Dead of Night

A car drives up a country road and stops. The man driving the car looks up to see a country cottage and his expression becomes puzzled. He drives up to the cottage, where his host Elliot Foley (Roland Culver) greets him in the driveway. He is Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns), an architect whom Foley has invited to his country home in Kent to consult on some renovations. Upon admittance to the sitting room of the cottage, Craig reveals to Foley and his assembled guests that, despite never having met any of them, he has seen them all in a recurring dream.

He appears to have no prior personal knowledge of them, but he is able to predict events in the house before they unfold. Craig partially recalls, with some dismay, that something awful will later occur and becomes increasingly disturbed. Dr. van Straaten (Frederick Valk), a German-accented psychologist, tries to persuade Craig that his fears are unfounded. The other guests attempt to test Craig's foresight and set him at ease, while entertaining each other with various tales of uncanny or supernatural events that they experienced or were told about. Craig says he has seen each person in his dream, but each one in a different dream.

The film then divides into smaller sections: unconnected sub-stories, each representing a separate dream by Craig.

Dream 1: A racing car driver lies in a hospital bed with a bandaged head. He makes a recovery and flirts with Joyce, his nurse. He stares at his shadow on the wall. He thought it was night, but opens the curtains to see it is daylight and there is a horse-drawn hearse outside. The hearse driver calls up "just room for one inside, sir". He is discharged from the hospital, Park Clinic. He waits for a bus. The conductor leans out and says "just room for one inside, sir"... he has the same face as the hearse driver. The man takes this as an omen and does not get on the bus. The bus has a terrible accident and crashes onto a railway line.

Dream 2: At a Christmas fancy dress party, the children play Blind man's buff. They then play hide and seek in the large mansion. Sally hides behind a curtain and is found by Jimmy. She then finds a secret door. It leads to a nursery, where she hears a young boy weeping. The young boy is dressed oddly. Meanwhile at the party, they spot Sally's absence. She is singing the boy a lullaby. When she returns to the main room, she is told this wing on the mansion no longer exists.

Dream 3: A sophisticated couple are planning to marry. He is gifted an old mirror by her. When he looks in it, he seems himself, but the room behind him is a different room: a highly ornate bedroom. When they look in the mirror together, he does not see her. If she holds his hand, the reflection is corrected. She discovers a previous owner committed suicide by slitting his own throat while looking in the mirror. She returns to find her fiancé fully observed in a new character. He tries to strangle her in a fit of jealousy. She breaks the mirror to return to normality.

Dream 4: Two golfing friends fall in love with the same girl and decide to play a round of golf to see who gets her. She gleefully agrees. The older man wins, not altogether fairly and the younger man, unable to face life without the girl, drowns himself in the lake. The older man gets the girl. When he next plays golf, the game is constantly interrupted by a ghost. The ghost materialises in the bar and demands he give up the girl, which he agrees. But the second requirement is that he give up golf, which he refuses. The ghost cannot disappear and the older man keeps him at his house. The older man gets married, but finds it hard to kiss his wife with the ghost watching. Dream 4 is a comedy section, but does not fit the pattern of the other dreams, as it is not the dream of an occupant of the room - just a silly story.

Dream 5: Maxwell Frere is being interviewed by Dr. van Straaten. He is a ventriloquist and wants his dummy, Hugo. We then go back in time. Hugo is very rude to guests and to Frere during his show. When Sylvester Kee, a second ventriloquist, enters as a guest, Hugo suggests he should pair with him instead of Frere. Hugo goes too far and Frere slaps him. The audience starts to get unsettled by the show. Frere goes back to his dressing room, but Hugo reappears and asks the ventriloquist to come through. Frere says he cannot bear anyone speaking to Hugo. When Frere puts his hand over Hugo's mouth to stop him from speaking he gets bitten, drawing blood.

