jwritert If you've seen the 1937 version of this film, it's hard not to compare the two. The first version is subtle and Danny's menace is hinted at rather than openly shown. Instead of quiet, threatening glances, we have an ax thrown through into the air and Finney hacking away at a dead body. I also don't understand why the 1964 version had to change the character of Olivia. In the original she was a repressed spinster, a nerd who was brunette and wore glasses, which made her attraction to a murderer all the more fascinating. Instead, the 1964 version recast Olivia as a sexy blonde who used to be an actress! The sexual tension between the two is totally gone (Olivia and Dan have sex immediately) and the great, quietly erotic scenes between Rosalind Russell and Robert Montgomery in the original (similiar to the scenes between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling) are missing. Instead we have a routine conflict - blonde wavers between her attraction and fear of an obvious psycho - and the film has nowhere to go. The only suspense left comes from watching Finney as "the psycho" and wondering when he'll explode.This is why the ending falls flat. Instead of seeing Russell's Olivia, still sexually frustrated and mesmerized by the sight of Dan in handcuffs in the 1937 original, we have Danny cowering in a bathroom and Olivia waiting to call the police. To really enjoy this film, I would advise not seeing the original!

nixolympica Just watched this film on TCM. Quite enjoyable and not as bad as I'd heard from reviews I'd read over the years. My only problem was that I was expecting to understand more about Finney's character by the end of the film (ie: what lead to his psychotic behaviour, what had gone wrong in his childhood...that kind of thing), but never got any deep insight at all. Which for me made him rather a 1 dimensional screen psycho - and therefore the film was not as interesting as it should have been. And the end of the movie was a ..."so what?" affair.Did I miss something? Or was I expecting a movie with more depth than it actually had?

Coventry To start with a little off-topic note: in 2003, Tim Burton made the film "Big Fish" which stars Ewan McGregor as a younger version of Albert Finney. When you actually see "Night Must Fall", which was shot around the time when Finney was in his late 30's, it becomes obvious how good this casting choice was! From multiple camera angles, McGregor really looks a lot like the young Finney and the facial expressions are almost exact. "Night Must Fall" itself is a truly interesting and involving thriller and I wonder why on earth it's so underrated! This is a remake of a 1930's thriller that stars Finney as a dangerous, yet very charismatic psychopath who systematically works his way up in a high-society family as a pageboy. After a while, the elderly lady and her daughter grow really fond of him but his mind and intentions are still disturbed. The film has a terrific opening sequence (the frightening image of Danny getting rid of his murder victim) and an extremely suspenseful finale! Everything in between is a bit too talky and – at times – somewhat dull, but you keep watching since Finney's performance is so outstanding. Especially the scenes in which he relives his vile crimes up in his room (forcefully holding the hat-box that contains grim trophies) are very tense and unsettling. Reisz' directing is well-handled but it merely is Freddie Francis' imaginative photography that makes this film so dreamy and beautiful. Francis unquestionably was Britain's best cinematographer of that time and he also directed a couple of entertaining horror films ("Trog", "The Creeping Flesh", "Tales that Witness Madness…")

shhazam2 This remake of a 1937 Robert Montgomery movie is just as eerie as the original. Albert Finney does a great job conveying a momma's boy character who turns even more pathological as the film progresses. As true for many better British films, the supporting characters are well cast and perfectly matched to their respective parts.