THE NIGHT WALKER (1964)

Irene Trent (Barbara Stanwyck) is in a troubled marriage, to say the least. Middle-aged but still attractive and vivacious, she's stuck with a rich, older, blind husband Howard (Hayden Rourke) who seems to resent her health and freedom, and accuses her of having a lover because of some mutterings of hers while dreaming. Howard thinks her lover is Barry (Robert Taylor), the family lawyer, the only person who ever comes to their home. While Irene might be interested, we know that her only lover is, in fact, a figment of her dreams. After a violent argument in which she says that her dream lover is more of a man that her husband will ever be, Irene leaves to spend the night in a hotel. Howard smells smoke and enters his laboratory; there’s a huge explosion and a fire, and the room is destroyed, with Howard's body seemingly consumed in the flames as the police find no trace of him the next morning. The next night, Irene has a nightmare in which the dead Howard is still alive. When Barry tells her she can't sell the house until it is considered safe, she decides to move into a small apartment behind a beauty salon she owns. But her dreams continue to the point where she can’t tell the difference between dreams and reality--even her dream lover (Lloyd Bochner) seems to come alive; handsome but a bit sinister looking, he swoops her off one night for a surreal marriage ceremony in an empty chapel with just a handful of wax figures as witnesses. Is this a story of supernatural haunting? Or is it a well-planned gaslighting? And if so, who is behind it and why?

Marketed as a horror movie (with a truly effective poster of an eyeball in a person's fist and a dream demon attacking a scantily clad woman), this came at the end of a number of successful horror films and thrillers from director William Castle. It was not a hit, partly because those poster art images (which are not in the film) sold it as something it wasn't--it's a psychological thriller. Of course, many great horror films are in fact psychological thrillers (PSYCHO, DIABOLIQUE, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, Castle's own HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, all movies which this one tips its hat to) but the promise of sex and gore in the ads (which included the words "Lust" and "Secret Desires" in big letters) was not fulfilled. Also, the lure of Stanwyck and Taylor, classic-era stars who had been married in the past, wouldn't have necessarily appealed to the young viewers who made other Castle films hits. Still, on its own terms as a mystery thriller, it works pretty well for much of its running time. Rourke's old-age blind man makeup is truly creepy, as is his burned face for the later dream (or are they?) sequences, as pictured above. Bochner is perfectly cast as the good-looking but oddly cold dream lover. The nightmarish wedding scene is wild, and we are kept guessing for a while as to what's really going on. But from the get-go, there are plot problems galore: the lab comes out of nowhere, not seen before the explosion, and the fact that the Trent mansion doesn't have a phone is unbelievable. As things get explained, things also get more complicated; this was written by Robert Bloch but it's not as tightly constructed as we might expect from the man who wrote the novel that PSYCHO was based on. Still, judged against other 60s movies to which this should be more fairly compared (TWO ON A GUILLOTINE, MY BLOOD RUNS COLD, MIRAGE), this is enjoyable enough. [Blu-Ray]