Nightmare **** (1964, David Knight, Moira Redmond, Jennie Linden) – Classic Movie Review 3306

Director Freddie Francis’s excellent 1964 psychological suspense thriller Nightmare stars the 25-year-old Jennie Linden as troubled young heiress Janet, a student at a private school. She is being brought up in the absence of her parents by Grace Maddox and Henry Baxter (played by Moira Redmond and David Knight).

Alas, poor Janet is suffering from terrible nightmares in which she appears to have murdered someone, after witnessing in childhood her father’s knife death at the hands of her mother. It turns out that Janet’s mother is in fact locked in an insane asylum, so Janet has good reasons for her bad dreams. But nevertheless she is expelled from school and, back home, the nightmares continue apace…

Screen-writer/producer Jimmy Sangster’s quintessential story is an intriguing mixture of traditional Gothic horror in the style of Gaslight or Suspicion and a post-Psycho insanity plot. But director Francis, following up his success with Paranoiac (1963), proves an expert hand at this kind of Hammer horror mystery and handles it extremely competently, indeed with considerable verve and style.

John Wilcox shoots it in Gothic horror-appropriate black and white.

Also in the cast are Brenda Bruce, John Welsh, George A Cooper, Irene Richmond, Timothy Bateson, Isla Cameron, Clytie Jessop, Elizabeth Dear, Julie Samuel and Hedger Wallace.

Jennie Linden is best known for Women in Love (1969), Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Nightmare (1964).

It is the second of director Freddie Francis’s enjoyable Psycho-esque Hammer Horror trilogy, following Paranoiac (1963) and preceding Hysteria.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3306

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/

The movies in The Hammer Horror Series box set are The Brides of Dracula, The Curse of the Werewolf, The Phantom of the Opera, The Kiss of the Vampire, Paranoiac, The Evil of Frankenstein and Nightmare.