The Night Has Eyes - 1942 film review

The Night Has Eyes is a British film, released in 1942, and not to be confused with Cornell Woolrich's Night Has a Thousand Eyes, which was published three years later and subsequently turned into a good film starring Edward G. Robinson. The British film also had two alternative titles in the US - Terror House and Moonlight Madness. No prizes for guessing which title I prefer.

The Night Has Eyes is based on a thriller by Alan Kennington which was published in 1939. I know very little about Kennington, though apparently in later life he was friendly with the better-known (yet still under-estimated) P. M. Hubbard. The film version of his book is in some respects creaky and melodramatic, as well as fog-shrouded, but it has a number of redeeming features.

One of these is the performance of James Mason as Stephen Dermid, a composer who has suffered severe shell-shock after being wounded while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Mason manages, not for the only time in his career, to combine the charming with the sinister. A young teacher called Marian (Joyce Howard) falls for him after travelling to the Yorkshire moors with her American chum (Tucker McGuire) to try to discover the fate of her friend Evelyn, who disappeared a year ago.

Stephen is cared for by a housekeeper, Mrs Ranger (Mary Clare, an actress of real ability who played the very different part of Mrs Pym of Scotland Yard) and an odd-job man, Jim. Unfortunately for Marian, it becomes increasingly clear that something terrible happened to Evelyn, and before long she is at risk of suffering a similar fate. Despite the presentation of Yorkshire, a county I love, as a wild blend of fog and bog, and not much else, I found the film rather entertaining.

HIgh Tide

High Tide was a novel published by P.M. Hubbard in 1971. Almost a decade later, the story was adapted for the Armchair Thriller television series in four episodes, and I recently watched, the complete mystery on Talking Pictures. Benefiting from a strong cast, it's stood the test of time pretty well, even if by modern standards the background music seems very intrusive.

Hubbard is a writer who has been recommended to me by several good judges, but I've not read much of his work. In my shallow youth, I was deterred partly because he has a very low-key style, and wasn't especially interested in complex plotting, and partly because his main interests, such as small boat sailing, didn't coincide with mine. But I've come to appreciate his qualities more, and I intend to read him more extensively.

High Tide is an atmospheric thriller rather than a complex puzzle, but it does feature a neat variation on the "dying message clue". Curtis (Ian McShane, at his best in this role) has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for manslaughter. He was responsible for the death of a man called Maxwell, whose mysterious final words prompt a rather menacing chap (played by Terence Rigby) to pursue him. Curtis figures out the meaning of the message,and befriends a pretty but mysterious young woman as he tries to find out what Maxwell was up to.

His quest - undertaken by boat, in characteristic Hubbard fashion - leads him to a house occupied by an ill-matched couple, played by John Bird and the glamorous Kika Markham, who seem to have the clue to the mystery. The sequence in which Rigby's character gets his come-uppance is rather memorable. I enjoyed seeing this, and it's helped to strengthen my interest in Hubbard..