Thu 5 Nov 2020
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: NIGHT CREATURES (1962).
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews[6] Comments
NIGHT CREATURES. Hammer Films, UK, 1962, as Captain Clegg. Universal Pictures, US, 1962. Peter Cushing, Yvonne Romain, Patrick Allen, Oliver Reed, Michael Ripper. Loosely based on the character Doctor Syn, created by Russell Thorndike (not so credited). Director: Peter Graham Scott.
Though the movie has numerous elements of horror and some strong frightful imagery of skeletal figures on horseback, Night Creatures is not a horror movie per se. Rather, it’s an thoroughly entertaining adventure film/swashbuckler that neither takes itself too seriously, nor makes a mockery of the proceedings. Released in the UK as Captain Clegg, the movie is rich in atmospherics and benefits from very good set design, costumes, and lighting. Above all, Night Creatures contains a strong leading performance by Peter Cushing and a good supporting performance by a somewhat youthful Oliver Reed whose physicality is on full display here.
Set in late 18th-century England, the movie pits revenue men against the good (and not so good) townsfolk of a coastal village in Kent where smuggling gin is a primary livelihood. Like Southern moonshine movies of the 1970s, the film very much wants you to be sympathetic, at least somewhat, to the smugglers. The authorities are cold, cruel, and not overly likeable. Holding the town together is the local preacher, Dr. Blyss (Cushing). He seems to have their welfare at heart. But preaching isn’t the only thing he does! He moonlights as the ringleader of the local smuggling outfit.
As the story unfolds, it turns out that Blyss (Cushing) spoilers alert has a secret. It turns out that Captain Klegg, an infamous pirate who long outwitted the authorities and was presumed dead, isn’t buried in the local graveyard after all. Blyss, it is revealed, is Clegg and has been living under an assumed identity for all these years. There’s also a subplot involving a love affair between the squire’s son (Reed) and Blyss’s daughter (Yvonne Romaine). It works well and serves to humanize Blyss/Clegg.
All told, the movie is worth your attention. This was my second viewing and I appreciated it a lot more this time. Cushing, because he primarily did horror films, never received the proper acclaim for his acting skills. This movie should prove skeptics wrong. He’s very good here, with the proper amount of cheekiness and deviousness. Captain Clegg is a memorable antihero. Good escapist fun with the proper amount of understatedness. Look for Irish actor Jack MacGowran in a small role.
November 5th, 2020 at 5:52 pm
Great film from the seven book series by Russell Thorndyke (a favorite of John Buchan) that inspired the George Arliss film DR. SYN, and of course Walt Disney’s THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH with Patrick McGoohan. There have also been radio dramitizations on the BBC.
The libertarian attitude of the British coastal native to the Inland Revenue and smuggling in general has always been something of a game with the French and Indian Wars, Revolution, and Napoleonic Wars hardly slowing down the flow of French Brandy. The stories are about evenly divided between swashbuckling like this, Gothic adventure like du Maurier’s JAMACIA INN, and comedies like GREEN GROW THE RUSHES.
November 5th, 2020 at 6:37 pm
The Thorndyke novels are great stuff, comparable to Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel adventures. The early-1970s paperback editions from Ballantine Books sometimes show up from used-book dealers. A recent line of POD reprints are horribly designed. Beware of CHRISTOPHER SYN, the book on which the Disney film was based. It was a needless rewrite by an American author, William Buchanan, of the much superior Thorndyke novel THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF DR. SYN.
November 5th, 2020 at 6:52 pm
Smuggling films could rightly be considered a subgenre of the action film/swashbuckler genre. Jamaica Inn, mentioned above, comes to mind.
November 6th, 2020 at 10:02 am
I noticed scenes and bits of business in NIGHT CREATURES that are in the Arliss film DR SYN (1937) but not in Thorndyke’s book.
November 6th, 2020 at 7:33 pm
Dan,
I’ve always seen this as a remake of the Arliss film more than an adaptation of the novels.
November 7th, 2020 at 9:40 am
David,
and yet the writers of the Arliss film get no screen credit on the Hammer remake. I wonder if DR SYN had fallen into PD by that time?