"This is the dead of night. It has nothing to do with time. It can happen in sunshine or in moonlight, in the best of weather or the worst. For the dead of night is a state of mind: that dark, unfathomed region of the human consciousness from which all the unknown terrors of our lives emerge. The dead of night exists in all of us, and no one knows at which strange, unexpected moment it will make itself known. So tonight, for your entertainment, three tales: one of mystery, one of imagination and one of terror."Today I'd like to talk to you guys about 1977's
Dead of Night, a made-for-TV mostly horror anthology by highly regarded creator
Dan Curtis. It's a triptych of stories written by the master of such tales,
Richard Matheson. The first is a very
Twilight Zone-like tale of wistful, nostalgic time travel with a twist, and not at all a horror story, called "Second Chance." I'd compare it to
Speilberg's segment in
Twilight Zone: The Movie, but a little more pleasingly clever. In it,
Ed Begley Jr plays an classic car enthusiast who restores an antique 1920s roadster, and in it, is able to travel back to the days of his youth, and enjoy some very
Back To the Future-like experiences.
The second story,
"No Such Thing As a Vampire," is based on a
Jack Finney short story and moves us into clear horror territory. In fact, you may have seen
a recent news story that the BBC has discovered a long lost episode of a "show so terrifying it was destroyed." That was a 1968 episode of
Late Night Horror called, you guessed it, "No Such Thing As a Vampire." Yup, it's an adaptation of the same story, in this case starring
Patrick Macnee and
Elisha Cook Jr.
- a period piece set in 19th century Romania. So if you want to get
ahead of BBC's airing of their lost episode in September, you can watch
this one. Interestingly, Curtis made this earlier than the rest of this
movie, in 1973, because he thought it could've been a pilot for an
entirely different television series that never ended up happening. So
lucky for us, he found a home for it here.
And speaking of tales
told elsewhere, we come to our third story "Bobby." This is the
highlight of the film, and evidently Curtis realized it, too, as he
completely remade it in 1996 for his anthology film
Trilogy of Terror 2, with
Lysette Anthony in the
Joan Hackett role. Both versions are quite good, but this one's better: a thrilling and atmospheric spin on the old
Monkey's Tale. I get a kick out of this entire film start to finish, but honestly, "Bobby" is the reason I need it in my collection.
Dead of Night starts
out pleasantly watchable and then steadily ramps up to a Hell of a
climax that can stand alongside your favorite horror films of any era.
Dead of Night
made its DVD debut in 2009 as a bit of a special edition from Dark Sky
Films. Honestly, I kind of thought that would be the beginning and end
of it. Most TV stuff, unfortunately, doesn't make it past DVD even to
this day. I mean, can you believe
White Lotus is DVD-only in the year of our Lord 2026? But regardless, just in time for Halloween, Kino stepped in to issue a new, fancier
Dead of Night blu-ray with even more goodies.
 |
2009 Dark Sky DVD top; 2025 Kino BD bottom.
|
Happily,
this isn't just the same old transfer slapped onto an HD disc. The
aspect ratio has been corrected from 1.28:1 to 1.33:1, and we can also
see the framing has been adjusted up and to the right. We've got all
new color timing, which is mostly an improvement, though there are some
sequences (like the final scenes of the first segment, which are a
little red on the DVD, but otherwise more realistic). And the HD is a
real improvement, with actual film grain replacing smudgy compression.
It's not vast, because this movie has a generally filtered hazy look to
it anyway, and the fine detail and grain is still on the soft side... 4k
this ain't. But for an inexpensive special edition of a TV movie you
never thought would see blu in the first place? Pretty nice.
Dark
Sky gives us the basic Dolby Digital mono track in 2.0 with no subtitle
options. Kino bumps that up to DTS-HD and adds subtitle options.
So the primary extra on Dark Sky's DVD is another
Dead of Night, also by Curtis. Yes, he made a pilot for a TV series called
Dead of Night,
which never got beyond the pilot stage. Unlike the film, it wasn't to
be an anthology with a fresh story every week, but the on-going saga of a
trio of ghost hunters. The episode, entitled "A Darkness at Blaisedon"
actually came first, airing on ABC in August of 1969 (back in those
days, they used to show unaired pilots to fill time during the summer
rerun season). In this one, a psychic inherits a mansion and hires our
two male leads to see if it's as haunted as she's been told. Of course
it is, they figure it out, and she winds up joining the team to go on
adventures that never wound up getting filmed. Kino carried over all of
Dark Sky's extras over, including this. In both cases they're just
giving us a 1.28:1 video transfer (it was presumably shot on tape), but
the DVD does make some slight improvement, cropping the noise around the
edges and critically, correcting the interlacing. Plus, while the mono
track is lossy on both discs, Kino once again adds subtitles that Dark
Sky forgot.
Besides that, Dark Sky (and Kino) include a
collection of deleted scenes and outtakes, mostly from "Vampire."
There's also a stills gallery and "isolated score highlights," which
runs a good 46 minutes.
Yes, all of that's on the blu-ray; but now there's more. For starters, we have a new audio commentary by the
Video Watchdog himself,
Tim Lucas.
Apparently, he's watched this film multiple times, but I found myself
wishing he paid more attention. Like he criticizes "a
curious cut-away here to Anjanette Comer in her garlic necklace asleep
in an entirely different room, which must have been imposed at this
juncture to cover a mishap involving the two-shot with Patrick Macnee
and Horst Bucholz." But you can clearly see throughout the scene
that she is in the same room with them, and they very naturally cut to
Comer when Horst turns to
check on her. That's a tiny quibble, but at another point he starts
talking about the ending of the first segment, revealing he didn't
understand the final twist or crux of the story. And he goes on a long
tangent, explaining his incorrect take and saying "the film didn't quite
have the coverage needed to make it obvious." It's obvious if you're
not looking at your phone during the movie, man. I'm citing these
moments because they made me roll my eyes in the moment, but in
fairness, they don't really harm the commentary experience, since we
don't go to expert commentaries for their opinions on the work anyway.
And Lucas comes prepared with a ton of information and observations,
adding some solid value to the disc.
And there's more. We also get two on-camera interviews with Curtis biographer
Jeff Thompson, one for each
Dead of Night. A lot of what he says is also in the commentary, but they're still worthwhile. Plus, we get a bonus trailer for
Burnt Offerings (another Dan Curtis joint) and a nice slipcover.
So
is it worth the double-dip? For sure. It's an all new transfer and an
upgrade in every single department. And yes, even if TV movies usually
fail to excite you, this one is a cut above, for those ready to
appreciate it.
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