Dead of Night (1945)

U.S. release poster

          Dead of Night (1945) is a supernatural anthology (or portmanteau) film from Ealing Studios which remains one of the most influential and highly regarded horror films of its era. The film directly and indirectly inspired a host of imitations, including multiple episodes of The Twilight Zone and several other horror or ghostly anthologies in both film and television, notable among which is the series of anthology films from Amicus Productions (Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, Asylum, From Beyond the Grave, etc.), an English outfit founded by the Americans Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, the latter of whom, as creative half of the company, acknowledged a debt to the Ealing film. 

"The Framing Narrative"

         Dead of Night consists of five short tales of terror (and comedy) connected by a framing narrative which sees an architect named Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) visit Pilgrim's Farm, a country house which mirrors the setting and situation from a recurring nightmare he has been experiencing. When Craig reveals this odd coincidence (as well as an uncanny ability of precognition) to the members of a small gathering at the house, it spurs each guest in turn to recount a strange incident from their lives. 

          Dead of Night is notable for being the first supernatural horror film to emerge from post-war British cinema. In the wake of such American horror films as Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932), James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), and numerous other pre-code Hollywood offerings, each more excessive than the last, the British Board of Film Censors, like its American counterpart the Production Code Administration, began actively discouraging the production and distribution of horror films by instituting such restrictive measures as the "H" certificate, introduced in the UK in 1932, which barred anyone under the age of 16 admission to horror films. Beyond the increasingly gruesome and sexualized content in pre-code (before July, 1934) horror films, and pre-code films in general, there was also the perception that horror films produced a negative effect on the national psyche, a particular concern during WWII. The demand for horror entertainment never waned, however. Universal Studios was eventually encouraged to continue its successful series of Frankenstein films, beginning with Son of Frankenstein (1939), after viewing the high box-office returns from a triple feature re-release of Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and Son of Kong (1933) at the Regina Theater in Los Angeles in the summer of 1938.

          In the UK, beyond drawing room thrillers, supernatural comedies and dramas, and the occasionally gruesome Tod Slaughter melodrama, a return to the production of supernatural horror films would not occur until immediately after the war with Dead of Night. Ealing Studios was known for producing patriotic (and often grim) war films. Later, the studio became known for the “Ealing Comedy,” a type of darkly satirical film exemplified by Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Ladykillers (1955). Dead of Night was a way for Ealing to move away from the grim realism of their war-era output and approach subjects which were both recognizably British and something in a new direction. WWII, only very recently ended, is not mentioned a single time in Dead of Night and is thus conspicuous by its absence. A year before, in 1944, Ealing produced The Halfway House, in which travelers experiencing personal crises converge on a supernatural Welsh inn that is lost in time and which allows the characters to stop and reexamine the course of their lives. The war is an ever-present specter in the film. The Halfway House was directed by Basil Dearden (director of "The Framing Narrative" and "The Hearse Driver" sequences in Dead of Night) and co-scripted by Dead of Night co-writer Angus MacPhail, both regular members of the production team at Ealing. After Dead of Night, Ealing returned to the anthology format with 1949’s Train of Events, a drama with dark undercurrents but nothing approaching the outright terror of the earlier film. Train of Events shared two directors with Dead of Night, Basil Dearden and Charles Crichton, and two writers, Angus MacPhail and T.E.B. Clarke. 

          Notable subsequent examples of the anthology horror film include Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror (1962), based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1964), the previously mentioned Amicus series of films (1965-1974), and Creepshow (1982), Stephen King's and George Romero's homage to the EC Comics of the 1950s (A course taken earlier by Amicus Productions with Tales from the Crypt (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973)). Dozens more appeared across the years, including numerous television efforts which have utilized the format in different and interesting ways. In 1945, the horror anthology film was still in its infancy and there was little precedent for a film like Dead of Night. Though there were anthology films which contained horror elements before Dead of Night (silent German cinema produced Richard Oswald’s Eerie Tales (1919), Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921), and Paul Leni’s Waxworks (1924)) the Ealing film set a standard for format and quality which still influences filmmakers today. 

