Night Watch

Brian G. Hutton – 1973 – England

Very late in the game, after the genre had run its course, Elizabeth Taylor took her turn as the lead in a ‘Grand Dame Guignol’ thriller.  Based on a Lucille Fletcher play, Night Watch tells the story of a bored and high-strung woman living in a London flat and becoming quite convinced (Rear Window-fashion) that her next-door neighbor has committed a murder.  The police find nothing, of course, and poor Liz is reduced to unraveling the mystery herself, with the added burden of trying to determine if she is really just being gas-lighted by her best friend (Billie Whitelaw) and her investment banker husband (Laurence Harvey, in one of his last roles), who seem awfully friendly with each other.  Lots of twists and turns, but few surprises, in a stage-bound and overly familiar plot.  Not a bad film, and interesting for the appearance of Taylor in one of her last movies before famously abandoning her glamour for the next decade or so, but otherwise a great cast is largely wasted since Taylor, Harvey and Whitelaw are burdened with having to keep their characters’ true motives a secret from the audience in order to allow for multiple twist endings in the film’s final ten minutes.