Review: And Soon the Darkness (1970)

And Soon the Darkness (1970)

Rated GP (now PG)

Score: 4 out of 5

And Soon the Darkness is a movie that made me never want to visit rural France. It's a thriller that starts by framing the land that its protagonists are traveling through as a picturesque locale out of a postcard or a tourism ad, but once the horror begins, it increasingly takes on an eerie feeling of a sort you'd sooner expect from a film like Deliverance set in the rural South, a forbidding place where the locals are off-putting and very clearly do not want you there while the beautiful natural scenery all around means that you're not gonna find help for miles. The characters, too, all kept me guessing, as everybody gave me reason to believe that they'd want our heroines dead for whatever reason, ultimately building to a very satisfying conclusion. It's a vintage British serial killer flick with a lot of old-school retro flair that still holds up today, its fairly flat direction and occasionally silly score aside.

Our protagonists, the sensible brunette Jane and the free-spirited blonde Cathy, are two English girls who are traveling across France by bicycle. When the two of them wind up in the middle of nowhere, they get into a spat that sees Jane run off into the nearest town. When she returns to where they split up, Cathy is gone, with evidence (her abandoned camera, for one, as well as the fact that we saw her attacked by an offscreen assailant while Jane was away) that she may be in danger, forcing Jane to turn to the townsfolk for help. However, there is reason to believe that any one of them -- the creepy farmers the Lassals, the detective Paul Salmon from out of town, the bumbling local cop, a British expat who hates tourists -- could be the one responsible for Cathy's disappearance, with no way for Jane to know who to trust.

The cast in this was impressive, with Pamela Franklin making for a likable heroine as Jane and the language gap between her and the townsfolk making for some tense situations as we know more than she does about what's going on. (Side note: the version I watched on Prime Video had all the French dialogue subtitled, but the original theatrical version left it all untranslated, putting you directly in Jane's shoes as the odd duck out.) The MVP in the cast, however, was Sandor Elès as Paul. A detective from Paris (or so he says) with a personal interest in both Cathy's disappearance and the murder of another young female tourist in the area a few years ago, Paul is presented almost from the get-go as a creep who Jane, and by extension the viewer, have very good reason to believe is lying about who he says he is. At the very least, he has absolutely no social skills, he misses important clues, he acts like a stalker towards Jane and Cathy, and his interest in what's happening, even if one is feeling charitable, is presented as that of an overeager amateur who's out of his depth and is going to get himself or somebody else hurt or worse. (You have to wonder why he's not off solving crimes in Paris.) Elès is almost too good at making me hate Paul, a guy who has so many "this is the killer" arrows pointing at him that you'd think he has to be a red herring, especially since other people in town are also acting suspicious... which only doubles back around and makes you wonder if this is exactly what the movie wants you to think.

The depiction of the town is a case in point when it comes to how this movie twists and subverts things. Initially, this is a portrait of "la France profonde" straight out of the imaginations of non-French who romanticize the country, with two girls riding down a scenic road lined with trees and farms into a village filled with tourists at a local eatery -- the image that France's tourism bureaus probably like to send of what the country looks like. We do get early shots of Paul taking an interest in the girls, but it's just one guy out of many. Once Cathy goes missing, however, those scenic vistas remain, but take on a much darker tone. Now, it feels like Jane has wandered into a place where nobody wants her around, the locals looking like the very deglamorized image of rural Midwesterners or Southerners except speaking a different language, the rusty Citroën 2CVs on the road evoking the same feeling as rusty '50s Ford trucks. It's a movie where the things that look inviting and exotic on the surface turn ugly and rotten once you actually have to spend time with them -- something that, as somebody who lived in Florida for more than ten years, I can definitely relate to.

The look of the setting wasn't the only thing that felt rough and rustic, though. This film was theatrically released, but the background of many of the people behind it was in '60s British television, and it often shows in what are generally pretty low production values. Director Robert Fuest manages to wring a lot of suspense out of it, to be sure, but it's still a very workmanlike film that moves rather slowly and doesn't really try to go above and beyond stylistically apart from letting the French scenery speak for itself. "Understated" is the word I'd use to describe this movie -- not dull by any stretch, but very much a showcase for the actors more than anything. The score could also occasionally be a bit too upbeat for its own good, especially when the end credits roll and the film's cheery opening theme is reprised to play over them after what had been a rather harrowing final showdown between Jane and the villain.

The Bottom Line

And Soon the Darkness is a hidden gem of vintage, non-Hammer British horror that, while a slow burn with some occasional late '60s/early '70s cheese, still has a lot to recommend about it for fans of this sort of thriller.