British Film Institute - London Film Festival

Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Search cinema listings

Browse cinemas A-Z

Search 20,000 reviews

 

Night of the Eagle (1961)

Director: Sidney Hayers

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Made on a comparatively low budget and adapted from Fritz Leiber's novel Conjure Wife, this is about a hardheaded psychology lecturer in a provincial university who gradually discovers that his wife Tanzie and some of his closest colleagues are practising witchcraft (in furtherance of campus politics). From the opening sequences in which Tanzie (Blair) scrambles frantically round her house searching for a witch-doll left by one of the faculty wives, the whole thing takes off into a kind of joyous amalgam of Rosemary's Baby and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? There are one or two irritations in the phony Americanised look of the college students, and in the miscasting of Janet Blair; but Sidney Hayers shoots the whole thing with an almost Wellesian flourish, and the script (by Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson) is structured with incredible tightness as the sane, rational outlook of the hero (Wyngarde) is gradually dislocated by the world of madness and dreams.

Author: DP

Time Out Film Guide


  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields





Top Stories

A Bond a day: No. 11 'Moonraker'

A Bond a day: No. 11 'Moonraker'

Time Out revisits the 21 Bond movies day by day to celebrate the release of 'Quantum of Solace'

The essential guide to the London Film Festival

The essential guide to the London Film Festival

Get the inside track on the all the films and events you'll want to catch at the Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival

Terence Davies: interview

Terence Davies: interview

Wally Hammond talks to visionary British director Terence Davies about his deeply personal and long-awaited new documentary ‘Of Time and the City’

W.

W.

Read our early review of Oliver Stone's George W Bush biopic, 'W.', playing at this year's London Film Festival

Ten friendly ghost movies

Ten friendly ghost movies

To celebrate the release of 'Ghost Town' in which Ricky Gervais plays a New York dentist who can see dead people, Time Out counts down ten great friendly ghost movies.