Nightmare

Janet was sent to boarding school after seeing her mother kill her father. She has the same nightmare over and over and is frightened that she will lose her mind too. She is taken out of school and brought back to the family house. Strange things happen there: a woman in white in the corridor, sounds that stop, objects that move. Freddie Francis directs from a screenplay by Jimmy Sangster. It is a Hammer production, shot in black and white. Jennie Linden plays Janet and Moira Redmond plays Grace. Hammer means vampires and colour to most people; this is not from that line. It belongs to the run of psychological thrillers Sangster wrote in the early sixties, all built the same way: a plan to drive someone mad, a narrative that breaks in half, and a turn that changes who you have been watching. The model is plain: the French Les Diaboliques, and then Psycho. Hammer repeated the shape cheaply and quickly, and Nightmare counts as one of the better constructed of them. Francis was a cinematographer by trade and won two Oscars for it. The handling of black and white here, and the sense of depth inside the house, comes directly from that. Who it is for: viewers interested in sixties British psychological thrillers and the lesser known side of Hammer. Who it is not for: if you see the turn early the second half is very long, and by current measure the horror is mild.