"And Soon the Darkness" which takes entirely place during the daytime is a fairly creepy but sadly neglected 70's Brit-chiller directed by Robert Fuest, who would later focus on horror movies that have slightly more extravagant story lines, like "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" and "The Devil's Rain". This movie exclusively revolves on moody atmosphere and eerie setting, as there are no nasty bits or gratuitous sleaze. The film starts out rather slow but gradually gets tenser, and particularly the last half hour is terrific and nail-biting. Two young British nurses spend their holiday bicycling through rural France, unaware that another tourist girl was brutally slain in the same region two years earlier and unaware that they're being targeted by the same fiendish rape-killer who's still at large in the area. Following a banal quarrel, Jane becomes separated from her friend Cathy. The latter then mysteriously vanishes and during the search for her friend, Jane only encounters suspiciously behaving locals. Robert Fuest maintains a continuously high tension-level using only very basic tricks, most notably the inability to communicate. Jane doesn't speak French and therefore she cannot understand the warnings of people or explain what happened to her friend. There aren't any subtitles for the French dialogs, so even the viewers are unaware of what's going on most of the time in case they don't speak the language. Pamela Franklin's acting performance is very convincing and the music as well as the photography is extremely uncanny. Definitely on of the most efficient women-in-peril horror/thrillers of the early 70's.
