I would have been ticked off paying for the tickets.

My wife and I were looking through the movies on DISH for something but didn’t really find it. The night before, we watched “Elvis” (2022 with Austin Butler and Tom Hanks) which we liked, so we took a chance on “Night Watch.”

What a mess. I liked Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey in “Butterfield 8,” but I didn’t think the same kind of chemistry was there in this mystery/thriller. Very different roles to be sure, but even so, I think the most patient viewers would have gotten tired of Taylor’s repeated claims that there were dead people in the boarded-up house next door. Frankly, Taylor–whose character was recovering from a nervous breakdown–was over the top manic about the dead people which nobody else saw, including the viewers and the police.

The reviews were mixed, “Time Out called it a “tired, old-fashioned thriller”; whereas The New York Times wrote, “Elizabeth Taylor, and about time, has got herself a good picture and a whodunit at that”; and Variety opined, “Lucille Fletcher’s Night Watch isn’t the first average stage play to be turned into a better than average film. Astute direction and an improved cast more than help”. – Wikipedia

“Tired” and “old-fashioned” summed up my reaction. But then, I never liked Laurence Harvey, merely tolerating him in “Butterfield 8.” How many of you have seen this film, either at the theater when it came out or years later on a satellite or cable channel? Did it seem tired to you? Would you have gone nuts if you ever saw bodies in your neighbor’s house on a dark and stormy night?

–Malcolm