E.F. Benson

          Dead of Night was written by Angus McPhail and John Baines, with additional dialogue by T.E.B. Clarke, deriving its subject and tone from the literary tradition of the English ghost story. The film credits two literary sources: E.F Benson and H.G. Wells. E.F. Benson provided the inspiration for the framing narrative, directed by Basil Dearden, with his story “The Room in the Tower” (1912), which relates how a man’s visit to a country house causes a recurring nightmare to become horrifying reality. Benson's “The Bus-Conductor,” first published in the December, 1906 issue of The Pall Mall Magazine, inspired the first of the film's story segments, “The Hearse Driver,” also directed by Dearden. The film segment tells of a race-car driver (Anthony Baird) who sees a deadly portent in the form of a hearse driver while recuperating in hospital following an accident on the track. Benson’s original story, particularly its haunting refrain, “room for one inside” (often reinterpreted as "room for one more"), has its roots in the folkloric tradition of tales concerning deadly premonitions. 

         An earlier example in English can be found in In the Wrong Paradise and Other Stories (1886) by Andrew Lang. In the chapter titled "The House of Strange Stories," Lang recounts the tale of a traveler staying at a Scottish manor who, as in a dream, sees a horse-drawn hearse on the road below his window late at night. Later, the traveler beholds the hearse driver in the form of the lift (elevator) operator at a hotel. The traveler avoids entering the lift moments before it plummets to the bottom of the shaft, killing everyone inside. E.F. Benson's story inspired several adaptations, including perhaps Rod Serling's second season The Twilight Zone episode "Twenty-Two" (February 10, 1961), an episode which listed as its source an anecdote from Bennet Cerf's Famous Ghost Stories (1944). The anecdote in question was taken from the final chapter of the anthology, "The Current Crop of Ghost Stories," written by Cerf from "a few of the memorable ghost anecdotes that have been told to me in the past few years." Cerf's version of the tale is virtually identical to that told by Andrew Lang in 1886, with a change of gender to the tale's protagonist. Oddly, Cerf includes a different E.F. Benson story in the volume, "The Man Who Went Too Far," but was perhaps unaware of Benson's notable treatment of the theme with "The Bus-Conductor." 

         Benson (1867-1940) was a prolific author best-remembered for the Mapp and Lucia series of novels (six volumes, 1920-1939), social comedies which later inspired two television series. He is also remembered for having written many of the most chilling horror stories of the early twentieth century, including “Caterpillars” (1912), “The Horror-Horn” (1922), and “Mrs. Amworth” (1922), the latter of which was filmed in 1975 with Glynis Johns (daughter of Dead of Night's Mervyn Johns) and broadcast as part of the British/Canadian television series Classics Dark and Dangerous in 1977.+ Benson’s ghostly tales were collected in The Room in the Tower and Other Stories (1912), Visible and Invisible (1923), Spook Stories (1928), and More Spook Stories (1934). His Collected Ghost Stories appeared in 1992. Another, lesser-known Benson story, "The Chippendale Mirror" (1915), may have provided the inspiration for the film's third segment. More on that later. 

          H.G. Wells provided the material for the film's only comedic offering, “The Golfing Story,” the frequently derided fourth segment of the film directed by Charles Crichton. This darkly humorous play resembles the comedies for which Ealing remains well-known. It concerns two golfing friends who make a wager of life and death over the hand of a shared romantic interest. The loser, having taken his own life, returns to haunt the winner by spoiling the latter's efforts at golf and romance. The segment is nominally taken from Wells's “The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost,” published in the March, 1902 issue of The Strand Magazine and collected, as "The Inexperienced Ghost," in Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903). It is a segment best enjoyed by those open to a dose of black comedy with their horror and least likely to be enjoyed by those who feel that such a comedic intrusion spoils the carefully built tension of the film's preceding segments. "The Golfing Story," along with "The Christmas Party" segment, was excised from the initial U.S. theatrical release print of the film in order to decrease the film's running time. See Notes for more information. 

