Linkshoch Wonderful Movie

BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

hwg1957-102-265704 Nightmare is a film of two halves, with Jennie Linden as Janet highlighted in the first and David Knight and Moira Redmond as Henry and Grace in the second part. The plot is the same for both halves, the use of fear to get someone to commit murder. Opinions vary but I think the first half is better mainly because the second half doesn't really hold water. How did the Gibbs and Mary Lewis discover what had been done to Janet and who did it? And if what Henry and Grace did was criminal so too was what they did. The ending seemed far fetched.The acting is good from British stalwarts like Brenda Bruce, George A. Cooper and Moira Redmond and particularly in the first half the suspense and fear are well portrayed. It is shot in lovely black and white and in wide screen that shows how perfect B & W photography was to eerie subjects. There are daytime scenes that just as creepy as the night scenes. A treat to look at throughout the film. As an entry in Hammer's suspense (as opposed to monster) films it is well worth viewing.

BloodTheTelepathicDog Now that screenplay format has to be a certain way--which ruins the film going experience--I highly doubt a film like this would be produced today. Studios would probably scoff at the change in direction this movie gives its viewer. The first half of the film focuses on one character, who we feel is the film's central figure, but then it changes gears and the script gives viewers a new main character halfway through the film. This leads the average film-goer to confusion and this device of changing main characters midway through the film would never fly today.The film starts with teenage Janet (Jennie Linden) who is sent home from her school. Janet, when she was eleven, witnessed her mother commit murder. Deemed insane, her mother was shipped to an asylum and the emotional Janet fears she is following in her mother's steps. Things don't go well at home as Janet has visions of a woman murdered in her family house. Although she has a strong support group around her, nurse Grace (Moira Redmond), her guardian Harry (David Knight), housemaid Mrs. Gibbs (Irene Richmond) and chauffeur John (George Cooper) she looses her marbles and gets sent to the sanitarium at the film's midpoint.Then the film focuses on Grace who feels someone in the house is trying to drive her mad. She too begins to see visions of a woman stalking the house. But who is trying to drive her mad? The same person that drove Janet mad? Grace feels that she knows who the culprit is but someone could be playing a cat and mouse game with her.STORY: $$$$ (The story is quite strong. The script will have you second guessing because it strays so far from convention. The problem with the shift in focal characters is that you, as a viewer, develop a relationship with the lead actor but then have that relationship squashed. Then you have to invest in a new relationship with a different character. This is the only real flaw to the film, but something can be said for breaking free of the by-the-numbers script that everything in Hollywood has become nowadays).ACTING: $$$$ (The acting is quite extraordinary. Jennie Linden gives the best performance as the tortured Janet which, given her exceptional work, hinders the film when she loses her status as the lead. She effectively captures the audience and just when you feel the utmost emotion for her Janet, the rug is pulled out from under the viewer and her character is lost. David Knight is chillingly self-absorbed as Henry and Moira Redmond is quite strong as the quick-tempered Grace. Both Irene Richmond and George Cooper give sensitive performances in their minor roles, as does Brenda Bruce who plays Janet's sympathetic school teacher).

Scarecrow-88 A teenage girl has an awful recurring nightmare of being trapped in an insane asylum cell with her sick mother who murdered dear old daddy on the poor child's birthday. Janet deeply fears of not only winding up at an asylum like in her nightmares, but the possibility of inheriting mother's murdering ways. Wishing to return home after staying at an all-girls private school, Janet(Jennie Linden, who is indeed excellent as the traumatized girl)is haunted by this woman with a slight scar on her face. Always trying to get away from her, this constant image of the woman laid on her back with a knife protruding from the chest lies at the heart of Janet's slow descent into madness. It all leads to the death of Janet's doctor, Henry's(David Knight)wife when she is a spitting image of the woman that haunts her nightmares.There's much more to this story than meets the eye, however, as we see that someone close to Janet was using her trauma as a weapon.Through Freddie Francis' startlingly eerie, moody B&W photography, we see the nightmarish realm Janet's trapped in. It doesn't end there as the film takes a detour that can be a bit jarring at first, but comes together by the end. "Nightmare" is one of those films which starts out one place then takes the viewer into a totally different direction. This film is a lot of fun.

The_Void I've been a fan of Hammer horror for a while, and have only recently discovered this whole new side of theirs. Hammer have become synonymous with fun horror films, but their serious little black and white flicks show that they're certainly not limited to doing just what we know they're good at! Like Freddie Francis' Paranoiac a year earlier, Freddie Francis' Nightmare works through it's thick macabre atmosphere, tight plotting and great acting performances. The film is also very paranoid, which helps you to get under the skin of the plot and into the heads of the characters. The film starts off following young Janet. Janet's mother stabbed her father to death on her birthday many years ago and has spent her life in an insane asylum ever since. Janet is now having horrible dreams of her mother, and fears that she may go the same way...but after being sent home, her problems really start. The plot for this film is odd because once we reach the half-way point, it makes a full turnaround and we begin following two of the smaller characters from the first part of the film.The second half of the story is definitely more interesting than the first, so the switch is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. This film appears to have been an obvious influence on Pete Walker's exploitation flick 'Frightmare', as the two follow pretty much the same theme. Hammer's version of the story is far better, though. The ensemble cast here are excellent, with everyone giving a terrific performance. Jennie Linden is convincing as the young girl being terrified by her dreams and more than does justice to the role. The greatness of the plot can be summed up by the fact that I often find myself giving low ratings to Hammer's black and white films, simply because I love to see the colours that Hammer do so well. This film is so professionally handled, however, that the lack of colour doesn't harm the film at all - and actually helps it. The atmosphere would never be the same in colour, and the colours are made up for anyway by the wonderful use of lighting. On the whole, this isn't one of Hammer's most important films - but it is a very good one, and I highly recommend it! Just one thing to note...it's not recommended that you watch this film with a headache - there's a lot of screaming!