#Hooptober9

💀 NUMBER TWENTY TWO 💀
💀 EIGHT DECADES (1940s) 💀

"Dead Of Night" (1945)
* dir: Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, Alberto Cavalcanti
* Horror / Supernatural / Who You Callin' A Dummy
[ ★★★½ / ★★★★★ ]

Man, it's been a damn good while since I've watched a nice old-fashioned horror anthology! Definitely one of my personal favorite subgenres, and I'm filling in a pretty iconic blindspot with this one. Bonus: it's an Ealing Studios production from the mid-40s! Which basically means: I can expect this thing to be staggeringly British and more than a bit cheeky, under guarantee of money back. Ahh. Like settling into a nice warm bath, it is.

...I just wish I didn't also find "Dead Of Night" to be so disappointingly dated and almost unrelentingly stodgy, except for a few standout moments, one outright knockout segment, and a killer finale. Oh well. At least I'm in a warm bath now! Splish, splash!

WRAPAROUND / FRAMING DEVICE (4/5)
Get a bunch of character actors in a single room to recount a handful of weird stories, one by one, as we build to an inevitable finale where the universe of the aforementioned stories and the reality of the film finally merge into one. Classic anthology setup; sturdy, gets the proceedings rolling, not too flashy. And this one is funny! Legitimately funny! Shrink has got jokes! Pleasant if unremarkable stuff. HOWEVER: it takes a sudden turn into horrifying surrealism in the final few minutes to an exceedingly effective degree, and I was so delighted by this unexpected swerve that the film as a whole honestly probably gained an entire half star from me for those moments alone. If only the entire film halfway lived up to the energy of its ending.

THE HEARSE DRIVER (2/5)
An obnoxiously high-on-himself racecar driver gets into an accident and subsequently receives a vision of an ominous hearse while recovering in the hospital. And I have nothing else to say about this one, because that's pretty much all that happens. It literally ends right when I felt like it was about to kick into gear! Yeesh. What a bizarrely limp foot to lead off with.

THE CHRISTMAS PARTY (3.5/5)
Okay, here we go! Just a vintage ghost story with an appropriately creepy little kid and a young headstrong ingenue, told with tons of atmosphere made up of cobwebs and inky-black shadows inside an enormous Victorian mansion during a costume party. Just a classic song, sung well.

THE HAUNTED MIRROR (3/5)
The Miss Scarlet of the group buys her husband a grand ornate mirror as a birthday present, except...wait for it...SPOOKY MIRROR! Which basically only amounts to it repeatedly showing off a room that is much nicer than the current occupied room. Even though this is the first story to really take its time to build out the characters and the inherent premise (which is an absolutely welcome effort), I just wish it was in service to a more interesting story. Honestly, it's hard to imagine this thing being remotely frightening to anybody, even in 1945. At least the two performances here are solidly engaging.

THE GOLFER'S STORY (3.5/5)
This one is a comedy about two best friends obsessed with golf who fall in love with the same woman and proceed to play a round to decide who will win her hand (and it's worth noting that she's SUPER into the idea). Homeboy loses and immediately takes a literal long walk off a short pier. He then haunts his buddy from the grave by making his swing game mid AF. It's very stupid, but knowingly so, and I was genuinely shocked at what a good time I had here (especially when it almost becomes a Comedy Bang! Bang! style sketch on genre tropes when the ghost forgets the specific elaborate hand movements used to make himself vanish). Could deal without that tasteless punchline of an ending, but...you know. 80 years ago.

THE VENTRILOQUIST'S DUMMY (5/5)
*Dale Gribble intensifies*

I don't know if I expected the most well-known and influential segment from this film to end up being the hands-down highlight, but I certainly can't say I'm too surprised. What I am surprised about, however, is just HOW much this thing stands up to the test of time compared to the stuffy creakiness of every other segment here. The lead performance from Michael Redgrave as the tortured ventriloquist is just dripping with barely-bottled fearful desperation and a sort of wild-eyed abandon that feels entirely modern, as does the uncanny psychological terror aspect to the narrative; especially if, again, you compare it to the more bump-in-the-night surface level fears of the rest of the film. In fact, I would go so far as to call the last few minutes genuinely chilling and honestly heartbreaking. A gem, an absolute gem.