Wizard-8 This is an interesting Hammer movie, being that it's essentially divided into two stories. The first involves a young woman being driven mad by nasty schemers, and the second story involves those schemers being given their just desserts. Both stories are executed fairly well, I guess, with good performance, atmospheric direction, and some striking black and white photography. But to me at least, both stories were kind of unsurprising. If you have read your share of EC Comics or seen shows like "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", much of what happens will come as no surprise at all. And they best told this sort of story, because this is really a short story; even at just 82 minutes, you can feel the padding. Not an awful movie by any means, but it probably won't be very surprising to many viewers.

jamesraeburn2003 *CAUTION - BIG SPOILERS*A 17-year old girl called Janet (Jennie Linden) is mentally disturbed by a recurring nightmare in which she dreams of being trapped with her mother in a cell at the insane asylum. On her eleventh birthday Janet saw her mother stab her father to death. At her boarding school, Janet's teacher, Mary (Brenda Bruce), arranges for her to return home for a while to recover. At High Towers, the family mansion, they are met by Grace (Moira Redmond), a nurse sent by Janet's legal guardian, Henry (David Knight), to look after her. Janet becomes disturbed by the figure of a tall, attractive, yet at the same time, sinister looking woman clad in white finding her stabbed to death on a couple of occasions. The family doctor recommends psychiatric help, but things get worse when Henry arrives with his wife, Helen (Clytie Jessop), who is the woman of Janet's nightmares. Janet cracks and stabs Helen to death. As she is driven off to the asylum, we learn that the events at High Towers were a cleverly engineered plot by Henry to murder his wife so he can marry his mistress, Grace. The pair believe that their scheme has made them untouchable, but the whole thing backfires on them with horrifying consequences...The second horror film that Oscar-winning cinematographer turned director Freddie Francis made for Hammer following the success of Paranoiac (1963). It stands as one of his best - not only for that studio - but out of all the genre films he made throughout the sixties and seventies. It shows that had Francis escaped the confines of horror, something that he openly admitted he never had any real affection for, he could have easily achieved the same level of acclaim as a director that he did as a lighting cameraman.Jimmy Sangster's story - man drives a vulnerable and mentally fragile woman insane so he can ditch his wife for another woman - was already starting to look tired by the time this came out but, here, it is a case of directorial style transcending the basic material. Francis proved that, after Terence Fisher, he was certainly this country's leading horror director and his sense of Gothic style was at its peak here. The opening dream sequence sees Janet making her way through the pitch black corridors of the asylum looking for her mother whose disembodied voice is calling for her. Then we cut to inside her cell where her mother gleefully tells her: "They've got us both now, we're both mad" before the door slams locked behind her and the mother breaks out into evil laughter is especially effective. It is masterfully shot with John Wilcox's b/w lighting recalling that of Francis' own on The Innocents (1961). The sense of dread and mysteriousness is aided by Don Banks' superb score that is, quite possibly, the best he ever composed for Hammer. The build up to Janet stabbing Henry's wife is also beautifully staged with the phantom woman (Clytie Jessop who also appeared as the fairground figurine holding the Shears of Fate in Francis' anthology film Torture Garden) terrorising her in the old rambling country estate late at night with Francis indulging in some wonderful camera-work including magnificent dollies that see the camera tracking through dark, enticing corridors. These sequences are genuinely unsettling and the entire film is made all the more so by the beautiful location shooting around the countryside shot during the hard winter of 1963 with the snow drenched landscapes adding to the creepy beauty of the piece.Towards the climax the giggles threaten to set in as Moira Redmond overacts in the scenes where she throws tantrums at Henry when she believes that she is cheating on him with another woman. But, on the whole, performances are good throughout. Jennie Linden, in a part originally intended for Julie Christie, is convincingly vulnerable and unstable as Janet and we as the audience can sympathise with her plight. Knight makes a good leading man skilfully portraying the false Henry as the seemingly kind and caring guardian of Janet and when he reveals his true colours as the ruthless, cold blooded killer, his transition is well enough done to startle the viewers. Also of note are George A Cooper as the chauffeur and Brenda Bruce as Mary in smaller roles, but both are perfectly cast and their role in bringing about the downfall of Henry and Grace is well enough concealed from us until the end so as to have the maximum possible impact.Nightmare was released as the support feature to Francis and Hammer's own The Evil Of Frankenstein in 1964. Thankfully the proposed title for the former, Here's The Knife Dear, Now Use it was dropped as it would have given the impression that it was a trashy, exploitation feature.

