Product Details

• Actors: Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Dame May Whitty, Alan Marshal, Merle Tottenham
• Directors: Richard Thorpe
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: September 10, 1996
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304152442
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #184,254 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Overlooked and underappreciated today, July 9, 2003

By 

Schuyler V. Johnson (Lake Worth, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Night Must Fall [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie is far superior to many others in the same genre, striving for the same effect but missing by a country mile. Night Must Fall delivers all and more. Robert Montgomery is fantastic and gives one of the best performances I have ever seen on film OR stage. I have watched this film over and over, many times and each time I see some new nuance, some other subtle moment he gives to the character, and he is so on the money you wonder...how can someone be so gifted and play against type so convincingly? Rosalind Russell is marvellous, as always, and it is interesting to see her in one of her early movies. Dame May Whitty is the star of stars here, and it is astonishing that someone of her age could turn in such an agile and convincing performance, especially toward the end, when you are afraid the suspense alone will finish her off, on screen and off. The supporting cast are perfect; the maid, the cook, etc., and the suspicious policeman who turns up now and then. It is truly one of the most hair-raising climaxes ever put on film and is quite capable of holding its own agaisnt the efforts of today. I am amazed that this is a relatively unknown movie today, and it really should be publicized and put on DVD and find its niche with today's movie audience, who would, if they only were aware, appreciate the mastery so evident on every frame. Truly a masterpiece.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars GOOSEBUMPS, August 9, 2002

By 

JOHN D THOMPSON (NEW YORK, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Night Must Fall [VHS] (VHS Tape)

If your local theatre group isn't doing NIGHT MUST FALL this efficient little movie will more than do. Emlyn Williams' original script is so canny that even reading it can give you goosebumps. John van Druten's screen treatment leaves it alone as much as possible. Dame May Whitty plays a hypochandriacal old lady; the kind who after a good night's sleep spends the next day telling everyone how she tossed & turned all night. Living with her in her house by a wood is her neice/companion Olivia (Rosalind Russell) and various servants. Enter a young page from a local hotel who may or may not be a psychopath (a chillingly effective Robert Montgomery). Williams' psychology really works on you. As unpleasant as the old lady is you don't want to see her 'get it' because Montgomery is so charming & persuasive you know in her place you'd be seduced too. It's like haveing a blind date with Ted Bundy. Whitty repeats her stage performace & she's honed it razor sharp. Rosalind Russell is awfully likeable & gives what is perhaps her most attractive performance. Montgomery, playing against type, keeps the shudders coming. For a sort of WHAT IF? version see THE NIGHT DIGGER (aka THE ROADBUILDER) with Patricia Neil & Nicholas Clay.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll Watch It a Hundred Times!, February 5, 2006

By 

Scott Coblio "kookoo guy" (West Hollywood, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Night Must Fall [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"Night Must Fall" is the type of movie that's great to own because you'll watch it a hundred times--it is a "chicken soup" type movie which has that intangible something which holds up under repeated viewings without getting tiresome. Perhaps because--as in other "cult" movies like "The Bad Seed", "Streetcar Named Desire", "Suddenly Last Summer" and "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane"--it is a wee bit perverse. Ostensibly a rather conventional "whodunnit", "Night" surprises the viewer by introducing what must have been in 1937 a radical element--the fascination and attraction that Olivia (Rosalind Russel) feels for a cold blooded murderer (Robert Montgomery). Why is she fascinated and attacted to him? Because she's bored with her repressed existence in an isolated house with her bossy aunt, that's why! Danny's very dangerousness, although lethal, is apparently just the jolt Olivia needs to feel alive again, and she's not ready to give it up right away! So she elects to shield him so that he won't be found out. Because this plot twist was unprecedented then (and scarce in films even today), you'll have a great time watching to see how it all works out. As some reviewers have noted, "Night Must Fall" is a bit stagey but as with "The Bad Seed", I don't think this hurts it one bit. Like "Seed", it WAS a stageplay (in 1935) and featured many of the same players before being filmed by MGM (interestingly, the play's author Emlyn Williams himself played the role of Danny). It could be said that Russell seems rather wooden in her role as the repressed niece, but this appears to be the way the character is written, as a woman who is emotionally stunted. It's hard to believe, watching her, that this is only two years before "The Women" and three years before "His Girl Friday". As good as she is however, she finishes third to Dame May Whitty as crochety old Mrs Bramson and Robert Montgomery as Danny, the charming murderer! Dame Whitty devours the scenery with such finesse, and Montgomery is so subtley full of lurking menace (one thinks of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector watching him), that poor Rosalind doesn't stand a chance against them! She got her chance in only a few years however. "Night Must Fall" has it all--humor and suspense in equal parts.