DEAD OF NIGHT

Dead of Night stands out from British film of the 1940s, It is a cult horror film probably best-remembered for the "ventriloquist's dummy" episode starring Michael Redgrave.

Walter Craig, an architect, is summoned down to a house called Pilgrim's Farm by a prospective client whom he does not know. On arrival he experiences strongly the feeling that he has been to the place before. He is taken into the house and introduced by his host to a group of people. These also are familiar, though none of them appear to know him.

After somewhat constrained greetings he tells them that he has met them all, and the house, and the situation, is a recurring dream. He explains how this dream always starts quietly and pleasantly - at the present moment - but after a certain small incident invariably begins to darken into ghastly nightmare, culminating in horror - a horror of his own creation - from which he wakes up sweating with fear.

He never remembers his dream for more than a few moments after waking, until the next time it occurs. He then describes the incident which will mark the turning point of his dream - the breaking of a pair of glasses belonging to one of the party, a psychiatrist. Increasingly fascinated, the party one by one reveal that each has at some time undergone an "inexplicable" experience.

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

In a post-epidemic nightmare world, scientist Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the only man immune to the plague which has transformed the entire population of the Earth into vampire-like creatures. He becomes the monster slayer that vampire-society fears.

Curing one of them, Ruth (Franca Bettoja), with a transfusion of his blood gives him hope for the future. It is a short future, however, since the other vampires quickly find. This dark tale, based on Richard Matheson's even darker novel "I Am Legend," was later remade as The Omega Man with Charlton Heston in the Vincent Price role and more recently as I AM LEGEND starring Will Smith.