving an alibi so as to stab his stepfather (Frank Finlay) to death.

The murder is investigated by a jaundiced cop played by Timothy West, while one of Martin's fellow lodgers is played by Barry Foster. By any standards, it's a terrific cast, and the Hitchcock connection is emphasised by the fact that Foster and Whitelaw appeared in the great man's late film, Frenzy - also about a sociopathic killer - as well by the haunting score, written by Hitchcock's favourite soundtrack composer, Bernard Herrmann.

Twisted Nerve is rather strange, not least because it is slow-moving with occasional bursts of lurid action. Yet it is undeniably chilling, in all sorts of ways. As for Hywel Bennett, his health problems have been well documented for a long time, but in his hey-day in the Sixties, he was not only very good-looking but also a very fine actor. It's sad that he wasn't able to maintain the brilliant standards of the first part of his career, but his best performances are genuinely striking..

Agatha Christie's Marple - Endless Night - ITV review

Endless Night, screened this evening on ITV, made an appealing Christie for Christmas. Agatha Christie's Marple is not an entirely consistent series, but here, the Queen of Crime's last really good novel was capably adapted by Kevin Elyot, who is a seasoned writer of Christie stories for stage and screen. Introducing Jane Marple into a story in which she did not originally appear was risky, for sure. Yet on the whole Elyot did a highly professional job - even though this did entail Julia McKenzie popping up so often and so unexpectedly that she became a spookier presence than the gypsy whose curse sets the story going.

The brilliance of the original novel, lay in the fact that Christie, writing in the Sixties, repeated one of her most famous tricks, despite its being supposedly unrepeatably. I borrowed the book from the local library shortly after it first came out, and was much impressed. As a student, I also enjoyed the film version starring Hywel Bennett as Michael Rogers, the poor lad who marries a lovely heiress. The film's cast was superb - it also included the likes of Hayley Mills, Britt Ekland, George Sanders and Peter Bowles. I'd rate it as the most under-rated movie ever made of a Christie novel.

Back to tonight's show, which also had an impressive cast. Tom Hughes played Michael, while his architect pal was played by Aneurin Barnard (the young hero of Moonfleet - he's had as impressive a festive season as Jenna Coleman.) Tamzin Outhwaite was almost unrecognisable as Michael's miserable mum, while there were cameo roles for Wendy Craig and Hugh Dennis.

The unusual structure of the plot means that Endless Night is far from orthodox Christie fare. This has caused some commentators to under-estimate it. In fact, it's a good story, and although this version did not strike me as being quite as compelling as the film (though in saying that, I have to admit I've not seen the film for a very long time) nevertheless it made excellent Sunday evening entertainment.