AND SOON THE DARKNESS

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AND SOON THE DARKNESS (director: Robert Fuest; screenwriters: story and screenplay by Brian Clemens & Terry Nation; cinematographer: Ian Wilson; editor: Ann Chegwidden; music: Laurie Johnson; cast: Pamela Franklin (Jane), Michele Dotrice (Cathy), Sandor Eles (Paul), John Nettleton (Gendarme), Clare Kelly (Schoolmistress), Hanna-Maria Pravda (Madame Lassal), John Franklyn (Old Man), Claude Betrand (Lassal), Jean Carmet (Renier); Runtime: 98; MPAA Rating: PG; producers: Albert Fennell/Brian Clemens; Levitt-Pickman Film Corporation (EMI Films); 1971-UK)
“It casts a sinister mood on its idiotic gloomy damsel-in-distress thriller story, and the result is a well-shot but unpleasant and unimaginative pic.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Brit cult film director Robert Fuest (“Just Like A Woman”/”Wuthering Heights”/”The Devil’s Rain”) helms one of his lesser horror pics, that lacks his usual wit and gravitas. It’s based on a script by Brian Clemens & Terry Nation.

Twenty-something Brit nurses, the rash blonde Cathy (Michele Dotrice) and the prim brunette Jane (Pamela Franklin), are on a bicycle vacation in rural France on deserted country roads. The opposites get into a spat and split when Cathy wants to jettison their agenda to check out a mysterious Frenchman (Sandor Eles) and Jane wants no distractions but to keep on schedule. When Jane leaves without Cathy, she soon relents and returns. But Cathy is missing. Jane meets the Frenchman in question, who takes her back to the previous town as she tries to find Cathy. When told inte small town by an English school teacher (Clare Kelly) that last year in this area a blonde gal was sexually assaulted and murdered, Jane panics and gets no help from the only-French speaking locals in trying to locate her missing companion.

It casts a sinister mood on its idiotic gloomy damsel-in-distress thriller story, and the result is a well-shot but unpleasant and unimaginative pic.

REVIEWED ON 8/7/2015 GRADE: C

Dennis Schwartz: “Ozus’ World Movie Reviews”

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