Following the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1960-61, there was – forgive
me – a “mad” rush to cash in on that film’s coattails. On one side of the pond,
U.S. based pastiches of Psycho would
come courtesy of Shlock-horror maestro William Castle.The gimmicky producer would rush out the
psychological-thriller Homicidal in
1961 and, a bit later - and more famously - with Joan Crawford in Straiht- Jacket (1964).In England, Hammer Film Productions, riding
high due to their reimagining of the classic “Universal” monsters, would likewise
bring to the screen four psych-thrillers of similar temperament: Paranoiac and Maniac in 1963, Hysteria
and Nightmare in 1965.
One of the connecting threads of this quartet of Hammer
efforts were that all scenarios had been dutifully scribed by their “house
writer” of sorts, Jimmy Sangster.In his
entertaining autobiography Do You Want it Good or
Tuesday? From Hammer Films to Hollywood: A Life in the Movies (Midnight Marquee Press,
2009), Sangster doesn’t dwell too long on any reminiscences of Nightmare, but offers he found making
the film “as being all fun.”Which, I
suppose, is a fair self-assessment.
Sangster’s
film (which he also produced) begins with a nightmare sequence, a young woman
walking frightened and apprehensive through the empty corridors of an insane
asylum.That woman, Janet (Jennie
Linden) enters the cell of a deranged woman who cackles and taunts menacingly.The girl awakens from her dream with a tortured
scream, scaring the living daylights out of her roommates at Hatcher’s School
for Young Ladies.One of her teachers at
the school, Miss Mary Lewis (Brenda Bruce) realizes this privileged girl is suffering
from some sort of nervous condition.She
accompanies her anxious student to Hightower, the tony mansion Janet is to
inherit when she comes of age.
The staff
at Hightower, particularly John (George A. Cooper) and Mrs. Gibbs (Irene
Richmond), seem fond of Janet, sympathetic and protective.In contrast, her guardian and executor of the
property Henry Baxter (David Knight) - as well as a new face at the mansion,
Grace Maddox (Moira Redmond) appear outwardly friendly… but there’s something
about the two that arouses one’s suspicions.We soon learn the disturbed mental patient Janet encounters in her
nightmares is her very own mother.It’s revealed
that on the day of her eleventh birthday, Janet witnessed the brutal stabbing
death of her father by the hand of her mother.
Though mom
would be subsequently sent to the local madhouse, the brutal memories of the
event have left Janet teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown.The girl is haunted by the thought that her
mother’s insanity might prove to be an inherited trait.It’s not helpful to Janet’s mental condition that
each night at Hightower she’s visited by a ghostly figure with a scarred face
and white dressing gown.The ghost-woman
roams the hallways, her appearances always preceding an act of staged violence.It’s enough to drive a young girl crazy…
which is exactly what happens in due course.
So far, so
good.Unfortunately, the film’s
narrative structure takes an unwelcome turn in its second half.Just as Janet Leigh’s embezzling character
disappears – surprisingly - from Psycho
a mere twenty-minutes into the film, so does Janet from Nightmare. Unfortunately, while Robert Bloch and Hitchcock’s shocking
twist works perfectly in Psycho,
Sangster’s cinematic mimic simply does not.Once Janet is out of the picture Nightmare
is unable to sustain its tension or dramatic momentum.
With beleaguered
Janet out of the film, the movie loses not only its principal character but its
heart.The mystery of the ghostly
figure and subsequent deterioration of Janet’s mental state – the film’s two
most compelling elements – are simply abandoned midway through. There are really no surprises in what follows.The two characters we suspect from the
beginning as being ne’er-do-wells are, of course, the two who actually are.The only mystery left is whether or not the pair
will get away with their devious scheming.And that’s simply not all that exciting.
That’s not
to say there’s no value to Nightmare.As one might expect, director Freddie Francis
does a proper if workman-like job on the film.The movie offers many of the requisite elements expected of a thriller:
twisting doorknobs, tentative walks through long, shadowy corridors, eerie
bedside visitations from a mute, ghostly figure and frightened peeks from beneath
the shield of a folded blanket.
In a 2013 memoir
Francis recalled he was, for the most part, pleased with his work on Nightmare, believing he successfully managed
“to sustain the drama and the shock elements.”He would write Sangster’s “excellent script […] was a genuinely scary
mystery with of course a sting in the tail.” Author and Hammer historian Jonathan
Rigby seems to agree in part, rightfully pointing out that many of Sangster’s
psych-thrillers were thinly disguised “Gothic horror films in modern dress.”
