BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Blucher One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Robert J. Maxwell After the opening credits, a kind of prologue rolls on for five minutes, narrated by Paul Frees (whose voice you'll recognize) doing a parody of himself. "What happens when you sleeeep? You dreeeem. And the dreeeems are filled with terror." We're treated to drifting images -- expanding spider webs, floating silhouettes, a surrealistic fist clutching a surrealistic eyeball that stares helplessly out of the screen.Are your dreams like that? If so, you should stop dreaming at once. Statistically, the most common dream isn't of flying or appearing naked in public but of being pursued. They're not much fun. I'm usually chased by some unidentified monsters but I'm trying to slog my way through some bog filled with molasses so I have to run in slow motion. The sex dreams are usually amusing, at least until the censor brings in the hobby horses."Dreeems are filled with meeeening," the narrator tells us, but the most recent theory, last time I checked, was that they aren't. While we're asleep, certain structures deep in our brains are defragging themselves, getting rid of some memories, assembling others. It generates a lot of neuronal activity and randomly bombards the cortex, the reasoning part of the brain. The cortex weaves all of this stuff together and tries to make sense out of what is essentially nonsense. Some people take all this more seriously than others. The tribes of Central Australia had a concept of "dream time," in which these imagined events actually took place in a kind of mystical alternative universe.Why do I go on like this, you ask? I don't know. Maybe I'm just dreeeming that this is being written. Who knows? A poet of ancient China, Zhuangzi, once remarked that last night he dreamed he was a butterfly. Today, is he a butterfly dreaming that he is Zhuangzi? Okay. I think the Thorazine has hit bottom. Back to the movie. I remember seeing it when it was released and I thought it was spooky. It still has its spooky moments but it takes a while to get going because the beginning resembles an episode from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Stanwyck is married to a bitter blind man. The blind man's attorney is Robert Taylor. The blind husband is apparently killed in an explosion and a sleekly handsome younger man, Lloyd Bochner, begins to show up at night, when she's supposed to be sleeping, and squires her around. Stanwyck can't tell the dreams from the reality.The reason it's still a bit spooky is that the director uses every tried and true cliché in the book, no matter how hoary. If a frightened woman is standing in the middle of the frame, a hand reaches in from off screen and grasps her shoulder. (Twice.) Stanwyck screams more often, and louder, than in all her previous movies put together. The plot is ludicrous, which is why I'm not getting into it in any more detail, and the drollery is helped immensely by the score. The "suspense" music, built around four notes on an upright bass, is straight out of an Abbott and Costello movie.It's utter schlock that leaves multiple loose ends dangling. (How did the fake wedding ring get on the floor of the fake chapel?) I've now seen it twice and that's enough.

MARIO GAUCI The "Grand Guignol"-style in horror movies became a hot box office commodity after Robert Aldrich's runaway hit WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962)and, true to form, legendary film-making showman William Castle jumped on that band wagon (quite successfully, I might add) with one of that film's stars, Joan Crawford, in STRAIT-JACKET (1964). This immediate follow-up exercise in similar vein adds an intriguing element of Freudian psychodrama and cleverly casts a former royal couple of Hollywood, Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck (whose final theatrical feature film this turned out to be!), in the leading roles; I should be following this with their much earlier on screen collaboration, THIS IS MY AFFAIR (1937). Opening with a remarkably eerie animated sequence on the nature of dreams – I even seemed to recognize the silhouette of the titular creature from that crazy Mexican flick, THE BRAINIAC (1962) as one of the haunting nightmare figures! – it gives the audience its very first jolt immediately as a creepy, Mabuse-like, eyeless figure comes pacing towards the camera! It turns out he is no figment of the imagination but Stanwyck's blind, embittered millionaire husband (Hayden Rorke – whose decidedly effective facial make-up is first-rate) walking around his mansion as his wife has her nightly dream of a romantic liaison with a mystery man (compulsively recorded on tape, as is every other conversation held within his household)! Taylor plays the millionaire's lawyer and, suspected of being his wife's lover, learns that his employer has had Stanwyck followed by detective Lloyd Bochner. After Rorke's death in an inexplicable explosion in his laboratory(?!), Stanwyck (who was virtually held captive by her deeply suspicious husband) bafflingly goes to live in the back-room of a hairdressing salon headed by young Judi Meredith who, lo and behold, is not really as sweet-natured as her attractive exterior suggests! As can be expected from such 'let's-drive-an-heiress-mad' scenarios, the plot thickens with new twists and turns every few minutes and, among the highlights we have: Stanwyck's dead-of-night wedding – in a supposedly abandoned chapel – with Bochner (who is amusingly billed as "The Dream" in the opening credits) presided over and witnessed by waxwork dummies and the climactic fistfight between Bochner and Taylor in Rorke's lab – which is about to blow up for the third time in the film! Driven by a minimalist but catchy score by Vic Mizzy (of TV's "The Addams Family" fame) – even if the main musical motif is oddly reminiscent of the "Food, Glorious Food" number from Lionel Bart's musical "OLIVER!" – THE NIGHT WALKER is possibly the second best – after the utterly unique oddity SHANKS (1974) – of the 8 William Castle films I have watched so far (although, thankfully, I will soon be filling in some of the remaining gaps with 4 more)…which makes its absence on DVD (I had to make do with a full-frame VHS rip of acceptable quality) almost as big an enigma as the strange occurrences that befall the sturdy Stanwyck throughout the film!

