The Night Has Eyes [Terror House] *** (1942, James Mason, Joyce Howard, Wilfrid Lawson, Mary Clare) – Classic Movie Review 11,798

For menace on the moors, Mason’s your man.

Director Leslie Arliss’s atmospheric 1942 thriller The Night Has Eyes [Terror House] stars James Mason, Joyce Howard, Wilfrid Lawson, Mary Clare and Tucker McGuire, and is based on a 1939 novel by Alan Kennington.

The Yorkshire moors suffer from an impressive surfeit of weather in this tale of a teacher’s vanishing, investigated a year later by her teacher friends Marian Ives (Howard) and Doris (Tucker McGuire).

Director Arliss makes heavy weather of it too, but Mason is on good form as Stephen Deremid, the battle-worn, shell-shocked Spanish War veteran, a one-time pianist, framed for murder. The teachers take refuge from the dark and stormy night in Stephen’s isolated cottage. Doris soon flees but Marian, filled with a mix of suspicion and love towards Stephen, stays on. Hence the gleeful adline: ‘She loved the man, even though she thought he was a murderer!’

The mystery itself and the general chiller mood are entertaining runners-up to Mason’s performance as the film’s attractions, while Günther Krampf’s foggy black and white cinematography brings style to a studio-based production.

The Night Has Eyes was released in the US as Terror House by Producers Releasing Corporation and re-released in the US by Cosmopolitan Pictures in 1949 as Moonlight Madness.

The cast are James Mason as Stephen Deremid, Wilfrid Lawson as Jim Sturrock, Joyce Howard as Marian Ives, Mary Clare as Mrs Ranger, Tucker McGuire as Doris, John Fernald as Doctor Barry Randall, Dorothy Black as Miss Fenwick, and Amy Dalby as Miss Miggs.

Leslie Arliss also directed Mason in The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,798

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