| Night of the Eagle | |
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Night of the Eagle released in the US as Burn Witch Burn! |
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| Directed by | Sidney Hayers |
| Produced by | Samuel Z. Arkoff Albert Fennell |
| Written by | Charles Beaumont Richard Matheson George Baxt |
| Based on | the novel Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber |
| Starring | Peter Wyngarde Janet Blair Margaret Johnston Anthony Nicholls Colin Gordon |
| Music by | William Alwyn |
| Cinematography | Reginald Wyer |
| Editing by | Ralph Sheldon |
| Distributed by | Anglo-Amalgamated (UK) American International Pictures (USA) |
| Release date(s) | 1962 |
| Running time | 87 min |
| Country | UK |
| Language | English |
Night of the Eagle is a 1962 British horror film directed by Sidney Hayers. The script by Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson and George Baxt was based upon the 1943 Fritz Leiber novel Conjure Wife. The film was retitled Burn, Witch, Burn! for the US market (not to be confused with the 1932 novel of the same name by Abraham Merritt).
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Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde), a psychology professor lecturing in belief and superstition, discovers that his wife Tansy (Janet Blair) is practicing witchcraft. She insists that her charms have been responsible for his academic career, despite him being the youngest and newest among his colleagues, and his well being. A firm rationalist and angry at her superstition, Taylor forces her to burn all magical objects in the house. Almost immediately things start to go wrong: A female student accuses him of violation, her boyfriend threatens him, and an unseen menace tries to break into their home. Tansy, willing to sacrifice her life for her husband's, almost drowns herself and is, as the film suggests, only saved in the last minute by Taylor giving in to the practices he despises. Later, Tansy attacks him with a knife, but he manages to disarm her and lock her in her room. Her limping walk during the attack gives Taylor a hint where to find the person responsible for his ill luck. He identifies university secretary Flora Carr (Margaret Johnston), wife of a colleague whose career stalled in favour of Norman's, as the perpetrator. Flora has his home, where Tansy is still locked in, go up in flames. Then, with the help of a ritualistic sound recording, she awakens the giant stone eagle which presides on the top of the university building's entrance to attack Taylor. Flora's husband arrives at the office and stops the tape machine. The eagle disappears, and Tansy manages to escape her burning home. On her way out of the campus, Flora passes the again immobile stone eagle. The statue topples over and buries Flora under her, killing her in an instant.
While not universally regarded as a classic by critics, Night of the Eagle mostly met and meets with sympathetic reviews:
The New York Times called Night of the Eagle "quite the most effective 'supernatural' thriller since Village of the Damned" and perhaps the "best outright goose-pimpler dealing specifically with witchcraft since I Walked with a Zombie...in 1943." and noted:[1]
Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader called the film "atmospheric and underplayed in the tradition of Val Lewton" and, despite judging Sidney Hayers' direction as "needlessly rhetorical at times", "eerily effective".[2]
Film historian William K. Everson, though critical of Night of the Eagle for its predictability, found good words for the story and Janet Blair's performance.[3]
David Pirie of Time Out magazine, while not happy with the casting of Janet Blair, acknowledged Hayers' direction "an almost Wellesian flourish" and the script being "structured with incredible tightness".[4]
Author S. T. Joshi declared it particularly notable for its realistic portrayal of campus politics.[5]
In 1963 Night of the Eagle was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.[6]
Witchcraft had been a recurring theme in the horror genre, though often in combination with Therianthropy (humans turning into animals as in Cat People or The Wolf Man) or Voodoo myths (White Zombie, I Walked with a Zombie). Night of the Eagle depicts the use of charms or supernatural powers in an 'everyday' environment and juxtaposes it with a rationalist view which is questioned during the progress of events. Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon (1957), to which William K. Everson compared it unfavourably [3], works in a similar way.
All three authors involved in Night of the Eagle's screenplay were prolific writers for film and television with the focus being on horror, mystery and science fiction. Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson in particular were repeatedly hired to adapt (though freely) the works of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft for the screen.
While the film was accessible to an under-aged audience in the U.S., it was rated "X" (adults only) in the UK on its initial release. It was later re-rated 15, then 12 for UK home video releases.[7]
Film prints for the U.S. release were preceded by a narrated prologue in which the voice of Paul Frees was heard to intone a spell to protect the audience members from evil.[8]
Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife was first published (in shorter form) in 1943 in Unknown magazine and as a single book in 1953. For Night of the Eagle, the New England setting of the novel was changed to rural Britain. Weird Woman (1944, starring Lon Chaney Jr.) and Witches' Brew (1979, starring Teri Garr, Richard Benjamin, and Lana Turner) were also based on Conjure Wife.
The following DVD-Releases were available in 2011:
Out of print are the 1995 US Image DVD, US-Laserdisc and VHS video titled Burn, Witch, Burn!, the British DVD-Box titled Horror Classics, consisting of The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Eagle and Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula, and the British VHS video Night of the Eagle.
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