Nightmare (1964)

Back in 1964, when I was 11, I went to see a double feature featuring Boris Karloff's 'Black Sabbath' and this British film. My friend and I chuckled through Black Sabbath, we were up to this! So adult. Then 'Nightmare' started and we 'watched' most of the movie from the floor of the theater. We couldn't bear it. Suspense beats monsters.

Nightmare is a film of two halves, with Jennie Linden as Janet highlighted in the first and David Knight and Moira Redmond as Henry and Grace in the second part. The plot is the same for both halves, the use of fear to get someone to commit murder. Opinions vary but I think the first half is better mainly because the second half doesn't really hold water. How did the Gibbs and Mary Lewis discover what had been done to Janet and who did it? And if what Henry and Grace did was criminal so too was what they did. The ending seemed far fetched.The acting is good from British stalwarts like Brenda Bruce, George A. Cooper and Moira Redmond and particularly in the first half the suspense and fear are well portrayed. It is shot in lovely black and white and in wide screen that shows how perfect B & W photography was to eerie subjects. There are daytime scenes that just as creepy as the night scenes. A treat to look at throughout the film. As an entry in Hammer's suspense (as opposed to monster) films it is well worth viewing.

The legendary British Hammer Studios perhaps spent most of their time exploiting classic horror stories through numerous sequels (EIGHT entries in the "Dracula"-series, SEVEN misadventures of Baron "Frankenstein") and serving up other grotesque monster-mash movies, but they also produced a handful of genuinely convoluted psychological thrillers in the likes of "Diabolique" and even Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". These obscure films (apart from "Nightmare", there's also "Hysteria", "Paranoiac" and "Fanatic") may not be very popular by today's standards, because they're not that bloody and don't have highly recognizable names in the casts, but their scripts are extremely engaging and often give insightful information regarding the darkest corners of the human mind. "Nightmare" is basically another simplistic story about greed and conspiracy, but the imaginative elaboration – courtesy of Hammer regulars Freddie Francis and Jimmy Sangster – makes it a compelling mystery oozing with a Gothic atmosphere. The intro alone is quite petrifying, as it shows an uncanny lady luring her own daughter into a morbid asylum. We then learn this is a recurring dream young Janet suffers from ever since, on her eleventh birthday, she witnessed how her mother killed her father with a kitchen knife. Since Janet's fear of inheriting her mother's mental illness becomes uncontrollable, her teachers at the boarding school decide to sent her back to the parental home under the supervision of the family's attorney Henry Baxter and the charming young nurse Grace. Back at the estate, someone deliberately intends to push the emotionally vulnerable young girl over a mental edge by carefully re-enacting the events of that traumatizing night. Whoever it is attempting to harm Janet; they may succeed but they will also be punished for it! Jimmy Sangster neatly divided his screenplay into two equally strong chapters, one revolving on the conspiracy against poor Janet and the other focusing on the well-deserved downfall of the villains. Especially the second half of the film is terrific, since it's dealing with a fairly new and innovative theme. Usually in these psychological thrillers, the screenplay just builds up towards one complex climax, but there's two in "Nightmare". The plot twists and red herrings are cleverly executed and there are several moments of genuine suspense. The film also benefices from a superb black and white photography as well as excellent locations, like the old country house and the aforementioned images of the eerie asylum. The acting performances are a bit wooden, though. David Knight fails to impress and Moira Redmond is unable to carry the film on her own as soon as the other female lead – Jennie Linden – disappears from the set. Highly recommended to the more experienced Hammer fan.

After Psycho proved a hit, Hammer were only too happy to jump on the bandwagon and do their own psycho-thrillers which, to be honest, all had similar story lines involving, insanity, driving people to insanity, impostors, family solicitors, pots of cash waiting to be inherited etc etc etc and as many twists and turns that could possibly be put into the story. Nightmare is one of the, if not the, best of this Hammer sub-genre. A young girl witnesses her mother stab her father to death on her birthday and, not surprisingly, this leads to a breakdown and to nightmares, with the girl believing that she is going the same way as her mother i.e. buying the one-way ticket to the asylum. But is she? As always, nothing is as it seems. Admittedly you can usually spot the twists coming but it doesn't matter here. The look of the film is fantastic. A clean, crisp black and white that director Freddie Francis makes full use of and at times his visuals alone set your spine tingling. The opening scene of the film as the young girl walks down the darkened corridors looking for the voice that is calling her is one of Hammer's most haunting set pieces and a great start to the film. Where this film differs from the others is at the half-way point the focus switches from the young girl to two of the other up-to-now minor characters and the young girl doesn't appear too much afterwards. This doesn't jar as much as you might expect, as Francis paves the way by dropping hints and enticing the viewers with possible plots before this happens. The end of the film, although not totally unexpected is certainly satisfying. Yet another minor Hammer classic that's guaranteed to get your bumps goosed!