A Cold Night’s Death (1973)
This is an unusual made-for-TV movie: it’s more Strindberg than Spielberg. Robert Culp and Eli Wallach star in a virtual two-man show, as scientists stuck in a snowbound research station performing stress experiments on monkeys and chimpanzees. Soon it becomes apparent that someone — or some thing — is experimenting with them. Or is it all in their heads? And even if it is, will it make any difference to the outcome?
#1 by ProfessorKettlewell on August 18, 2010 - 11:44 pm
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“If this had been a Kneale script, he would probably have found a much better way of illustrating the difference between the two men than having Enari actually explain it”
What, like, maybe the standoff between Crawshaw and Brock in ‘The Stone Tape’?, which uses visual grammar (Crawshaw’s filthy hands and hideous anorak; Brock’s manicure and loverman bathrobe) to illustrate the conflict beautifully.
Look, Will, I respect you as a critic as much as anyone (and that’s no faint praise when I’m including Lyz and Scott and Keith and Ken and Nathan) but, I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that I find Kneale a bit overrated. I particularly bridle at the fact that at least 50% of the greatness of Quatermass was Rudolph Cartier and Desmond Briscoe, who never seems to get their props (honestly- can you imagine the possession of Sladden without those sound effects?). I know ‘The Road’ and ‘The Chopper’ are supposed to be brilliant, but we can’t really judge, can we? And after waiting for 20 years, I confess to being a bit underwhelmed by ‘Beasts’ too
Anyway, top rankin’ review as always. I really will have to check this out.
#2 by Braineater on August 19, 2010 - 7:18 pm
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Your example from The Stone Tape is perfect, and helps to illustrate why I choose to use Kneale as the exemplar of how to do this sort of thing right. In A Cold Night’s Death, the conflict between Jones and Enari is one of the crucial elements of the story, yet it’s handled a little clumsily through raw dialog. On the other hand, the conflict between Brock and Crawshaw is only one of a handful of subplots, none of which are as important to the narrative as the relationship of the two men in the American film… but which are introduced so naturally into the flow of the story, and which add so much to our understanding of who the characters are and why they do what they do, that the movie would be much poorer without them.
I’d also like to point out that Kneale’s approach was rare for people working in the fantastic genres. Most horror and sci-fi and fantasy in movies takes place in an obvious make-believe universe, where the laws of nature and human behavior can be bent to the demands of the story. Kneale brought ghosts and monsters plausibly into a world I recognize as my own, and that’s probably why I admire him most. The Patrick Magee episode of Beasts is one of my very favorites: it not only avoids all the clichés you’d expect from its build-up, it actually subverts them — but at the same time I find it horrifying. On the other hand, the moment most people refer to when they talk about the original run of the series — the horrid visitor at the end of “Baby” — struck me as a little silly.
#3 by Cullen on August 18, 2010 - 11:49 pm
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I’ve seen this movie once, years ago, and in all that time I never forgot the ending. Very impressive.
#4 by El Santo on August 19, 2010 - 12:11 pm
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Good Lord, Will! Do you realize you’ve posted nearly as many reviews this month as you had during the whole first half of 2010?
#5 by Braineater on August 19, 2010 - 7:23 pm
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Or my total output for some entire years, yes. I’m deliberately trying to step up the pace a little.
It helps when the movies are familiar, and in English.
#6 by José on August 19, 2010 - 4:40 pm
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Wow, this was a very fast answer to my request! Great review, Thanks. The ending of this movie is incredible, the acting is perfect, I also feel a little unease about the handling of the animals, but helps a lot with the general feeling of “something here is wrong…”
#7 by Braineater on August 19, 2010 - 7:34 pm
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Well, to be honest, I’d just watched the movie anyway, purely for enjoyment’s sake. I hadn’t planned on writing a full review, but when you mentioned it (coming right on the heels of Sandra’s mention of The Norliss Tapes, which I’d also just watched) I thought: why not?
#8 by lyzard on August 22, 2010 - 12:12 am
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Another “I’ve only seen it once, but…” I spoiled my own fun* with this one by figuring it out too soon. That probably says something about the way my mind works.
*Monkey-handling excepted, of course.