         Beyond the credits to Benson and Wells, the film presents the rest of the stories as original to the screenplay, although a closer look suggests additional source material. 

"The Christmas Party"

          The second segment of the film, “The Christmas Party,” directed by Brazilian-born Alberto Cavalcanti, is told by a teenaged girl, Sally (Sally Ann Howes), and concerns a Christmas party, a game of "Sardines" (a sort of reverse "Hide-and-Seek" in which one player hides and are sought out by a group), and the ghost of a long-ago murder. This segment was inspired by a real-life murder and very likely also by a popular ghost story of the time. The real-life murder was that of three-year-old Francis Kent by his sixteen-year-old half-sister Constance Kent in 1860 in the village of Road in Wiltshire (now Rode in Somerset). Francis was first discovered missing from the main house and later found in an outhouse with severe lacerations about his body, including a deep throat wound. Constance was not initially brought to trial because of class differences with the working-class detective who identified the girl as a suspect. Five years later, Constance made a confession to an Anglo-Catholic clergyman. She described how she abducted young Francis from the main house and then murdered him in the outhouse using a stolen razor. Constance was subsequently prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to death before the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, of which she served only twenty years before immigrating to Australia, changing her name, and living to 100 years of age, dying one year before her crime was dramatized for Dead of Night. Elements of this infamous murder were incorporated into many contemporary works of popular literature, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862), Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868), and Charles Dickens's unfinished final work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). 

Constance Kent

          “The Christmas Party” also bears resemblance to the short story “Smee” by English author A.M. Burrage (1889-1956), first published in the December, 1929 issue of Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine. Burrage was a prolific writer specializing in short fiction for the crowded magazine market of the day, covering everything from school stories and boy’s adventure fiction to a scathing antiwar memoir (War Is War) to many of the creepiest ghost stories of the time. “Smee,” one of Burrage's most oft-reprinted tales, was included in Burrage’s 1931 collection Someone in the Room (as by "Ex-Private X"), an excellent volume of supernatural tales which also contains “The Waxwork” (later adapted for the Lights Out television series and Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and two of his finest stories, “The Sweeper” and "One Who Saw." Dennis Wheatley included “Smee” in his gigantic 1935 survey A Century of Horror Stories, where, if it did indeed provide the germ of "The Christmas Party," the writers of Dead of Night likely encountered the story. It was first published in the U.S. in Alfred Hitchcock’s Fireside Book of Suspense Stories in 1947.

Alfred McLelland Burrage

“Smee” concerns a Christmas party, a variation of "Hide-and-Seek," and the story of a young girl who previously died in the house by falling down a staircase and breaking her neck. The guests at the party decide to play “Smee,” the word being a degeneration of “it’s me.” Since the object of the game is to roam around a large, dark house attempting to find the player labeled “Smee,” it is easy to imagine how the story ends, especially when one considers the girl with the broken neck and how that sort of nasty accident might produce the lingering presence of a ghost. Dead of Night essentially took the skeleton of Burrage's tale and grafted onto it the real-life murder of Francis Kent. Burrage's work regularly found its way onto television in the early days of the medium. His 1927 story "Playmates" was adapted no less than three times, for Gruen Guild Theater and The Schaefer Century Theatre in 1952, and for The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse in 1954.     

