And Soon the Darkness (1970)

Daylight Dread.

Jane (Pamela Franklin) and Cathy (Michele Dotrice) are a couple of British nurses taking a bicycle vacation through rural France. When they have an argument, Jane storms off ahead leaving Cathy sunbathing on the grass. Later on Jane returns but can find no trace of Cathy, stuck in a foreign land and unable to speak the language, Jane soon finds herself in grave danger as she searches frantically for her lost friend.

The title is about the protagonist trying to resolve a mystery/terror situation before the darkness falls. Film is completely set in daylight time, with a very limited amount of characters, and no extended bouts of dialogue. Looking at it from the outside, you would not be thought of as ignorant for expecting this to not be frightening or thrilling, yet it is both. The isolation of the countryside is a foreboding presence here, which coupled with Jane’s isolation as a foreigner, makes for edgy atmospherics.

Director Robert Fuest is in no hurry what so ever to start turning the screws, so the first half of pic is very slow, but patience is rewarded once the girls argue and split up. Then Fuest starts introducing peripheral characters, and writers Brian Clemens and Terry Nation dangle bits of dark information into the plot, about the area and its history. The mystery element is amped up high, the perpetrator could quite easily be anyone who Jane meets, and then we lurch into paranoia and peril when all will be revealed in a wave of daylight dreadfulness.

Critics were (are) very much divided about the picture, complaints ranging from it being nasty and distasteful, to it being too labourious for its own good. But it has a very good fan base, and it certainly does what it sets out to do by putting those wiling to invest fully in it on to the edge of their seats. Recommended on proviso you are prepared to bare with it for the first 45 minutes. 7/10

**_Two English girls bicycling through the French farmlands takes a dark turn_**

This is a good flick to get a feel for rural France. Petite Michele Dotrice is a highlight as the blonde while winsome Pamela Franklin is strapped with a dubious short haircut. She looks best in a movie she made the next year with a full brunette mane, “Necromancy,” featuring Orson Welles.

Less than two years earlier Pamela shot another film in rural France, albeit the northern coast. I’m talking about “The Night of the Following Day” with Marlon Brando. Take that film and mix in elements of “In the Devil’s Garden” and it’ll give you an idea of what this movie offers.

It was remade forty years later with Amber Heard, Odette Annable and Karl Urban, albeit switching the setting to American girls touring through Argentina.

It runs 1h 39m and was shot Aug-Oct 1969 in the heart of France south of Paris (Loiret and Loir-et-Cher) with studio done northwest of London.

GRADE: B-