The Night Digger (1971)

Effective psychological love story with a macabre twist not found in the original Joy Cowley novel. The dreary existence of middle- aged spinster Maura Prince takes an unexpected turn with ... See full summary »

Director:

Alastair Reid

Writers:

Joy Cowley (novel), Roald Dahl

Stars:

Patricia Neal, Pamela Brown, Nicholas Clay

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Patricia Neal	...	Maura Prince
Pamela Brown	...	Mrs. Edith Prince - Mother
Nicholas Clay	...	Billy Jarvis
Jean Anderson	...	Mrs. Millicent McMurtrey
Graham Crowden	...	Mr. Bolton
Yootha Joyce	...	Mrs. Palafox
Peter Sallis	...	Reverend Rupert Palafox
Brigit Forsyth	...	District Nurse
Sebastian Breaks	...	Dr. Ronnie Robinson
Diana Patrick	...	Mary Wingate
Jenny McCracken	...	Jenny - Farmwife
Bruce Myles	...	Bank Clerk
Zoe Alexander	...	Stroke Patient
Christopher Reynalds	...	Young Billy
Elaine Ives-Cameron	...	Gypsy

Storyline

Effective psychological love story with a macabre twist not found in the original Joy Cowley novel. The dreary existence of middle- aged spinster Maura Prince takes an unexpected turn with the arrival of young handyman Billy Jarvis, but there is more to Billy than meets the eye. This well-crafted film, full of sexual tension and Gothic flavor, was Patricia Neal's second after her return to acting, her real-life stroke worked deftly into the story by then-husband Roald Dahl.

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Plot Keywords:

handyman | murder | mansion | blindness | gothic horror | 

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Taglines:

A lonely woman in a decaying mansion... A young stranger on a big, black bike.

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Genres:

Drama | Horror | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

12 May 1971 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Road Builder

Filming Locations:

Twickenham Film Studios, St Margarets, Twickenham, Middlesex, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios, Tacitus Productions, Youngstreet

Technical Specs

Runtime:

97 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The original length of the film was 110 minutes. Bernard Herrmann composed his score for 110 minutes version. But about 13 minutes were cut right before the film's official release. So some of Bernard Herrmann's cues didn't end up in the film. In the released version (97 - 98 minutes), small portions of Herrmann's cue close to the end of the film was accidentally edited out. Some of Herrmann's cues that he composed for certain scenes in the released version didn't end up in the released cut. One of the unused cues was a cue for the scene where the nurse walks back and enters into her car.

User Reviews

Deserves to more widely seen

As others have said, this movie was written by British poet/author Roald Dahl as a vehicle for his wife, American actress Patricia Neal. (I thought of it recently after seeing a similar American movie "Happy Mother's Day, Love George" that featured Neal and the couple's real-life daughter Tess Dahl). The basic story is pretty good. Neal plays a lonely spinster whose domineering mother rents a room to a traveling road worker (Nicholas Clay), and Neal's character finds herself drawn to the handsome, younger man, unaware that he might be a serial killer who has buried a string of female victims along the road he is building. . .

This definitely works as a vehicle for Neal, who is probably most famous for the Paul Newman movie "Hud" (even though her character in that was supposed to have been African-American, but such a thing would have simply been too incendiary in the early 1960's). She is very good in this. Unfortunately, she doesn't get a lot of help. Nicholas Clay would later play Lancelot in "Excalibur" and appear with an all-star cast in Agatha Christie's "Evil Under the Sun", but he was just too inexperienced here. For whatever reason, there was a plethora of handsome but psychotic young men in British movies at this time, and this role might have been better played by another "handsome young psycho" actor like Shane Bryant or Hywell Bennett (although neither of them might have been very convincing as a roughneck construction worker). If it have been made a decade or so earlier though, it would have been a PERFECT role for a young Oliver Reed.

The directing is also a little flat generally, but the first murder (following a motorcycle ride) is pretty inspired. The Bernard Hermann score is not one of his best, but it does add SOMETHING to the proceedings. This isn't great, but it certainly deserves to be more widely seen.