Endless Night (1972)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Powerful

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

An American heiress called Ellie Thomsen (Hayley Mills) marries a restless, mysterious chauffeur called Michael Rodgers (Hywel Bennett) and they move into their dream house, Gipsys Acre, on the south coast of England. However, the dream soon turns sour when a rather sinister and eccentric elderly woman called Miss Townsend (Patience Collier), who claims to be a descendent of the family who perished in a fire that destroyed the house that once stood on the same site, warns them that their home will bring them nothing but misfortune. Dismissing her as a crank they take no notice and go on about living their lives. But, things start going wrong when Ellie's beloved companion Greta (Britt Ekland) moves in. Michael becomes jealous that his wife spends more time with her than she does him. There are also Ellie's sponging relatives to contend with, Aunt Cora (Lois Maxwell) and her husband Reuben (Peter Bowels) as well since, although they live fifteen miles away, they spend a lot of time around Gipsys Acre. Then tragedy strikes when Ellie is killed whilst out horse riding. It appears that the horse was frightened by something; perhaps by the apparition of the creepy Miss Townsend, and threw her off causing her neck to be broken. The inquest returns a verdict of death by misadventure, but the distraught Michael isn't satisfied. After accompanying Ellie's solicitor Lippincott (George Sanders) to America to settle his wife's affairs, Michael returns to Gipsys Acre to find Greta still living there. Did they really despise one another as much as they appeared to and does the house have more sinister surprises in store for them?Based on one of Agatha Christie's darker and scarier murder mystery novels, this British psychological thriller suffers from a build up that is too slow and rather tedious. But, as soon as it gets into its stride, it delivers a killer twist that takes the audience completely by surprise, and if you can live with the sluggish first half, it is well worth taking the trouble to stick with it. As you watch it, and this is part of the fun, you will wonder whether the story is going to go for an out and out supernatural explanation or a more rational and earthly one. Anyhow, the genuinely shocking climax will leave you asking yourself if the perpetrator of the crime was of sound mind or did Gipsys Acre really possess some sinister ghostly power. After all there are stranger things in life and on earth that we mortals cannot understand.Performances are generally good all round. Hayley Mills is convincingly lovely and vulnerable as the good natured but rather naive Ellie; whom we can see is loaded with money and everyone around her is just trying to take advantage of her. Lois Maxwell and Peter Bowels are noteworthy as her out for what they can get relations and Britt Ekland is stand out as Greta. She offers a finely judged performance combining an air of mystery with her fondness of Ellie (or is she as devoted to her as much as she appears to be?) and her love of life. Hywel Bennett was also better than I expected him to be as the restless and somewhat unscrupulous chauffer Michael who cleverly hides a more sinister side to his personality that isn't easily detectable.Bernard Herrmann's music score sounds as if it was cobbled together from his various assignments for Alfred Hitchcock and it seemed to me if the producer-director team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat were having a go at outdoing the old master of suspense at his own game. They don't quite succeed, of course, but they do manage to stage some fairly scary sequences and some good suspense it has to be said.

I confess I have a weakness for films like this one, shot in the early 70s, in the south of England, which is when and where I grew up.Here we have a tale of romance, the building of a dream home, a death and a plot twist or two.The cast list is cracking, the production values are OK, and the story is by one of the most renowned authors of the 20th century. What is not to like? Well, the detractors would have you believe that the acting is pedestrian, the story is both plodding and garbled, and the direction wasn't up to snuff either. I agree it isn't a perfect movie, but like many of Christie's novels, it bears a second viewing, if only to see how artfully the story is constructed.Yes there are flaws; the 'dream house' is monstrous (as another reviewer comments, more like a Bond villain's lair than anything else), Hayley Mill's dodgy accent is soon dispensed with, the dubbed singing isn't quite right, and both lead actresses (to me) look painfully skinny. But then again Hayley Mills never looked more lovely, either, and Britt Ekland... well, that choice might drive you round the bend....The whole film has a slightly slow-paced and dream-like quality, which makes sense on second viewing, as does the impression that there is something 'not quite right' with the Hywel Bennett character. I daresay enthusiastic viewers of more, er, flash-bang-wallop films might find this pace frustrating, but my advice is just to go with it and see where it takes you.I liked it much better second time around; "why don't we go right back to the beginning, and start again?" -indeed!

This is a special case in Agatha Christie's canon .She reportedly wrote it in six weeks and ,coming back to "Roger Acroyd" style ,told her story in the first person by chauffeur Mike ;this is one of her most depressing books ,and the last line is unforgettable,echoing Blake's poem which is mentioned as a foreword.A character ,Ellie's friend Claudia,is ruled out.The detective plot is not unlike that of "death on the Nile",without the exoticism,but with more emotion.The writer also found inspiration in some of her old own short stories "the dream house" (1926) and mainly "the case of the caretaker" (1942 )in which the curse of an old shrew (the character of the movie resembles Christie's depiction) is included.Gilliat worked with Hitchcock as a screenwriter and it shows,not only because Herrmann wrote the score;the pictures of the seaside and the magnificent Gypsy's Acres landscape recall some early scenes in "Vertigo" .So does Mickael's museum visit.There are good ideas in the directing :the "four seasons " dream house ,very modern ,in which Ellie sings her baroque aria ;the death of the architect in the hospital;the characters on the painting,coming to life for the final trial ;it seems that -Hitchcock's influence again- the director wanted an ending à la "psycho" .The stars of "the family way" are here again:Mills and Bennett ; the cast also includes Lois Maxwell (everybody knows as Moneypenny) and George Sanders in his last part.Remade as a MTV work in which Miss Marple -who solved "the case of the caretaker" I mention above -appears .Christie reportedly did not like the hot sex scene.

Endless Night is from an Agatha Christie Miss Marple mystery and the observant and neutral Miss Marple has been taken out of this film adaption. The perpetrator is brought to justice by his own psychological defenses falling apart.This is one particular mystery in which I can say absolutely nothing in going into the plot without giving too much away. It concerns young Hywel Bennett who is a working class kid who aspires to the good life, but who really hasn't a work ethic to succeed. Without knowing it he meets up with Hayley Mills the 6th richest girl in the world although she says she's more like the sixteenth. No matter though it seems like a storybook romance. They even build a house together at a place called Gypsy Meadow which is said to be cursed. After that things start happening that makes one believe in a gypsy curse.Whether it's Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple as the protagonist Agatha Christie works are structured to make the protagonist be the honest observer of events. Take that out and the structure is unbalanced. Why they didn't make this a Jane Marple story who knows.Mills and Bennett who already did The Family Way and Twisted Nerve together worked well as a team, but Jane Marple was needed here.I can't say any more about this film except that in the end there are a few dead bodies all coming in the last third of the film. Agatha Christie fans will note a distinct similarity to the murder plot uncovered in the Hercule Poirot story Death On The Nile to this one. That's all I'm going to say.