Somewhere in-between his career as a horror director (Devil Doll, Curse of Simba) and his decline into a series of lackluster James Bond Spoofs that he continues to make to this day, Lindsay Shonteff found the time to direct this long lost Swinging Sixties slasher film. Some last minute re-editing by the distributors was responsible for Shonteff adopting the pseudonym "Lewis J Force", making it the only film he's disowned and ironically one of his few worthwhile films. Perhaps its down and dirty cocktail of sex and violence, which ranks it as quite unlike anything else in Shonteff's back catalogue might be another reason why its director disowned it. Gilbert Wynne stars as a no-nonsense East End copper, who's out to solve some brutal Jack the Ripper style murders of prostitutes and assorted dolly birds in sleazy Soho. Wynne is just about the most wrong headed copper you could imagine. For one he can't even save his wife from a Psycho alike death by the slasher's blade, and spends most of the movie carrying out a vendetta against a "little swine" who he thinks is the real murderer. The real killer revealed early on, is a stern middle class Judge (Jack May) who disapproves of swinging Sixties permissiveness and "the filth and horror of the age", and for that reason feels compelled to dress up in leather, a Beatles wig and cut up prostitutes, au pairs and anything else in a mini skirt. Its worth seeing for Jack "The Archers" May's un-bee-le-vable turn as a demented pervert alone. In the movies most berserk moment the judge has a break down in his secret room full of health and efficiency style photos. He cries and blubbers as he tears off false bras from the photos then drools onto the photos and stabs them. If that wasn't enough, wait until you see the climax where he escapes the police by dressing up as a woman and is nearly gay bashed. Apart from May's involvement what's equally surprising is the amount of nudity and blood on display, some was cut by the censors of the day and its nothing too shocking now. Yet compared to say Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed or Taste the Blood of Dracula two other British horror movies released the same year, it must have been pretty explicit and sexy stuff for the late Sixties. Perhaps sensing it was more "strong meat" than the average horror film the distributors originally released to fleapit cinemas as a skinflick item. Boasting to be "Savage, sexy, sensational" it played the Tatler and Cinecenta cinema clubs alongside Cave of the Living Dead (63) another horror movie sold in the UK on its sexploitation elements, in that film's case scantily clad vampire women. Shot under the title Evil is... (a reference to one of the judges rants) and also known as He kills Night after Night and The Night Slasher, under any title the movie is way out of Shonteff's usual league. Most of the movies success must lie at the pen of screenwriter Dail Ambler who had previously penned Beat Girl (aka Wild for Kicks) another controversial movie evolving around murder, strippers and juveniles and using London's red light district as a backdrop. Whatever can be said about the man behind the camera he never wastes the chance to delve into the naughtiest places of the capital as we accompany a misogynistic court secretary (one of the films many red herrings) in his secret life, leering his way through Soho and giving the filmmakers an excuse to hang in some (now long gone) adult book shops and strip clubs. Few movies have ever caught the seedy underbelly of London in its swinging Sixties heyday so.... well sordidly. A few poor performances aside chalk it up as another triumph from Butchers film distributors, makers of all sorts of low budget British B-movies of the Fifties and Sixties. Some favourites include The Cover Girl Killer (Harry H Corbett as a maniac photographer) and Rag Doll, a juvenile delinquent movie with Jess Conrad and the late, great Patrick Magee. One of Butcher's last productions and their most explicit, Night would make a good double bill with the equally eccentric Corruption (67) both "shot entirety on location in London, England" movies are due some form of recognition as British cinema at its most demented and sleaziest best, and certainly don't deserve their current obscurity.
Review of Night After Night After Night