Peter Cortland (Ralph Michael) in "The Chippendale Mirror"

          Dead of Night's third segment, “The Chippendale Mirror," or, as it is more commonly known, "The Haunted Mirror,” directed by Robert Hamer, is considered by some to be the jewel of the film. It concerns an antique mirror which reveals a room from the past and suggests a malevolent occupant of the room who seems always hidden from view. The hidden occupant, a murderously jealous husband, begins to negatively affect the behavior of the new owner of the mirror, a recently married man. The segment bears resemblance to another E.F. Benson story, also titled "The Chippendale Mirror." First published in the May, 1915 issue of Pearson's, it tells of a man who purchases an antique mirror from a secondhand shop only to discover that the mirror has recently been removed from a room in which a woman was murdered. The mirror has recorded the murderous act and reveals the murderer to be someone close to the purchaser of the mirror. Benson's story remained uncollected until anthologist Hugh Lamb included the tale in Forgotten Tales of Terror (1978). 

From Beyond the Grave:
Marcel Steiner in "The Gatecrasher"

         "The Chippendale Mirror" segment, with its idea of an antique object that reveals a horrible hidden past, was perhaps an influence on the 1974 Amicus anthology film From Beyond the Grave, based on four stories from English author R. Chetwynd-Hayes. The film contains two segments suggestive of the Dead of Night story. The first, entitled “The Gatecrasher” and based on Chetwynd-Hayes's story from The Unbidden (1971), concerns a man (David Warner) who purchases an antique mirror which houses an evil entity (possibly Jack the Ripper), played to eerie perfection by Marcel Steiner. After an impromptu séance awakens the spirit, it demands blood sacrifices before freeing itself from the mirror and trapping the unfortunate protagonist in its place. The final segment of From Beyond the Grave, “The Door,” based on Chetwynd-Hayes's story from Cold Terror (1973), tells of a young man (Ian Ogilvy) who installs an antique door in his home only to discover that it inexplicably opens onto a very old room that once belong to an evil sorcerer (Jack Watson) who remains trapped within.

         

Maxwell Frere (Michael Redgrave) and Hugo
Dr. van Straaten (Frederick Valk) looks on

         The final segment of Dead of Night, “The Ventriloquist,” or as it is more commonly known, "The Ventriloquist's Dummy," is directed by Alberto Cavalcanti and is likely familiar to most horror film fans, even those who have never seen the film, such is its reputation as a frightening segment and such is its influence upon subsequent cinematic treatments of the theme. Told by the psychiatrist Dr. van Straaten (Frederick Valk), the tale relates the events concerning a ventriloquist named Maxwell Frere (Michael Redgrave), who is convinced that his dummy, Hugo Fitch, is alive and intent on causing him harm. When Hugo tricks Maxwell into shooting an American ventriloquist, Sylvester Key (Hartley Power), Maxwell snaps and destroys the dummy. Hugo gets the last laugh, however, as the confrontation destroys Maxwell’s mind in a most disturbing way, suggesting a macabre switch of identities. The ambiguity inherent in the tale is beautifully handled by all involved, offering equally valid viewings of the segment as supernatural or psychological. 

          Though the intrinsically creepy quality of the ventriloquist's dummy has been mined by horror writers since the emergence of the technique as a performance art, this segment of the film was likely inspired by two sources. The first is the 1929 film The Great Gabbo, a melodrama concerning a ventriloquist (Eric von Stroheim) who becomes increasingly dependent on his dummy, Otto, for expression as he descends into madness. The Great Gabbo was adapted from the short story “The Rival Dummy” by Ben Hecht, first published in Liberty Magazine for August 18, 1928. Although The Great Gabbo is not a horror film, it remains of interest as it is likely the origin of the sub-genre of the possessive dummy. “The Rival Dummy” was adapted for radio on Mollé Mystery Theatre for November 1, 1946, starring Walter Slezak, and for television on Westinghouse Studio One on September 19, 1949, starring Paul Lukas and Anne Francis, the latter of whom later appeared in Rod Serling's first season The Twilight Zone episode "The After Hours." 

