- Night of the Eagle
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"Burn Witch Burn (film)" redirects here. For other uses, see Burn Witch Burn (disambiguation).
Night of the Eagle 
Night of the Eagle released in the US as Burn Witch Burn!Directed by Sidney Hayers Produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff
Albert FennellWritten by Charles Beaumont
Richard Matheson
George BaxtBased on the novel Conjure Wife by
Fritz LeiberStarring Peter Wyngarde
Janet Blair
Margaret Johnston
Anthony Nicholls
Colin GordonMusic 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 
UKLanguage 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).
Contents
Synopsis
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.
Reception
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]
- Simply as a suspense yarn, blending lurid conjecture and brisk reality, growing chillier by the minute, and finally whipping up an ice-cold crescendo of fright, the result is admirable. Excellently photographed (not a single "frame" is wasted), and cunningly directed by Sidney Hayers, the incidents gather a pounding, graphic drive that is diabolically teasing. The climax is a nightmarish hair-curler but, we maintain, entirely logical within the context.
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]
Background info
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]
Novel and adaptions
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.
DVD-Releases
The following DVD-Releases were available in 2011:
- Night of the Eagle, UK 2007, Optimum Releasing
- Burn, Witch, Burn!, US 2011, MGM (DVD-R "on demand").
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.
References
- ^ July 5, 1962 review of Tales of Terror and Burn, Witch, Burn from The New York Times
- ^ Review of Burn, Witch, Burn from Chicago Reader
- ^ a b Everson, William K. (1974). Classics of the Horror Film.
- ^ Review of Night of the Eagle in the 1999 edition of Time Out Film Guide, Penguin Books, London.
- ^ Joshi, S. T. (2007). Icons of horror and the supernatural: an encyclopedia of our worst nightmares. 2. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 716. ISBN 0313337829.
- ^ "1963 Hugo Awards". World Science Fiction Society. http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/1963-hugo-awards/. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
- ^ Night of the Eagle in the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) database.
- ^ Burn Witch Burn on DVDtalk.com
External links
- Night of the Eagle at the Internet Movie Database
- Night of the Eagle at AllRovi
Films directed by Sidney Hayers 1950s Violent Moment (1959) · The White Trap (1959)1960s Circus of Horrors (1960) · Echo of Barbara (1961) · Payroll (1961) · Night of the Eagle (1962) · This Is My Street (1964) · The Trap (1966) · Three Hats for Lisa (1966) · Finders Keepers (1966) · The Southern Star (1969)1970s The Firechasers (1971) · Assault (1971) · All Coppers Are... (1972) · Revenge (1974) · King Arthur, the Young Warlord (1975) · Murder (1975) · One Away (1976) · What Changed Charley Farthing? (1976) · Deadly Strangers (1976)Richard Matheson Novels I Am Legend (1954) • The Shrinking Man (1956) • A Stir of Echoes (1958) • The Beardless Warriors (1960) • Hell House (1971) • Bid Time Return (1975) • What Dreams May Come (1978)Short stories "Born of Man and Woman" (1950) • "Blood Son" (1951) • "Button, Button" (1970)Screenplays The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) • House of Usher (1960) • "The Last Flight" (1960) • "Nick of Time" (1960) • "A World of Difference" (1960) • "A World of His Own" (1960) • Master of the World (1961) • The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) • "The Invaders" (1961) • "Once Upon a Time" (1961) • Night of the Eagle (1962) • Tales of Terror (1962) • "Little Girl Lost" (1962) • "Young Man's Fancy" (1962) • The Raven (1963) • "Death Ship" (1963) • "Mute" (1963) • "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1963) • "Steel" (1963) • The Comedy of Terrors (1964) • The Last Man on Earth (1964) • "Night Call" (1964) • "Spur of the Moment" (1964) • Fanatic (1965) • The Young Warriors (1966) • "The Enemy Within" (1966) • The Devil Rides Out (1968) • De Sade (1969) • Duel (1971) • The Night Stalker (1972) • The Night Strangler (1973) • The Legend of Hell House (1973) • Dracula (1973) • The Morning After (1974) • Trilogy of Terror (1975) • The Martian Chronicles Mini-Series (1980) • Somewhere in Time (1980) • Jaws 3-D (1983) • Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) • "Button, Button" (1986) • Loose Cannons (1990) • The Dreamer of Oz (1990) • Rod Serling's Lost Classics (1994) • Trilogy of Terror II (1996)Adaptations
by others"And When the Sky Was Opened" (1959) • "Third from the Sun" (1960) • Cold Sweat (1970) • The Omega Man (1971) • The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) • What Dreams May Come (1998) • Stir of Echoes (1999) • "Dance of the Dead" (2005) • "My Ambition" (2006) • I Am Legend (2007) • I Am Omega (2007) • The Box (2009) • "The Splendid Source" (2010) • Real Steel (2011)Categories:- 1960s horror films
- 1962 films
- Black-and-white films
- British films
- British horror films
- English-language films
- Films based on novels
- Films directed by Sidney Hayers
- Screenplays by Richard Matheson
- Supernatural horror films
- Witches in film and television
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