Dead of Night
Concerto for the Right Hand
The inanimate has provided many a scare over the years for filmgoers. This double feature pairs two films in which storefront mannequins and ventriloquist dummies raise the fright factor. One of the greatest horror anthologies ever produced, Dead of Night stars Mervyn Johns as an architect summoned to work on a Victorian country house inhabited by a cast of characters who have been infiltrating his own recurring nightmares. Among the most chilling of the film’s five sequences is Michael Redgrave’s turn as a ventriloquist tormented by his evil dummy. A surreal, rarely screened German production, Concerto for the Right Hand tells the tale of a lonely street sweeper who finds a mannequin and takes her home with him but loses its arm. Meanwhile, a shopkeeper who is missing his right arm finds the lost limb and uses it as his own, with frightening results.
PROGRAM
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Dead of Night
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer.
With Mervyn Johns, Michael Redgrave, Googie Withers.
UK, 1945, 35mm, black & white, 104 min.
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Concerto for the Right Hand (Konzert Fur Die Rechte Hand)
Directed by Michael Bartlett.
With Henry Akina, Miklos Koniger.
West Germany, 1986, 16mm, color, 79 min.
German with English subtitles.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
The Single Standard / Carnival in Flanders
Dumbo / He Who Gets Slapped
The Marriage Circle / The Merry Widow
The Cat and the Canary / And Then There Were None