Eric von Stroheim and Otto (The Great Gabbo)

          “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy” segment from Dead of Night received its own radio adaptations, as well. “Dead of Night,” which utilized only the “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy” segment of the film, was a one-off episode of Out of This World for February 28, 1947 and was performed again as the pilot episode of Escape! for March 21, 1947. Both performances featured Berry Kroeger and Art Carney, the latter of whom later appeared in Rod Serling's Christmas-themed The Twilight Zone episode "The Night of the Meek."^

         

Gerald Kersh

The film segment may also owe its genesis to Gerald Kersh’s 1939 story “The Extraordinarily Horrible Dummy.” Kersh’s story concerns a ventriloquist driven mad by a dummy he believes to be alive and possessed by the spirit of his dead father, an overbearing taskmaster. Kersh’s story was first published in Penguin Parade #6 and was included in the author’s 1944 collection The Horrible Dummy and Other Stories. It was twice adapted and performed as “The Whisper” for the Lights Out television series, first on September 23, 1949 and again on July 3, 1950. Although some publications have claimed that the film segment's similarity to Kersh's story is coincidence, Kersh scholar Paul Duncan uncovered correspondence between the screenwriter of the segment and Kersh which finally established the truth of the film borrowing from the Kersh story. In "Dead of Night - The Mystery Solved," from the December 22, 1998 installment of Kershed, an online Gerald Kersh newsletter, Duncan writes: "The screenwriter sent his script to Kersh, saying that Kersh's story was his inspiration, but he had changed the story whilst retaining the spirit - would Kersh object?" Kersh, Duncan writes, "proceeded to grant the film writer permission to go ahead and use the script, saying that he would not sue and did not require screen credit." Duncan concludes: "Once again, the myth turns out to be the truth."  

             Additional works of interest include Margery Lawrence's "The Occultist's Story: Vlasto's Doll," which originally appeared in The Tatler for November 25, 1925. The story was collected in Lawrence's Nights of the Round Tale: A Book of Strange Tales (1926), an excellent collection of ghost stories which languished in obscurity until rescued by editor and bibliographer Richard Dalby, who began including tales from the collection in his anthologies beginning with The Virago Book of Ghost Stories in 1987. Lawrence's book of stories (many of which were based on the author's own experiences with the supernatural) adopts a similar structure to that of Dead of Night, in which a group of gathered guests recount strange events from their past experiences. 

             H. Russell Wakefield's 1940 story "Nimbo and Nobby's Farewell Performance" (reprinted as "Farewell Performance"), concerns a ventriloquist's dummy that exposes a murder committed by its operator. The story leaves it unclear whether the dummy is actually imbued with supernatural life or is simply a conduit for guilt-transference. The story was first published in the author's collection The Clock Strikes Twelve (Herbert Jenkins, 1940), a volume reprinted in the U.S. in 1946 by Arkham House. The Twilight Zone actors John Hoyt ("The Lateness of the Hour," "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?") and Alan Napier ("Passage on the Lady Anne") were joined by Joan Shawlee in a television adaptation of Wakefield's story for Pepsi-Cola Playhouse on January 22, 1954. The story was adapted by writer W.J. Stuart and director John English, and re-aired as an episode of the mystery/thriller anthology series Moment of Fear on July 20, 1965. 

Splash page by Graham Ingels
for "The Ventriloquist's Dummy"

         There have been a number of variations on the tale of a ventriloquist's dummy that is perhaps alive and either trying to take over the body of the ventriloquist or spur the ventriloquist to some nefarious action. One memorable example is “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy!” from issue #28 of the EC Comics title Tales from the Crypt (Feb/Mar, 1952). Written by Al Feldstein and illustrated by Graham Ingels, it tells of a ventriloquist whose dummy is imbued with life not by a supernatural source but rather through a hideous birth defect. The tale was adapted for the second season of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt series with Don Rickles as the ventriloquist and Bobcat Goldthwait as an unfortunate admirer. The episode was scripted by Frank Darabont, future director of the Stephen King adaptations The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999), and The Mist (2007), and directed by Richard Donner, who directed six episodes for the fifth season of The Twilight Zone, including Richard Matheson's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and Rod Serling's "The Jeopardy Room." The episode aired on June 5, 1990.

