a_chinn Slow moving, but at times stylish horror film about Elizabeth Taylor thinking she's losing her mind after witnessing a murder out her window and everyone telling her she's crazy and seeing things. The film was directed by Brian G. Hutton, who made some solid films, such as "Where Eagles Dare" and "Kelly's Heroes," and brings more style and flair to this film than I would have expected based upon his previous work. It's his surreal and dream-like touches that elevate this tired and played out story. Liz Taylor tries way too hard and comes off as over-the-top in not a good way (unless you're into campy performances, which I kind of am and can appreciate in a so-bad-it's-good sort of way). Laurence Harvey gives a competent though uninteresting performance as Taylor's husband. On the plus side, the film features a fine musical score by John Cameron, but overall this plot has already been done many times before and done much better. FUN FACT! This film was Taylor's only performance in a horror film.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS**** Both Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey as Ellen & John Wheller play a couple who are coming apart due to Ellen's insistence that she saw a murder committed across the yard separating her and Mr. Appleby's, Robert Lang, houses. With the police called on the scene nothing is found to confirm Ellen Wheller's claims yet she still goes on making a nascence of herself calling the police almost every day claiming that a murder had taken place and the police are ignoring it. It soon comes out that the beautiful but a bit dizzy in the head Mrs. Ellen Wheller had a serious mental breakdown a couple of years ago when her first husband Carl, Kevin Colson, and his secret lover,Linda Hayden, were killed in a car crash while making out, like two baboons in heat, with each other and not keeping their eyes on the road.It's in Ellen's not giving up on her thinking that her husband John as well as her good friend Sarah Cooke,Billie Whitelaw, are somehow behind the imaginary murders that she saw that it's suggested by her shrink-psychiatrist-Mr. Tony,Tony Britton, that she take a long rest in the country and chill out before she goes over the edge. Wth Ellem Wheller going crazier by the day if not hour we soon find out that she's not as crazy as we, the audience as well as movie cast, thinks that she is. It soon turns out that there's a method to her madness and in the end the joke is not on her both on both John & Sarah. It was the crafty and manipulated Ellen by keeping all the cards close to her ample breasts or vest in never letting them in on her plan that had both John and Sarah as well as the police totally underestimate her and not realize just whet her end game was all about. ***SPOILERS***Much like the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock thriller "Rear Window" the ending will shock your pants-or if your a female-panties off. It's then we get to see the real reason to why Ellen is so off the wall and unstable during the entire movie. Looking normal as well as beautiful on the surface Ellen that by making everyone-including the local police-think that she completely nuts the plan that she dreamed up in the end worked to perfection. And by the time anyone realized what it was she was literally gone with the wind together with the family jewels and bank accounts as well as personal property in a place where no one including the police could find her.

PrometheusTree64 Just bought NIGHT WATCH and watched it tonight when it arrived. I don't think I've seen it since, say, I was a teenager and it was on the late show!But it's a Taylor film no one talks about. I actually think it's great, in its way (but, as with every Laurence Harvey movie he does with Taylor, I always want to re-cast him with James Mason).Anyway, yes, I think it's a smidgen underrated. And has a nice, London-y, shrouded early-'70s melancholy flavor and that neo-Victorian early-'70s thing what with the dark wood and the plush velvet-y furniture and the Tiffany lamps and the overgrown plants and deep shadows and the sprinkling of harpsichord in the score and the occasional fish-eye lens.Great twist ending, too!

Nazi_Fighter_David The film is disarranged with standard Gothic paraphernalia: a spooky abandoned house, ghosts (perhaps real, perhaps imagined), peals of rolling thunder, prominently displayed kitchen knives… Liz is nonetheless in familiar territory, playing yet another rich, unoccupied, unwanted wife… She's not a shrew this time, though, she's a cool, cunning lady who pretends to be unhinged, cooking up an elaborate display of madness… She sees or thinks she sees—a murder in the deserted house across the courtyard—by which she hopes to entrap her straying husband and her faithless best friend… There are clues throughout, but we aren't fully alerted to her masquerade until the end… Taylor's part is not a flattering one: she plays a woman who has been rejected by two husbands… Her character's acting emphasizes Liz's recent penchant for doing a lot of acting herself… Her show of neurosis, in fact, is too mannered to be consistently convincing… She's best when, at the beginning, she's the serene upper-class wife and again, at the end, when she lashes out directly at her antagonists… In the last reel, when we're upon her and can see the calm deliberation beneath the affected hysterics, she's especially appealing