Endless Night (1972) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by Slig001 ★★★★

  Based on a story by Agatha Christie, Endless Night is a haunting story of love and ambition. The film reunites Twisted Nerve co-stars Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett, the latter of which plays a similar character to the one in the aforementioned film. He's a dreamer who happens to meet a wealthy heiress, who quickly falls in love with him. The film is a slow burn but it is constantly engaging. The story rather draws you in, despite some unlikely aspects. The tone is mixed, ranging from sweet to mysterious and with an overarching sense of foreboding permeating the whole thing. It's clear that it's all going somewhere and the film really hits us with a barrage of twists in…

• Review by Gentry ★★★½

  “You look especially elfin this morning.”

  Death at one’s elbow. A blind buy from Kino Lorber based on its yellow/giallo cover, Agatha Christie bonafides and Ms. Britt Ekland. The same year she was getting peeped on, Ekland was getting gas lit in this British produced potboiler based on Christie’s well-received thriller novel about a hired driver who marries an heiress and commissions his best buddy/dying architect (named “Santonix”) to build him a remote controlled dream house on Gypsy's Acre. Saying anything further would spill into spoiler territory, so I’ll leave it at that. Come for “desiccated old poop” George Sanders and stay for the Hayley Mills/Ekland horse girl duo. I’ll never look at my antihistamine pills the same way again.

  “If the wish can be willed, then perhaps the means will follow.”

• Review by Paul D ★★½ 10

  First of all you should ignore the insistence that this is a horror film. It is not, Wikipedia says it is, IMDB says it is, but it just isn't, end of story, case closed.

  I suppose you could say that this story of a shiftless young man who married the 6th (or more like 16th, as she would have it) richest girl in the world, apparently without any knowledge of her wealth, has some passingly supernatural elements, but you'd be hard-pressed to make a decent case for the film being in any way chilling. There is the matter of the old lady who pops up every now and again to tell the couple that the place where they have built…

• Review by Wilson ★★★½ 2

  I have noticed that people are rather sniffy about the qualities of Endless Night, which is a surprise to me, because I rather enjoyed the film. A moody Agatha Christie adaptation that is less a whodunit and more a deliberately paced mystery melodrama.

  The film builds slowly to one twist, slowly to one specific reveal, to one murder (well, it is Christie). It isn't possible to guess what is going on, rather you are just expected to go along with the characters and enjoy the back-and-forth, the Devon coast, the Bernard Herrmann score. The film unwinds carefully and slowly and absolutely held my attention for 95 minutes.

  Hayley Mills, Britt Ekland, Per Oscarsson, Hywel Bennett, Peter Bowles, Lois Maxwell and…

• Review by Michael501 📺 ★★

  1972 In Review - October
  #3
  
  A working-class young Englishman marries an affable American heiress, but their marital bliss is soon interrupted when they begin constructing a home on land alleged to be cursed.

  Although Endless Night is based on a novel by Agatha Christie, it does not feel like a typical Christie story. There is no Poirot or Marple type detective, and no long list of suspects, all with ample motive, means and opportunity to commit the crime. There are no deaths until one occurs about three-quarters of the way through the film, and even then we assume that this was an accident. Only at the very end is the existence of a murder plot revealed.
  The story is…

• Review by pirateneckbeard ★★★ 2

  I am going back to the well of a duo that I have enjoyed in the past with Hayley Mills & Hywel Bennett but this time a little older and based on an Agatha Christie novel. I don't understand why they made Hayley Mills try to pretend to have an American accent. I think she is a great actress but it was terrible. This movie has some nice vistas and keeps suspense enough which plays off the twos career at the time and it looks good with a bit heavy (scowl at me now) Bernard Herman score. Just gotta say the set was garish and I hope it was meant to be but the story was heavy with tension but light in delivery. Not that it wasn't fun but it was just a subpar murder mystery. However if you are in the mood for that it is delightful.

• Review by Fint ★★★ 4

  Was hoping I would like this one more the second time round but it's still a bit of a damp squib - a mystery that is wreathed in trappings of eeriness and twistiness but which is actually Whodunnit Plot #3. Hayley Mills plays an American but is beautiful and adorable so we forgive that miscasting. Britt Ekland turns up to enunciate her lines and take her clothes off, as usual. George Sanders, most sadly, gives a very poor performance right at the end of his life.

  It's overwrought and over-directed and dodgily dubbed. But - and it's a considerable but - it does have a lush Bernard Herrmann score that consciously evokes Vertigo (such as in a scene admiring artworks in the Rijksmueum) and Sidney Gilliat's script possesses dashes of interest and occasional sly wit.

• Review by BeBraveMorvern ★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I admit that the murder mystery’s solution took me by surprise. That it was a mystery at all would’ve taken me by surprise had I not know it was an Agatha Christie adaptation. The murder happens after 70 minutes of stuffy British innuendo and vague portents. Then it has 25 minutes to unravel.

  Director Sidney Gilliat adds little bursts of chintzy psychedelia — overexposures, double exposures, stream-of-consciousness editing, gaudy filters. They’ve aged as well as the leading man’s belted cardigans.

  The opening credits lay Bernard Herrmann’s menacing strings, their intensity cranked to 11, over footage of waves crashing tempestuously against rocks. The bombast made me giggle; that the film then takes place mostly inland makes it even sillier.

• Review by AndreIron ★★★½ 8

  "Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night"

  Hywel Bennet's upwardly mobile chauffeur, a British George Eastman, is not one who will accept his fate gladly. Much like his previous, excellent performance in "Twisted Nerve", a plan is afoot, but whose plan, and what do they hope to gain?

  There is something fascinating about characters who will stop at nothing to transcend their class, something deeply sympathetic about the desire to defeat the circumstances of our birth, yet terrifying about the human costs and eventual ends of such endeavors. Bennett is an actor who can fascinate us in the same way a shark does - even if we are terrified of him, we cannot help but…

• ★★★ 1

  This is a dreamy, atypical adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel. Of course it comes with a twist but the film’s strength is getting lost over time in the romantic drama and austere incidents leading up to it.

  To me, this is in the same exact vein as Altman’s Images which came out in the exact same year. Neither saw theatrical success in the other’s country.

  Endless Night has the same idyllic landscapes and occasional psychedelic touches, but lacks Altman’s visual panache and sense of focus; something hard to achieve with a story built on unspooling its characters’ psyches. But it’s not without merit, and Bernard Herrman’s score elevates things.

• Review by Wallace007 ★★½

  After reading Endless Night,became one of my three favorite novels written by the Queen of Crime,the story brilliantly told by Michael Rogers really impressed me due to its acumen,reaching a shocking plot twist suddenly revealed,instantly I wanted that this (which is the only movie adaptation) had a fair quality,unfortunately what I saw was an uninspiring direction,allied to a messed up screenplay creating an alternative timeline with no reason,on the other hand,the 70s atmosphere was somewhat engaging,seeming a giallo with disconnected scenes,and an implicit mystery to be figured out.

• Review by Norb ★★★

  Agatha Christie's tale here relies mostly on knowing something is amiss but spends the majority of its runtime being fairly uneventful. While not as much fun as one of Christie's typical parlor room mysteries, since it would be tough to guess the ending to this one, it still makes for a suspenseful scenario and a wild finale. The ending is executed strangely—it manages to be confusing in ways that it shouldn't be—but ramps up the intrigue. It's carried well by solid performances and the two gorgeous lead actresses.