And Soon the Darkness
Encyclopedia
And Soon the Darkness is a 1970 British thriller film. Starring Pamela Franklin
Pamela Franklin
Pamela Franklin is a British actress who appeared in feature films from 1961 until 1976, and on American television throughout the 1970s.-Early life and career as a child actress:...

, Michele Dotrice
Michele Dotrice
Michele Dotrice is an English actress best known for her portrayal of Betty, the long-suffering wife of Frank Spencer, played by Michael Crawford, in the BBC sitcom Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em, which ran from 1973 to 1978....

 and Sandor Elès
Sandor Elès
Sandor Elès was a Hungarian-born actor....

, it tells the story of two young English women on a cycling holiday in France, who run into difficulties.

Plot

Jane (Pamela Franklin) and Cathy (Michele Dotrice) are two young nurses from London, taking a cycling holiday in rural France. When they stop at a busy cafe, Jane wants to plan their route, but Cathy is more interested in a handsome man (Sandor Elès), whom she spies drinking alone at the next table. Later, as Jane and Cathy make their way along a quiet country road, the man, who rides a Lambretta scooter, overtakes them, and they pass him a few minutes later, as he rests by a cemetery gate. Cathy becomes intrigued by him.

Stopping for a rest, Cathy decides she wants to sunbathe for a while, but Jane wants to push on. Eventually they argue, and Jane decides to carry on alone.

A short while later, at a lonely café, the owner tries to tell Jane, in poor English, that the area has a bad reputation. She begins to reconsider her decision, and heads back to the spot where she left Cathy earlier, unaware that something has already happened.

Unable to find her friend, and increasingly concerned about the presence of the scooter rider, Jane decides to look for the local police officer (John Nettleton). Jane becomes convinced that the moped driver, who is called Paul, and who says he is a plain-clothes detective, is in fact Cathy's attacker. She escapes from him - in the process discovering Cathy's dead body - and re-encounters the policeman, who is then revealed as Cathy's actual murderer. He attacks Jane but is stopped by Paul, who knocks him unconscious.

Production

The film was directed by Robert Fuest
Robert Fuest
Robert Fuest is an English film director, screenwriter, and production designer who has worked mostly in the horror, fantasy and suspense genres....

, and made by the same production team that had recently completed the television series The Avengers
The Avengers (TV series)
The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series set in the 1960s Britain. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed . Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants...

. The screenplay was written by Brian Clemens
Brian Clemens
Brian Horace Clemens OBE is a British screenwriter and television producer, possibly best known for his work on The Avengers and The Professionals...

 and Terry Nation
Terry Nation
Terry Nation was a Welsh screenwriter and novelist.He is probably best known for creating the villainous Daleks in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who...

, both of whom had contributed to The Avengers, as well as to several ITC
ITC Entertainment
The Incorporated Television Company was a British television company largely involved in production and distribution. It was founded by Lew Grade.-History:...

 crime series made in Britain. Consequently, in spite of being filmed on location in France, the film has more of the look and feel of these earlier series. Notwithstanding the title, the film eschews the familiar use of darkness and claustrophobia to create suspense. In a way analogous to Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

's use of the large hotel interiors in The Shining
The Shining (film)
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...

(which it predates by a decade), the mounting drama unfolds in bright, open spaces. Similar parallels have been drawn with the isolation and dread of the open road in Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...

's thriller Duel
Duel (film)
Duel is a 1971 television film about a terrified motorist on a remote and lonely road being chased and stalked by the unseen driver of a tanker truck...

.

Reception

The film did moderately well at the box-office on both sides of the Atlantic, but was not received particularly well critically. Time Out called it "nasty", and the New York Times said it displayed "poverty of imagination". The British film critic Leslie Halliwell
Leslie Halliwell
Robert James Leslie Halliwell was a British film encyclopaedist and television impresario who in 1965 compiled The Filmgoer's Companion, the first one-volume encyclopaedia devoted to all aspects of the cinema. He followed it a dozen years later with Halliwell's Film Guide, another monumental work...

 noted that it had "some pretension to style".

Release

It was released as a DVD in the US with an audio commentary by Fuest and Clemens, and released in the UK as a region 2 DVD at the end of January 2008.

Remake

An American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 remake of this film was released in 2010.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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