Endless Night
THERE are many reasons to love Sidney Gilliat's 1972 thriller Endless Night. A stylish, colourful take on a 1967 Agatha Christie novel it boasts two fine central performances from Hywel Bennett and Hayley Mills for a start. Like many an early 70s British studio offering, it boasts an impressive supporting cast including the likes of Peter Bowles and George Sanders – and then there's a suitably spooked score from the master of Psycho-flavoured fright fests Bernard Hermann to enjoy. All thing considered, it's a bit of gem.
Bennett and Mills had shared screen time before of course as troubled marriage partners in the Boulting brothers' 1966 film The Family Way and as star-crossed lovers in the psychotic thriller Twisted Nerve, made for Roy Boulting two years later – but here their natural chemistry provides something very special indeed.
Bennett is Michael Rogers, a good looking working class chancer whose mother (Madge Ryan) reckons will never amount to anything. Somehow, this easy going drifter manages to snag the heart of an American heiress called Ellie Thompson. While Ellie's well-to-do family sneer at the wide boy from the underclass who's arrived in their midst, Michael makes the most of his new found opportunity in life by marrying his loaded lover and fulfilling a lifelong dream to build a sprawling family home on a patch of land called Gipsey's Acre.
Michael, however, is an odd shifty character with some serious skeletons in his closet that start to come out as his modernist homestead goes up – and Ellie's domineering friend Greta (Brit Ekland) starts to turn up more and more. Add to that the presence of Ellie's Uncle Andrew (Sanders) and the witchy and weird local eccentric Miss Townsend (Patience Collier) and it quickly becomes clear that Michael's dream new life might be getting closer to a full-blown nightmare.
The thing about Endless Night is, it intrigues the way a good psychological thriller should. Watch it through once and you'll feel the need to re-watch it straight away. Before you know it, you'll have watched it three or four times just to see if the pieces fit together better with every viewing.
Released for the first time in a limited edition Blu-ray by Indicator, it's a lush, thoughtful study of psychological collapse. Bennett is brilliant as the multi-sided Michael and while the American accent that Mills tries to pull off wanders all over the States at times, she's equally impressive as the emotionally frail and damaged heiress who's being led a merry dance.
Christie herself didn't like the adaptation apparently – not too keen on Ekland's brief nude scene it seems – yet Gilliat created a fine hour and a half of old school psychological terror here that builds slowly but effectively throughout.
Indicator have wheeled out a nice selection of extras for this release including a plush booklet, short interviews with Mills and longer retrospectives with both Gilliat and Bernard Hermann.
Creepy, edgy and heavily laden with psychological clues throughout, Endless Night is a superior example of a cinematic thriller delivered with real style.