          Alfred Hitchcock Presents approached similar material in 1956 and again in 1957. Ray Bradbury, a frequent contributor to the Hitchcock series during its early seasons, adapted his 1953 story “And So Died Riabouchinska” (The Saint Detective Magazine, June/July, 1953) for the first season of the series, broadcast on February 12, 1956. Bradbury previously sold the story as a radio play to the CBS radio series Suspense in 1947, where it was adapted by writer Mel Dinelli and broadcast on November 13th of that year.* Bradbury subsequently adapted the story for the second season of The Ray Bradbury Theater on May 28, 1988. The third season opener of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “The Glass Eye,” which aired on October 6, 1957, was another memorable excursion into the world of ventriloquism. Based on a John Keir Cross story from The Other Passenger (1944), it concerns a woman (Jessica Tandy) who becomes obsessed with a ventriloquist (Tom Conway) who harbors a disturbing secret concerning his identity, this being that the diminutive "dummy" is in fact the ventriloquist and the handsome man nothing more than a convincing dummy.  

         

Cliff Robertson and Willy in "The Dummy"

The Twilight Zone episode “The Dummy” (May 4, 1962), written by Rod Serling and based on a story idea by Lee Polk, features Cliff Robertson channeling his inner Michael Redgrave and can almost be viewed as a remake of the Dead of Night segment. The episode remains highly effective, however, and ups the ante on the horror of the final twist in the tale with disturbing makeup effects from Academy Award-winner William Tuttle. The series revisited the theme, far less effectively, in the fifth season episode “Caesar and Me” (April 10, 1964), based on a script by Adele T. Strassfield, secretary for the show's final producer, William Froug. 

Anthony Hopkins and Fats (Magic)

          The 1964 British horror film Devil Doll features an evil ventriloquist and his dummy named Hugo. Anthony Hopkins starred as a troubled ventriloquist in the 1978 psychological suspense film Magic, adapted by William Goldman from his 1976 novel. Goosebumps author R.L. Stine has derived a lot of mileage from the concept beginning with Night of the Living Dummy in 1993 and continuing on through a slew of sequels and spin-offs. 

          Dead of Night concludes with an expressionistic sequence in which Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) journeys through the nightmarish elements of each story, tying all of the tales into a circular narrative, only to begin anew with the closing credits (allegedly created when the projectionist during a test screening accidentally loaded the first reel again). The theme of the deadly reoccurring dream has also seen its share of dramatizations. The Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont used the concept for two of his finest contributions to the series, the first season’s “Perchance to Dream” (November 27, 1959), starring Richard Conte and John Larch, and the second season’s “Shadow Play” (May 5, 1961), starring Dennis Weaver and Harry Townes. “The Overnight Case,” the tenth episode of the excellent but short-lived 1961 anthology series ‘Way Out, features a woman, Barbara Baxley of The Twilight Zone's "Mute," who is unable to awaken from a nightmare within a nightmare. One of the most frequent types of stories told on Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond (1959-1961) was the dream or vision of premonition, much like that experienced by the architect in Dead of Night. Perhaps the most famous example of such a tale is the 1910 story "August Heat" by William Fryer Harvey. The story was collected in Harvey's Midnight House and Other Tales and has been reprinted numerous times. "August Heat" was adapted for television on four occasions, for Danger (1950), On Camera (1955), The Unforeseen (1959), and Great Ghost Stories (1961). Other writers have approached the subject with success, including Agatha Christie ("In a Glass Darkly") and Daphne du Maurier ("Don't Look Now").

