Rooiight! 'et's geht ohn wit it, then.
OK, never mind that. Writing that way would get old quick. Just imagine the rest of this being told to you in Graham Chapman's voice on Monty Python.
On the next to last night before Halloween, I felt like I needed something really good. Also, I don't have any entries this month for the 1940s. Enter Dead of Night.
Dead of Night is a British horror anthology film that has a whopping 96 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It lands on a lot of lists of scariest and influential horror films. And it was released in 1945. Perfect.
Then I started watching it. Uh oh.
The film consists of five separate stories, wound together by a common tale. The first is about premonitions, the second a third-rate ghost story. The third was somewhat better. It was about a haunted mirror.
I found myself not paying attention, checking my phone, and wondering how in the hell Martin Scorsese could possibly find this to be the 11th scariest film of all time.
The fourth tale is a humorous one about one golfer haunting another. Not getting better.
The last one, about a ventriloquist and his dummy, was definitely the best. And then, of course, at the very end we see how all the tales and the linking story tie together. And it was cool twist. But not cool enough.
This movie is not scary. The stories were probably original in 1945, but by 2013, you've probably heard at least one around a campfire. It is very British. (The golfers call each other "old man" and use words like "cad.") All in all, it's a decent film, but it's just not the classic it's made out to be. I was disappointed, and thus, didn't feel like writing a lot about it.
If you want to see a horror anthology, watch Creepshow.
2.75 stars.
I couldn't find a trailer, so here is a clip from the ventriloquist story:
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