Night of Fear

Kind of cool that it's the first Ozsploitation... but it wears thin very, very fast.

A very intractable film. The camera is all over the place, from high up in the air to under the stairs to an ultra-close-up of a horse's eye (apropos horses: there's a scene here recalling the amazing(ly sad) horse scene in Aguirre!). This Bourke-guy is furthermore going for some aggressive editing, and at certain points he goes all crazy and makes whatever time- place- and reality perspective we might've had get all lost in a rapid blaze of terror.

A film of groans, grunts, growls and gasps; there are no spoken words except for those emanating from a radio at one point. And for the most part this is effective as is the harsh and intrusive music (the editing is similarly harsh and intrusive for the viewer), but the film is more foreboding than it is actually scary (the man-eating rats are a bit gimmicky). With a run time of about 50 minutes, it's sharp and to the point.

An intriguing little film, particularly how it predates the Texas Chainsaw Massacre given the similarities (like the animals-in-cages home decorations, which has quite the pay-off here). I want to like this medium-length dialogue-less film more, but it is held back by some very cheesy outdated music (which is obviously quite prominent) and there feels like quite a lot of terrifying build-up to a rather lacking conclusion.

I didn't know that this was intended as an episode on TV when I was watching the DVD. That makes a lot of sense, but reviewed as a stand-alone film, it almost drove me nuts. The gritty feel, energetic editing & photography and lack of dialogue work fine for about 30 mins, but then it gets really tedious and I was in agony by the time it finally reached the end. It would have been a cool short film, but way too long as it is.