Though Francis
was well-schooled in the art of cinematic horror, he would admit he was not
terribly enthused with the work of his detached cameraman Johnny Wilcox.But the director suggested the atmospherics
of the film’s interior photography were buoyed by his keeping “the edges and
corners dark thus giving the overall picture a claustrophobic and menacing
feel.”Released in April of 1964 as the
under-card of a double bill topped by Hammer’s The Evil of Frankenstein (also directed by Francis), Nightmare was met with mixed critical
reviews – a considered view shared by many fans of Hammer thrillers ‘til this
very day.
Scream
Factory promotes their release of Nightmare
as a “Collector’s Edition,” and one must say it certainly is that.There are a bevy of featurettes examining this
83 minute film from every conceivable angle.Kim Newman shares his thoughts during the near seventeen-minute study “Sleepless
Nights – Reflecting on a Nightmare of
a Movie.”Jonathan Rigby clocks a nearly
twenty-five minute rumination during his episode “Slice and Fright.If that’s not enough, there’s also “Reliving
the Nightmare: Interviews with
Actress Julie Samuel and More,” “Nightmare
in the Making,” “Jennie Linden Remembers,” and “Madhouse:Inside Hammer’s Nightmare.”If this bounty
of extra-features still leaves you dissatisfied – and I can’t imagine why it ever
would – there’s also an audio commentary supplied courtesy of film historian
Bruce Hallenbeck.To round things off,
we’re also gifted with the now expected theatrical trailer and a generous stills
gallery.
In some
respects, there’s perhaps too many
featurettes complimenting a medium-range film that runs less than an
hour-and-a-half.The general nuts and
bolts background stories regarding the conception and making of Nightmare are shared with repetition by the
usual gang of learned subjects – the trainspotting film scholars of British
horror.The inclusion of commentaries by
those who actually worked on the film partly offer a measure of balance,
sharing time-worn memories and occasionally intriguing glimpses of behind-the-scenes
moments.If the historians are somewhat
guilty of bombarding us with factoids and ruminations of context, footnotes and
filmographies, it’s all good, really.Let’s face it, this is the sort of minutiae we Hammer horror wonks live
for and have now come to expect.
It’s fair
to say that by the time you make it through all of this set’s special features
you will know more about Nightmare
than you ever thought possible.There
are discussions on the influence that such films as Psycho and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) had on Sangster’s work.It’s also suggested that the writer’s inspiration in scripting films
in the psyche-thriller genre went back even further than 1955, with nods to
such predecessors as Gaslight (1944) and
The Spiral Staircase (1946).
The
commentaries aren’t necessarily dry and academic.Hearing a bit of gossip is always fun.It’s interesting to learn of Sangster’s anguished
reaction when discovering his original script for Nightmare had been critically red penciled in its pre-production margins
by Hammer producer James Carreras.Then
again, Sangster’s screenplay for Nightmare
might have seemed a tad familiar to Carreras.It was in many ways reminiscent of the writer’s own scenario for an
earlier Hammer effort Scream of Fear
(1961).In any event, Sangster’s work
would prove to have long legs. The screenwriter would later sell the storyline
– and yet another reworking of the script - to producer Aaron Spelling for the ABC-TV
film A Taste of Evil (1971) featuring
Barbara Stanwyck.
Anyway, if you’ve read this review
this far in, you already know you want this.Aficionados of the horror, mystery, and thrillers of Hammer Films
Productions will properly celebrate this U.S. Blu-ray release of Nightmare – and well they should.Scream Factory offers a brand new 2K Scan
from an interpositive of the B&W film and the image is stunning, with only
the slightest and most unobtrusive white emulsion scratches slipping by now and
again.The film is offered here in 1080p
High-Definition Widescreen (2.35:1) with English DTS-HD master Audio and
removable English subtitles.This is an
essential film purchase for collectors of Hammer’s legacy films as well as for
fans of intelligently crafted psychological-thrillers in the Psycho and Les Diaboliques vein.But make no mistake about it, Nightmare is, at best, a middle-range Hammer
film.It’s neither a classic, nor an
embarrassment nor a cheap knock-off.It’s simply a passingly engaging thriller that sadly derails due to unsatisfying
and curious scripting issues.