And Soon the Darkness

Infobox_Film
name = And Soon the Darkness


caption = DVD cover
writer = Brian Clemens and Terry Nation
starring = Pamela Franklin
Michele Dotrice
Sandor Elès
John Nettleton
Clare Kelly
director = Robert Fuest
producer = Albert Fennell,
Brian Clemens
distributor = EMI
released = September 10, 1970
runtime = 94 minutes
language = English
budget =
imdb_id = 0065398

"And Soon The Darkness" is a 1970 British thriller film.

Starring Pamela Franklin, Michele Dotrice and Sandor Elès, it tells the story of two young English women on a cycling holiday in France, who run into difficulties.

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.

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 moped, 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 moped 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 and re-encounters the policeman, who is then revealed as Cathy's actual murderer.

Production

The film was directed by Robert Fuest, and made by the same production team that had recently completed the television series "The Avengers". The screenplay was written by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation, both of whom had contributed to "The Avengers", as well as to several ITC 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's use of the large hotel interiors in "The Shining" (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's thriller "Duel".

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", [ [http://www.timeout.com/film/77949.html "Time Out" website review] ] and the New York Times said it displayed "poverty of imagination". ["New York Times", 5 April 1971] The British film critic Leslie Halliwell noted that it had "some pretension to style". ["Halliwell's Film Guide" entry]

References