Night of the Eagle

Norman Taylor teaches sociology at a university. His subject is superstition; he tells his students that magic does not work and writes it on the board. His career is moving fast; a chair is within reach and his colleagues find it odd. One day he goes through his wife's things. In Tansy's cupboard he finds dried plants, earth taken from a graveyard and braids of hair. For years she has been making charms to protect her husband. Norman burns all of it. The next day things start going wrong. Sidney Hayers directs; Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson wrote the screenplay. Peter Wyngarde, Janet Blair and Margaret Johnston are in the cast. The source is Fritz Leiber's novel Conjure Wife. The novel had been filmed before; this counts as the third adaptation. The tension it builds is uncertainty; the film does not reveal for a long time whether anything supernatural is happening. The matter it treats is academic rivalry; the magic works as a figure and the contest over the chair is the real subject. The sound design is decisive; doors, wind and a tape recorder carry the tension. At some screenings a warning section was added at the start, with a protective incantation read to the audience; it was a promotional idea. The black and white photography and the university locations work inside the narrative. Its limit is scale; the budget is small and the effect in the last section is weak today. Who it is for: viewers who like British horror and psychological thrillers. Who it is not for: it is slow, the effects dated, and the finale does not meet expectation.