My take: I only saw half of it, but the first half was pretty good.
I’m now 25 movies into the book Studies in Terror. Only 105 left to go before I complete watching all movies listed in that book. Unfortunately, The Night Has Eyes, was only available in part online. The Night Has Eyes was released as Terror House in the U.S. and later as Moonlight Madness in a reissue. None of these names got me any closer to finding a complete watchable version, however.
Moonlight Madness was the U.S. title for the reissue.
I found one version of The Night Has Eyes on a questionable website. If you go there, it will look like the film is complete, but it stops working about halfway through. It’s not available through Netflix, YouTube or Amazon, so I am stuck having only watched the first half of it.
It was an interesting first half though. In the movie, two young school teachers, Doris and Marian, go to the Yorkshire Moors on their holiday. They go for a morbid reason: they are following the footsteps of a good friend who died a year earlier, lost in the muck-filled, slimy moors. While traipsing through the moors, the two teachers get lost in a storm and seek shelter at a lone house they stumble upon in the storm.
The house is owned by a young man, Stephen Deremid. As Studies in Terror author Jonathan Rigby points out, Stephen’s “welcome is so chilly that Doris turns to Marian and quips, ‘Well, give me Boris Karloff!'” That got a chuckle out of me since I have been watching so many Boris Karloff movies in my pursuit to learn about horror.
It doesn’t take long before Stephen and Marian fall in love. But that love is questioned when Marian starts to uncover that her lost friend was at this house right before she died.
If you can find this movie, let me know by leaving a comment. I read the rest of the plot synopsis, but I would love to actually see the rest. It reminded me of The Old Dark House, which I enjoyed immensely. It had a similar creepy house on a stormy night quality.
I was not able to find a trailer online. This movie seems to be hidden and largely unknown to the denizens of YouTube who I so rely on.
Terror House was the original U.S. title for The Night Has Eyes.
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