I'd never heard of DEAD OF NIGHT before I made my list for Horrorfest 2013, but now I'm glad I've seen it. This British horror anthology from 1944 sneaks up on you as you watch it – at first it seems a little obvious and dumb, but as the ghost stories get more intense, you get sucked in even more and eventually... well, I can't give away the ending.The series of ghost stories, each with a different director, is framed by a meeting of a group of characters gathering in a country house. Our main character (Mervyn Johns) arrives and reveals to the group that he has seen them all, and the house, in a recurring dream and that the dream always turns out to be a nightmare. He can't the overall "story" of the dream, but he does recall quick flashes that become premonitions and impress most of the party guests, except the resident skeptic (Frederick Valk) who has an answer for everything.
As things get spooky, the party guests begin to reveal their own seemingly supernatural tales, and these becomes the stories of the anthology. It seems each of them has had a run-in with a weird experience before. These range from the potentially easily explainable (a car crash survivor who refuses to get on a bus that crashes moments later) to the overtly sinister and magical (a ventriloquist dummy with a mind of his own).
Although the movie gets creepier and creepier as it goes on, it also does some interesting things with bouncing the tone around to keep you on your toes. If this isn't done right, you end up with a mess. But here it works, especially in the leap between a light-hearted story about a golfing rivalry that continues beyond the grave to the freakiest story of them all about a living ventriloquist's dummy who torments his master (Michael Redgrave).
I'm not sure why this film isn't more well known than it is, but I'm glad it's liked well enough to end up on IMDB's list, and then on mine.
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