Being Film #3 for Hooptober 2025
Anthology films are hard to nail down. You not only have to have a strong selection of stories that work, but the framing device often can make or break the film. So there was already a stacked deck against Ealing Studios, the English film studio known more for comedies like The Ladykillers and The Lavender Hill Mob. But by leaning into that sense of oddness, Dead Of Night works out just right, balancing stories that veer from silly to obscure to terrifying, and letting the frame reinforce the pervading weirdness.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Big-time architect Walter Craig arrives at the cottage of Eliot Foley, who’s invited him to stay the weekend to discuss extending the home. There he meets Foley and his other guests, and Craig immediately feels something’s off. He’s been here before, dreamed these very people and this very house. As he shares his discomfort with the guests, they in turn share their own unexplainable stories of ghosts and cursed objects, until the one disbelieving guest, Dr. van Straaten, reveals his own mysterious tale, which triggers a climax for the ages. What’s real and what’s a dream, and where does it begin and end?
It’s hard to talk about why Dead of Night works so well without getting into the details of the film’s incredible climax. So I’ll try to talk around it. The real trick of the film lays in the way the stories are sequenced, slowly building the dread by keeping you off your toes as to what you’re watching. Craig’s introduction (played brilliantly by Mervyn Johns) of arriving at the cottage and meeting everyone immediately throws you off balance by playing into dreams and unreliable narrators.
As the guests stories progress we’re kept further off-balance, as they shift dramatically in tone, from the “huh” opening of “The Hearse Driver” to the more folk legend of “The Christmas Party”. Things become more sinister with “The Haunted Mirror” before taking a huge swing into comedy with “The Golfer’s Story”.
While the guests tell their stories, premonitions from Craig’s dreams slowly emerge, and by the time of the concluding story, Dr. van Straaten’s terrifying “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy” we’ve entered complete nightmare territory. Beyond the inherent creepiness of ventriloquist acts and dummies in general, it kicks off the resolution of the framing device, and its there the movie shows its true colors as Craig commits to the bit and turns an already frightening encounter into utter insanity. The last few minutes of Dead Of Night are something to behold as Craig frantically comes to his own end.
Or is it the beginning? That’s the fun of Dead Of Night, and while its tricks and tropes have been used again and again in the ensuing decades, it still feels fresh and exciting here, making for a great surprise early in the marathon.
Cinema Dual 
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