bkoganbing William Castle was always one for gimmicks to get attention for his product. Whether it was those tinted glasses for 13 Ghosts or those insurance policies for Macabre, Castle always had a keen eye for publicity. For The Night Walker he did things the more conventional Hollywood way, he reunited two stars from Hollywood's golden age of the studio who happened to be married to each other at one time.This was done once before, for William Powell and Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey. The trade papers were buzzing about how the former marrieds would get on. Actually they did and they produced a classic motion picture comedy.Would that The Night Walker did the same for Taylor and Stanwyck. Neither was especially fond of the project although they behaved professionally whether the cameras were rolling or not. I agree with a previous reviewer, you either love the film or you can't understand it. I belong in the latter category.Barbara is a beauty parlor owner married to a really creepy blind guy in Hayden Rorke. He's got the idea she's cheating on him and with his attorney Robert Taylor. Later on he's killed in an explosion in the house. After that Stanwyck starts having nightmares, so much so she can't tell reality from dream. The audience has some problems in that regard as well.A really talented cast milks whatever entertainment value can be gotten from The Night Walker. Let's just say that at the end of the proceedings only one is left to tell the tale, a tale the police are going to have a lot of problems believing.Castle puts his usual chilling atmosphere on the proceedings. But I assure you if you think about the plot the whole thing is quite ridiculous.

phillindholm Producer/Director William Castle, famed for his low-budget shockers complete with assorted gimmicks, had by now reached his "Star Stage." He had featured Vincent Price in two of his films, and in 1964 really scored a coup when he signed Joan Crawford for "Strait- Jacket." Thanks mostly to her drawing power (she would later do "I Saw What You Did" for Castle) the film was a hit - and her publicity appearances on behalf of it didn't hurt, either. So, for his next project, Castle signed both Barbara Stanwyck and her initially reluctant ex-husband Robert Taylor to headline "The Night Walker" from a script written by "Strait-Jacket's" Robert Bloch (who also penned the book "Psycho"). In this psychological mystery melodrama, Stanwyck plays the wife of a rich, blind scientist (Hayden Rorke) who suspects her of having an affair. He hires a detective (Lloyd Bochner) to determine whether his wife is only dreaming of a lover or actually has one. Shortly thereafter, he is killed in an explosion, and his now very rich widow is plagued with nightmares in which he is pursuing her (when she's not dreaming of her mystery lover, that is). Taylor is her late husband's lawyer whom she turns to for help when her dreams begin to drive her mad. And so goes the plot...Most critics saw this as another "Horror Hag" movie, in other words, a lurid yarn featuring a Golden Age star, a cycle which began with "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" (with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford) and continued with "Strait-Jacket" (Crawford); "Lady In A Cage" (Olivia De havilland) and Ann Sothern) "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" (Davis, De havilland and Agnes Moorehead) etc. This time around though, the still- beautiful Stanwyck was cast as a victim, rather than a villainess (as most of the veteran actresses ended up playing in these films were) and she generated a good deal of sympathy-(besides being a terrific screamer). The supporting players (Bochner, Judi Meredith, Rochelle Hudson and Marjorie Bennett) are capable and game, the production is well photographed and features a truly creepy score from the great Vic Mizzy ("The Addams Family, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken"). Famed voice-over king Paul Frees (for some reason credited as 'Ted Durant') sets the scene beautifully with a short but effective prologue. What really makes this work, however, are the still-potent talents of Stanwyck and Taylor, both of whom are really better than the material, but give it their all nevertheless. Alas, though profit participant Stanwyck toured with Castle to promote it, "The Night Walker" was a box-office flop, and it would take "Rosemary's Baby" which Castle only produced, to put him back on top. It's still an above-average film of it's type though, and pretty scary to watch alone at night.