In Britain "The Night Digger" is shown from time to time on TCM, normally late at night, under the alternative title "The Road Builder". It is not, however, a particularly well-known film, even though the script is by one of Britain's best-known writers (Roald Dahl) and it stars an Oscar-winning actress (Dahl's wife Patricia Neal).
Neal plays Maura Prince, a middle-aged spinster living in the English town of Windsor with her mother Edith. Several years earlier Maura suffered a serious stroke, which left her temporarily paralysed, although she has now recovered and works as a therapist helping other stroke victims. (Dahl inserted this as an obvious reference to the fact that Neal had herself suffered such a stroke in 1965). Maura is finding it difficult to cope with the demands of looking after her elderly mother and maintaining their large Victorian Gothic house, obviously once luxurious but now run down and dilapidated.
Their lives are changed when they hire a young man named Billy as a handyman. Billy is a road-builder working on a new motorway which is being built in the area. (The motorway runs from Liverpool to London via Manchester, Birmingham, Oxford, Reading and Windsor. In reality no single motorway has ever been built along this route, although the southern part of the route corresponds roughly to the M40, which did not exist in 1971, not being completed until 1988).
Billy claims that his surname is Jarvis and that he is originally from Cheshire (in north-west England), which causes Edith to claim him as a long-lost relative as she has family with that surname in that county. (Billy's accent, however, is a south-eastern one, which must cast some doubt on his claim; he may have discovered Edith's family background and invented a story to deceive her). At first he seems to be a godsend to Edith and Maura; he is polite, friendly, helpful and a competent worker whose efforts soon have the dilapidated house and overgrown garden looking smarter. Billy, however, may be hiding a dreadful secret. A young woman from the area is found murdered, and the police attribute the crime to a serial killer who has taken the lives of several other women in different parts of the country. Ominously, the other killings took place in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Oxford and Reading- the cities close to which Billy was previously working on the new motorway. There is, however, a further complication in that Maura- previously a dutiful daughter obedient to every whim of her domineering mother- finds herself becoming attracted to the handsome young man.
The plot is not always satisfactory, and the ending, after Maura and Billy have run away to the Scottish Highlands together, is particularly enigmatic. (This is surprising given that Dahl was a gifted short story writer whose stories normally ended with a satisfying twist). Although it is clear to the audience that Billy is indeed a killer (and there is an attempt to explain psychologically why he became one), we are never sure how much Maura knows or suspects about his guilt. Is she convinced of his innocence, or is she closing her eyes to the obvious. Or does she know all along that he is guilty? Our view of Maura depends very much upon the answers to these questions, so it is surprising that they are never definitely answered. Perhaps Dahl felt it made for a more satisfactory film to keep us guessing. (The title "The Night Digger" refers to Billy's habit of disposing of his victims at night, by burying them under the motorway workings.
The plot has many similarities to that of another British film from a few years earlier, "Night Must Fall", which also regularly appears on TCM, and which also features a mother and daughter living together and a psychopathic handyman. "Night Must Fall" (a remake of a 1937 American film with the same title, which I have never seen) is a rather dull film with one of Albert Finney's weakest performances at its centre. "The Night Digger", although it has its weaknesses, is an altogether better film.
Rather surprisingly for a winner of the "Best Actress" award, Neal never really became a household name, certainly not when compared to other "Best Actress" winners from the sixties such as Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren and Katharine Hepburn. Her performance here, however, shows just how good she can be as the sexually repressed spinster dominated and emotionally manipulated by her mother. Although we may suspect that she is knowingly covering up for a murderer, we always retain some sympathy for her. Pamela Brown is also good as the terrifying Edith, even though she was really too young for the role, being only nine years older than Neal.
