The Night Walker (1964)

After a lengthy, rather silly voice-over intro about dreams, THE NIGHT WALKER begins. Irene Trent's (Barbara Stanwyck) blind, jealous, clock-collecting husband, Howard (Hayden Rorke) suspects his wife has been seeing another man. Howard's suspicions are mostly based on his overhearing of Irene's dreams. Soon enough, tragedy strikes, resulting in a spook-o-thon. But wait! Is anything as it appears to be? While this could have been a fascinating experiment in psychological horror, it is instead, another William Castle cheeeze-log. Forever attempting to be another Hitchcock, the terminally un-subtle Castle, unable to help himself, opted for long, dull stretches of nonsense, interrupted by his signature "rubber-mallet-to-the-cranium" approach to suspense. One feels great sorrow for Ms Stanwyck, who must have been wondering what she had done to deserve such a fate as this cinematic absurdity. At one point, her overwrought screams seem to say, "My god! What happened?! I was in DOUBLE INDEMNITY! Noooo!" Actually, the best thing about this movie is the theme music by none other than Vic Mizzy (the genius behind the music for THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN and TV's THE ADDAMS FAMILY). Other than that, expect non-stop malarkey...

Incredibly well written, somewhat hammy acting at some points, overall, a masterfully told story with great twists and turns!

Funny, it almost doesn't seem quite as bad as I remember it -- except for the ending and Stanwyck's usual overwroughtness in the wrong places.Who made the creepy -- and downright good -- ghostly avant-garde prologue montage, narrated by Paul Frees? It's the best thing about the movie and it's pretty obvious that William Castle, no auteur he, was not responsible for it.The eerie 1964 Cold War black-and-white photography with an equally eerie Vic "Addams Family" Mizzy score. And yet, after the first 16 or 17 minutes, it slips into TV sitcom crap. Only it's funny unintentionally. I still say the whole thing would have been granted a little extra dignity if they had ended on Stanwyck awakening one more time, hearing men's voices down the hall, and her going to find her husband and the lawyer in the study, reliving completely the first scene in the study from the beginning of the movie, Stanwyck in the doorway of the study in terror, camera zooms up to her left eye. Movie ends.She's still locked in the dream. She still can't wake up.That would give the literal crime story wrap-up of the film the chance to be disavowed for its stupidness.

William Castle's B/W thriller ( 1964 )with Barbara Stanwick and Robert Taylor .. Is this available on TCM ?? I see it is not available on DVD,, but there a lot of great films not available that get run regularly on TCM . I thought there was a box I could check that would alert me when this title is to be run during the week, so I won't miss it. For those of you who are familiar with this Gothic style horror film,, Castle did wonders with the Music, the Angles of the camera lens and the Black and White composition of this little 86 minute gem of a film. The music of this film gives me the creeps whenever I think of the melody. And the angle of the Dutch framing ( on an angle ) makes the horror that much better.