Dead of Night remains a horror film which casts a long shadow of influence over the genre. Like the greatest films, it is one which can be repeatedly viewed to reveal new layers of insight and experience. It has set a standard which has rarely been equaled.   

-JP

UK release poster; art by Leslie George Hurry

Dead of Night (released: 09/04/1945)
(U.S. release: 06/28/1946)
 Ealing Studios (production), Eagle-Lion (J. Arthur Rank; distribution)                           Universal Studios (U.S. distribution), 105 minutes

Producers: Michael Balcon
                  Sidney Cole (associate)
                  John Croydon (associate)
Directors: Basil Dearden (framing narrative & "The Hearse Driver")
                 Alberto Cavalcanti ("The Christmas Story" & "The Ventriloquist")
                 Robert Hamer ("The Chippendale Mirror")
                 Charles Chrichton ("The Golfing Story")
Editor:      Charles Hasse
Screenplay: John V. Baines, Angus MacPhail, T.E.B. Clarke
Photography: Douglas Slocombe
Art Direction: Michael Relph
Music: Georges Auric (composer), Ernest Irving (conductor), Frank Weir and his Sextet
Sound: Eric Williams
Costumes: Marion Horn, Bianca Mosca
Makeup: Tom Shenton
Visual Effects: Lionel Banes, Cliff Richardson
Featuring: Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Mary Merrall, Googie Withers, 
                  Frederick Valk, Anthony Baird, Sally Ann Howes, 
                  Robert Wyndham,  Judy Kelly, Miles Malleson, Michael Allan, 
                  Barbara Leake, Ralph Michael, Esme Percy, Basil Radford, 
                  Naunton Wayne, Peggy Bryan, Allan Jeayes, Michael Redgrave,
                  Elisabeth Welch, Hartley Power, Magda Kun, Garry Marsh, 
                  Renee Gadd
                  
*Grateful acknowledgements:

Michael Felsher for his article on the film for the 2003 Anchor Bay DVD release of the film.

Jack Seabrook for his article, "Ray Bradbury on TV Part Two: Alfred Hitchcock Presents 'And So Died Riabouchinska.'"Bare Bones E-Zine (barebonesez.blogspot.com), August 23, 2012. Accessed: May 6, 2016. 

 +There is little reliable information about Classics Dark and Dangerous, with some sources citing a production date as early as 1971. Date of production used herein was taken from Un-Dead TV: The Ultimate Guide to Vampire Television by Brad Middleton (Light Unseen Media, 2012). Broadcast information was taken from tvarchive.ca (an information database of classic Canadian television programs). 

^The Digital Deli Too provided information concerning the radio adaptations of "The Rival Dummy" and "Dead of Night" 

-"The 'H' Certificate" by Michael Brooke (BFI Screenonline) 

-"Remembering Dead of Night," documentary feature on the Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber. 

-A special thanks to Ramsey Campbell, who informed the author of H. Russell Wakefield's story.  

Notes:   
 -The initial U.S. theatrical release print of the film was edited down from 105 minutes to 77 minutes, not, as some sources have suggested, to make the film less frightening or to remove sensuality. The U.S. print was edited for a more manageable running time, customary for a period in which U.S. audiences were believed to have less patience for a longer and more deliberately paced film. The two mildest segments of Dead of Night, "The Christmas Story" and "The Golfing Story," were cut from the initial U.S. print. Some commentators have pointed out the essential error in editing Dead of Night, particularly in removing entire segments, and this is that the final sequence will not make sense to the audience. 

-“Dead of Night,” or some variation of, is the title of several other horror properties, notably a 1972 BBC2 horror anthology television series, a 1974 horror film more commonly known by the alternate title Deathdream (directed by Bob Clark, written by Alan Ormsby, and featuring the first professional makeup work of Tom Savini), and the 1977 television anthology film directed by Dan Curtis and written by The Twilight Zone writer Richard Matheson, which adapted stories by Jack Finney and Matheson. 

Australian release poster