Besides the acting, "The Night Digger" is also notable for its brooding, mysterious feel. Even without the macabre nature of the story, the photography of the damp, autumnal English countryside and the decaying, Gothic mansion, aided by the score from Hitchcock's favourite composer Bernard Herrman, would be enough to conjure up a sense of nameless dread. Director Alastair Reid was no Hitchcock (he worked mainly in television, and only made a few feature films) but he brings a few atmospheric touches to this film. His use of unusual, oblique camera angles and his technique of concentrating on only a part of a speaker's face (normally the eyes or mouth) add to the general strange and unsettling atmosphere of this film. Despite the obscurity into which it has fallen, "The Night Digger" is a tense thriller and character-study which it is worth staying up late to see. 6/10
Neal plays Maura Prince, a middle-aged spinster living in the English town of Windsor with her mother Edith. Several years earlier Maura suffered a serious stroke, which left her temporarily paralysed, although she has now recovered and works as a therapist helping other stroke victims. (Dahl inserted this as an obvious reference to the fact that Neal had herself suffered such a stroke in 1965). Maura is finding it difficult to cope with the demands of looking after her elderly mother and maintaining their large Victorian Gothic house, obviously once luxurious but now run down and dilapidated.
Their lives are changed when they hire a young man named Billy as a handyman. Billy is a road-builder working on a new motorway which is being built in the area. (The motorway runs from Liverpool to London via Manchester, Birmingham, Oxford, Reading and Windsor. In reality no single motorway has ever been built along this route, although the southern part of the route corresponds roughly to the M40, which did not exist in 1971, not being completed until 1988).
Billy claims that his surname is Jarvis and that he is originally from Cheshire (in north-west England), which causes Edith to claim him as a long-lost relative as she has family with that surname in that county. (Billy's accent, however, is a south-eastern one, which must cast some doubt on his claim; he may have discovered Edith's family background and invented a story to deceive her). At first he seems to be a godsend to Edith and Maura; he is polite, friendly, helpful and a competent worker whose efforts soon have the dilapidated house and overgrown garden looking smarter. Billy, however, may be hiding a dreadful secret. A young woman from the area is found murdered, and the police attribute the crime to a serial killer who has taken the lives of several other women in different parts of the country. Ominously, the other killings took place in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Oxford and Reading- the cities close to which Billy was previously working on the new motorway. There is, however, a further complication in that Maura- previously a dutiful daughter obedient to every whim of her domineering mother- finds herself becoming attracted to the handsome young man.
The plot is not always satisfactory, and the ending, after Maura and Billy have run away to the Scottish Highlands together, is particularly enigmatic. (This is surprising given that Dahl was a gifted short story writer whose stories normally ended with a satisfying twist). Although it is clear to the audience that Billy is indeed a killer (and there is an attempt to explain psychologically why he became one), we are never sure how much Maura knows or suspects about his guilt. Is she convinced of his innocence, or is she closing her eyes to the obvious. Or does she know all along that he is guilty? Our view of Maura depends very much upon the answers to these questions, so it is surprising that they are never definitely answered. Perhaps Dahl felt it made for a more satisfactory film to keep us guessing. (The title "The Night Digger" refers to Billy's habit of disposing of his victims at night, by burying them under the motorway workings.
The plot has many similarities to that of another British film from a few years earlier, "Night Must Fall", which also regularly appears on TCM, and which also features a mother and daughter living together and a psychopathic handyman. "Night Must Fall" (a remake of a 1937 American film with the same title, which I have never seen) is a rather dull film with one of Albert Finney's weakest performances at its centre. "The Night Digger", although it has its weaknesses, is an altogether better film.
Rather surprisingly for a winner of the "Best Actress" award, Neal never really became a household name, certainly not when compared to other "Best Actress" winners from the sixties such as Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren and Katharine Hepburn. Her performance here, however, shows just how good she can be as the sexually repressed spinster dominated and emotionally manipulated by her mother. Although we may suspect that she is knowingly covering up for a murderer, we always retain some sympathy for her. Pamela Brown is also good as the terrifying Edith, even though she was really too young for the role, being only nine years older than Neal.
Besides the acting, "The Night Digger" is also notable for its brooding, mysterious feel. Even without the macabre nature of the story, the photography of the damp, autumnal English countryside and the decaying, Gothic mansion, aided by the score from Hitchcock's favourite composer Bernard Herrman, would be enough to conjure up a sense of nameless dread. Director Alastair Reid was no Hitchcock (he worked mainly in television, and only made a few feature films) but he brings a few atmospheric touches to this film. His use of unusual, oblique camera angles and his technique of concentrating on only a part of a speaker's face (normally the eyes or mouth) add to the general strange and unsettling atmosphere of this film. Despite the obscurity into which it has fallen, "The Night Digger" is a tense thriller and character-study which it is worth staying up late to see. 6/10