NIGHT MUST FALL (1964)

A complete re-think of the old Emlyn Williams stage shocker about a cheeky young drifter who brings serious Alpha Male attitude into the lives of four sex-deprived women in an isolated English village house. With the thuddingly good gimmick of a recently discovered headless corpse in the area and the leather hatbox valise the young man keeps near him as unbidden sociopathic tendencies start to overwhelm the surface charm. Clive Exton’s screenplay opens up the play, adding large doses of Angry Young Man/ Working Class New British Cinema to the mix, which director Karel Reisz and actor Albert Finney (reunited after their groundbreaking SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING) whip up to a froth. But the genres clash; the realism of one consistently at odds with the calculated effects of old-fashioned melodrama.* But not without interest, especially for Finney’s unhinged perf & Mona Washbourne’s early pleasure at his testosterone-fueled bad manners.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Exton got closer with Richard Attenborough & director Richard Fleischer in the dark, fact-inspired suspenser 10 RILLINGTON PLACE/’71. And Reisz had more luck cross-breeding Angry Young Man/New British Cinema with Screwball Comedy in his next genre mash up, MORGAN!/’66.

DOUBLE-BILL: For the original NIGHT MUST FALL, try the old M-G-M version from 1937 with Robert Montgomery, Dame May Whitty & Roz Russell. (see below)