Norman Taylor is a psychology professor lecturing about belief systems and superstition. After a scene in which his wife searches frantically and finds a poppet left by a jealous work rival, he discovers that his wife, Tansy, is practising obeah, referred to in the film as "conjure magic", which she learned in Jamaica. She insists that her charms have been responsible for his rapid advancement in his academic career and for his general well-being. A firm rationalist, Norman is angered by her acceptance of superstition. He forces her to burn all her magical paraphernalia.
Almost immediately things start to go wrong: a female student accuses Norman of rape, her boyfriend threatens him with violence, and someone tries to break into the Taylors' home during a thunderstorm. Tansy, willing to sacrifice her life for her husband's safety, almost drowns herself and is only saved at the last minute by Norman giving in to the practices he despises.
Tansy attacks him with a knife while in a trance, but Norman disarms her and locks her in her room. Her limping walk during the attack gives Norman a clue to the person responsible for his ill luck: university secretary Flora Carr, the wife of Lindsay whose career had stalled in favour of Norman's. Flora uses witchcraft to set fire to the Taylor home with Tansy trapped inside.
Using a form of auditory hypnosis over a loudspeaker system, Flora convinces Norman that a giant stone eagle perching at the top of the university chapel has come to life to attack him. Lindsay arrives at the office and turns off the loudspeaker, and the illusory eagle vanishes. Tansy escapes her burning home and rejoins her no longer sceptical husband. On their way out of the campus, Lindsay sees the chapel's heavy doors are ajar (left thus by Norman in his "escape" from the eagle), and insists on securing them despite Flora's protests. As she waits for him, the eagle statue falls from the roof and kills her.
Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont were admirers of the novel and decided to adapt it. They were paid $5,000 each by James H. Nicholson of AIP, who passed the project over to AIP's regular co-producers, Anglo-Amalgamated in England. They agreed to finance, allocating the movie to Independent Artists to produce. Producer Albert Fennell bought in George Baxt to work on the script.[1] The original script (commenced by Matheson and completed by Beaumont) was published in the Gauntlet Press edition of He Is Legend, a Matheson tribute anthology, but not in the subsequent paperback.[4]
Filming took six weeks.[5] Part of the deal of Anglo-Amalgamated financing was that a star play the lead; Peter Cushing was originally meant to star but decided to make Captain Clegg instead. Musical comedy star Janet Blair came on board and the male lead was rumoured[citation needed] to have been offered to both Peter Finch and Cushing; Finch turned the part down and Cushing was unwell at the time the film was due to go into production. Peter Wyngarde was cast at the last minute.[1]
Release
While the film was accessible to an under-aged audience in the US., 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.[6]
Film prints for the US 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.[7] For protection, American theatre audiences were given a special pack of salt and words to an ancient incantation.[8]
The fact that three screenwriters have worked on its expansion possibly explains why the film is not all one had hoped it might be. The producers have had little success making the subject-matter believable, for all that much of the action is underplayed, and it is impossible to accept the situation of two presumably intelligent women succumbing to the lure of black magic. But director Sidney Hayer's stage management is fresh and exciting for the most part, skilful in its reliance on suggestion, naggingly effective as a study of psychic attack. Peter Wyngarde succeeds in conveying the young professor's confusion and doubt, while Margaret Johnston enjoys herself along broader lines as the wild-eyed, madly frustrated Flora.[9]
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:[10]
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".[11]
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.[12]
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".[13]
Author S. T. Joshi declared it particularly notable for its realistic portrayal of campus politics.[14]
The following DVD releases were available in 2011: Night of the Eagle, UK 2007, Optimum Releasing, and Burn, Witch, Burn!, US 2011, MGM (DVD-R "on demand").
^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. Vol. 2. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 716. ISBN978-0-313-33782-6.
^"1963 Hugo Awards". World Science Fiction Society. 26 July 2007. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
