I don’t want to give away too much about this witty sleeper from the fine people at Hammer Films, but I can tell you this:
This is just barely a horror movie. This is more like a dark comedy in horror clothing. It’s goofy and only little scary. It starts with something to really freak out the kids with a ghastly execution enacted by the mysterious Captain Clegg, a pirate on the high seas in the 1700s. After that, we jump to a small English village that supposedly has ghosts and goblins that roam around the surrounding woods at night to scare people to death.
All of that stuff pays off eventually, but this is not a movie about monsters in the woods. It’s about the secrets of the little village. It’s a place that goes on high alert when the authorities show up looking for bootleg liquor. It’s also a place where Peter Cushing delivers a terrific performance (partly sinister, partly funny) as the local preacher whom we instantly KNOW is up to no good.
This is a movie where we root for the bad guys to win, mostly because they’re so clever.
Pretty much all of the hallmarks of Hammer are here. It’s got a terrific cast that includes Oliver Reed and a host of memorable British character-actors, such as Patrick Allen, Jack MacGowarn, Michael Ripper and Derek Francis (this village is not peopled by a bunch of boring extras; it’s full of colorful characters). It’s got a beautiful woman (Yvonne Romain) who spends the whole movie popping out of the top of her dress. And it’s got a few make-up department gross-outs that are tame today, but that probably rattled people back in ’62.
The original British title is Captain Clegg, while in the US it has the more misleading title of Night Creatures.