At a bar, Frere is too drunk to speak and Hugo deeply insults a lady. Her male companion threatens Frere, who says it is nothing to do with him. He is punched in the face. Sylvester, at the end of the bar, rescues him. Hugo rematerialises in Sylvester's room and Frere shoots Sylvester in jealousy. Frere is imprisoned in an asylum. Hugo is still with him. Apparently, Sylvester is still alive. Hugo threatens to go to him. Dr. van Straaten watches the conversation. When Frere starts to suffocate Hugo, van Straaten tries to save him (as though he were alive). Sylvester visits Frere in the asylum. Frere's personality has switched to that of the dummy. He now speaks with Hugo's voice.

After the stories have been told, a sequence of events begin that trigger Craig. He blames Dr. van Straaten for not letting him leave earlier, then strangles him. He then hallucinates about the various dream stories, appearing in each story - including "just room for one more inside, sir". At the end, he himself is attacked by Hugo.

The whole film is then revealed to be a dream. Craig finally finds himself struggling against his bedclothes in a sunlit bedroom as a phone rings. His wife brings him the phone. It is a call from Elliot Foley, inviting him to his country home to consult on some renovations. Craig's wife suggests that spending a weekend in the country might help him get rid of his terrible nightmares.

Ultimately, Craig drives up a country road to Foley's cottage in Kent as in the start of the film.

The film opened at the Gaumont Haymarket cinema in London on 9 September 1945.[3]

The circular plot of Dead of Night inspired Fred Hoyle's steady state model of the universe, developed in 1948.[8]

Mario Livio in Brilliant Blunders cites the impact of a viewing of Dead of Night had on astrophysicists Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi, and Thomas Gold. "Gold asked suddenly, "What if the universe is like that?' meaning that the universe could be eternally circling on itself without beginning or end. Unable to dismiss this conjecture, they started to think seriously of an unchanging universe, a steady state universe.

In the early 2010s, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films.[9] Dead of Night placed at number 35 on their top 100 list.[10] Director Martin Scorsese placed Dead of Night 5th on his list of the 11 scariest horror films of all time.[11] Writer/director Christopher Smith was inspired by the circular narrative in Dead of Night when making his 2009 film Triangle.[12]

A shot of Redgrave from the film is featured on the cover of Merrie Land, an album by The Good, the Bad & the Queen.[13]

The theme of a recurring nightmare has been visited in other works and media:

• "Shadow Play", a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone television series
• "The Secret Miracle", a short story by Jorge Luis Borges that also contains a recurring nightmare inside a framing story

The theme of the mad ventriloquist and his dummy with a life of its own has been visited in other works and media:

• The Great Gabbo, a 1929 film starring Erich von Stroheim
• Knock on Wood (1954), a Danny Kaye musical comedy
• "The Glass Eye", a 1957 episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series, starring Jessica Tandy
• "The Dummy", a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone television series, starring Cliff Robertson
• "Caesar and Me", a 1964 episode of The Twilight Zone television series, starring Jackie Cooper
• Devil Doll, a 1964 film starring Bryant Haliday
• Magic, a 1978 film starring Anthony Hopkins
• It Couldn't Happen Here, a 1988 film by the Pet Shop Boys
• The Ventriloquist and Scarface, a Batman enemy first appearing in 1988
• "The Puppet Show", a 1997 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Dead of Night, a 2003 art exhibition by collaborative duo Beagles & Ramsay
• Dead Silence, a 2007 film starring Judith Roberts and Donnie Wahlberg
• The Beaver, a 2011 film starring Mel Gibson.

The theme of the fatal crash premonition has also been visited in other works and media:

• "The Bus-Conductor", a short story by E. F. Benson published in The Pall Mall Magazine in 1906 which was the basis for the segment in Dead of Night
• Famous Ghost Stories, a 1944 anthology by Bennett Cerf which retells the Benson short story, but changes the main character to a woman and transfers the action to New York City
• "Twenty Two", a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone inspired by the Cerf story

The theme of a mirror casting a murderous spell has been visited in other works and media:

• "The Mirror", a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone
• "The Gatecrasher" segment from the 1974 Amicus Productions Anthology film From Beyond the Grave

• List of ghost films

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Dead of Night

• Dead of Night at IMDb
• Dead of Night at the BFI's Screenonline
• Dead of Night at AllMovie
• Review of film at Variety
• Dead of Night at the TCM Movie Database
• Dead of Night at Rotten Tomatoes