Rainey Dawn This one has a great Gothic atmosphere of madness - complete insanity. It really a dark, bleak film... you will not find a subtle joke nor a smile in this film.Where does the nightmare end and reality begin? What or who has driven Janet into maddening nightmares and why? If you like a good creepy mystery-thriller then this is a film you should enjoy.I consider this film for a "dark and stormy night" - it's one of those type of movies. I can't say much about this movie because if I did it might ruin it for the first time viewer.8/10

José Luis Rivera Mendoza (jluis1984) British director Freddie Francis is nowadays best known for his excellent work as a cinematographer in films such as "Sons and Lovers" (1960), "The Elephant Man" (1980), "Glory" (1989) and "The Straight Story" (1999); but in the 60s, he directed several horror films for the two most important horror films production companies in the United Kingdom: Hammer and Amicus. While his career as a director looks uneven when compared to his successful work as a cinematographer, he managed to craft a few little gems for both companies that have slowly become cult classics. Among them, "Nightmare" comes up as one of his best, an elegant Gothic horror that tells a story about madness, death, and nightmares.The film is the story of Janet (Jennie Linden), a young student at a private school, who by nights is haunted by horrible nightmares about her insane mother, who is currently locked in an asylum. As the nightmares become more constant, she is sent back home for the winter in order to rest a while. But the nightmares keep haunting Janet's dreams and soon she becomes more and more convinced that somehow she has inherited her mother's insanity despite the efforts of her guardian Henry (David Knight) and her nurse Grace (Moira Redmond) to help her.Written by another Hammer regular, Jimmy Sangster (who wrote the Hammer classics "Curse of Frankenstein" and "Dracula"), the plot is a terrific thriller with horror elements that adds psychological themes to the story, always questioning reality as Janet watches it. The suspense and the mystery are the key factors of the plot and Sangster handles both elements with excellent care and the whole setting (an old house during a winter) enhances the feeling of paranoia and madness the characters suffer. Some critics have pointed out that the film somehow loses steam by the second half, and while in my opinion this is relatively true to an extent, I think this doesn't really do any harm and it's still a wonderfully developed mystery."Nightmare" is visually a Hammer film that went against the conceptions of the so-called "Hammer style" and modernized their concept of Gothic horror by setting the film in contemporary times. The claustrophobic location looks wonderful in the beautiful black and white photography (another move away the "Hammer style") and Francis shows why he has a reputation as cinematographer. His eye for the visual is perfect and gives a whole new dimension to the "old dark house" element so common in Gothic horror. The style of the film looks like an enhanced version of his previous "Paranoiac", as here the mix of suspense, Gothic horror and British melodrama works in a near-perfect way.The cast is entirely made up of non-Hammer regulars, which gave the film a fresh face and it really works. Jennie Linden was a last-minute choice for the role of Janet, and we can say that they got lucky with her, as her performance is top-notch and frightening believable. Moira Redmon is also superb, giving her character, the nurse Grace an aura of mystery that is both appealing and haunting. David Knight is not as lucky although fortunately, he does not appear too much in the film. Totally the opposite are the cases of George A. Cooper and Irene Richmond, who give remarkable performances in such a sadly limited screen time."Nightmare" is an excellent thriller that suffers from some small minor flaws that hurt the film a bit. The sudden division of the film in two parts works very well as an interesting plot device, but the second part of the film is a bit harder to follow as the change comes a bit too sudden (although in general it's still pretty good). Another minor complain (well, not exactly a complain), is that Francis at times puts a lot of emphasis on the atmosphere and style over the plot, although this is never too distracting.Certainly Hammer will always be known for their excellent versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Werewolf, but this little film is as good as those and maybe even more. "Nightmare" is part of that line of underrated classics that Hammer made and that hopefully will receive more appreciation now that they are finally available. 9/10. An excellent thriller!