REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT. Warner Brothers-First National (UK), 1938. Emlyn Williams, Shorty Matthews, Ernest Thesiger, Anna Konstam, Allan Jeayes, Anthony Holles. Based on the book by James Curtis, who also wrote the screenplay. Director: Arthur B. Woods. Shown at Cinevent 19, Columbus OH, May 1987.

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT

   Film historian William Everson was very much in evidence at the convention, and his interest in the British mellers was responsible for the appearance of They Drive by Night on the program.

   (Only the title made its way across the Atlantic. The American film of the same name was based on the A. I. Bezzerides novel Long Haul.)

   In the first half of the film, Emlyn Williams is a recently released convict trying to evade the police, who believe he has murdered his former girl friend. Much of this is shot at night, in the rain, and is a taut chase in the Fritz Lang vein.

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT

   In the second half of the film, Williams and a new girl friend set a trap for the real “mad sex killer” (in Everson’s pithy description) who is played by Ernest Thesiger, the unforgettable Dr. Pretorious of James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein.

   The style clashes irreconcilably in the two sections of the film, but the casting and a nicely designed and staged scene in a period dance hall give the film some interest.