Norman Taylor is the envy of every man on Hempnell Medical College’s campus, and the darling of every teenage girl. He’s young and dynamic, with high grades that make him a shoo-in for tenure, and he’s got the tremendously sexy Tansy waiting at home. He seems to have it all, but a life of success has made him complacent, convinced that his ride on the gravy train is thanks to his genius. It’s time for him to be taken down a peg or two …
Adapted from Fritz Leiber’s 1943 novel Conjure Wife and released during the horror boom of the late ’50s and early ’60s, Night of the Eagle feels less like a Hammer production and more like Corman’s Poe cycle. It’s thanks in no small part to regular Corman collaborators Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont on screenplay duties, and their efforts significantly improve Night of the Eagle over the previous adaptation of Leiber’s tale of witchcraft and campus politics – the hypnotically dull Weird Woman starring Lon Chaney Jr. The film wastes no time in setting out its central conflict (the clash between hard-edged rationalism and the existence of the supernatural), with Norman writing “I DO NOT BELIEVE” on his blackboard in front of a rapt class. He arrogantly defines the concept of belief as “a morbid desire to escape reality”, claiming that those four words are necessary to destroy its forces. He practices what he preaches at home too, and treats Tansy’s preoccupation with Obeah as dangerously foolish – thus establishing a binary perspective, with rational men on one side and superstitious women on the other.
Norman’s rational arrogance is challenged as soon as he makes Tansy burn the charms she’s dotted around their house for safety as, all of a sudden, trucks try and run him down, and a disgruntled student pulls a gun on him after another student who’s infatuated with him accuses him of rape. One of these would be bad, three events in a morning is enough to make a man suspicious, but Norman doubles down and blusters his way through his misfortune to such an extent that you want to shake him. When he does break down it’s not because he’s presented with knowledge he can’t explain, but because he may lose Tansy, and for all domineering arrogance it’s evident that he genuinely loves his wife, considering her his intellectual equal. Their relationship is the beating heart of Night of the Eagle, and a refreshing change from the scream-heavy couplings found at Hammer during the ’50s and ’60s. It’s only when Tansy leaves Norman, determined to die in his place to break his curse, that he seriously considers the supernatural. As he stands in a seaside crypt, casting graveyard earth over a photo and weeping bitter tears, it’s hard not to feel a pang of sympathy for a man who is partly to blame for his own grief, desperately trying to bring his beloved wife back to him.
Matheson and Beaumont have neatly charted a man’s humbling in the face of overwhelming evidence, showing that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy.
It’s here that my favourite character, Margaret Johnston’s enigmatic Flora, really enters the picture as the architect of Norman’s troubles, and she’s been targeting him with a magic just as powerful as Tansy’s to ensure that her husband Lindsay gets a leg up at the College. Flora angles herself as the power behind the throne, treating her husband with barely suppressed irritation that stands in marked contrast to Tansy and Norman’s affection for each other. Johnston plays the role with a limp – a classic sign of inner evil that stretches back to Shakespeare’s Richard III, and the physical infirmity symbolises all of her frustration and rage, which bubbles out when Norman finally confronts her. Leering over her desk lamp, her face sinisterly illuminated, she calmly dismantles his regained bravado, laughs in his face, and taunts him by remarking “You’re behaving like a frightened schoolboy, Norman. Frightened of being wrong”. The men may run the show, but it’s the women that pull the strings.
The only slight downside to Night of the Eagle’s climactic face-off is how it ends as, while the special effects for the swooping bird hold up sixty years on (barring the now visible trainer’s rope in Studio Canal’s new restoration), it feels far too abrupt, and too small considering the slow burn of dread Hayers has been building for the an hour and fifteen minutes. The eruption of violence happens largely in Norman’s mind, and when his house is burned down much of the drama is offscreen. We do, however, get Wyngarde against his blackboard, the words DO NOT erased in a nice piece of symbolism that brings the story full circle. Matheson and Beaumont have neatly charted a man’s humbling in the face of overwhelming evidence, showing that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy.
Studio Canal’s release, the latest in their Cult Classics series, is presented in a beautiful 4K restoration and comes with several excellent extras. Of note is a twenty-minute analysis by Anna Bogutskaya that examines the film’s relationship to second-wave feminist thought, and the dynamics between Tansy and Norman.
Night of the Eagle is out now on Studio Canal Cult Classics Blu-Ray
Excellent review – really captures the unique tone and your comparison to Hammer in terms of sexual politics is very apt.