The Night Child Review

• 5th Nov 2012

The other night I watched a documentary presented by ‘The League of Gentlemen’s’ Mark Gatiss in which he continued his story of the horror film by focusing on the euro horror, its history and developments. It was a gentle reminder that asides from the classic horror films which came out of Hollywood and the classy low budget horror films from Britain there was also a parallel genre in Europe. Massimo Dallamano was a director not included but did make a series of semi-cult exploitation B horror films in the 1970s. One of them has been released by Arrow Films under the title, The Night Child, although is usually better known as The Cursed Medallion (the original Italian title is Il Medagliano insangninato) but for some reason has been re-released as The Night Child. The film received very little in the way of release which may be the reason of this being something of an unknown horror film. Falling in between The Exorcist (1973) and that other classic possessed child film, The Omen (1976), The Night Child is one of many films that came out of Italy which cashed in on the success of The Exorcist with its possessed child as the monster. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was the film that began the possession films, but The Exorcist took the genre in a new direction. Other films from Italy such as The Antichrist (1974) and Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil (1975) followed but The Night Child, although lesser known is a better film if left a little under developed.

The film stars Richard Johnson who appeared in many an Italian horror where he was able to cash in on his success in the creepy The Haunting (1963). Johnson plays an art historian who travels to Italy to look at a curious painting in the Umbrian town of Spoleto. Art historian Michael Williams (Johnson) is a widower, his wife having died in a house fire and having fallen from a window. He travels to Italy with his daughter who naturally has not gotten over the death of her mother. While there he is met by a glamorous TV producer Joanna Morgan (Joanna Cassidy) but strange things begin to happen. The young girl, already suffering from night terrors has terrible visions including being chased by medieval villagers and being pursued for being a witch. After a while the painting begins to reveal itself and a local aristo (Lila Kedrova) warns the professor of the paintings secrets and message while his daughter becomes more and more dangerously possessed. Evil then begins emanating from the painting…

The Night Child takes some time to get going and while it has some genuinely creepy moments it doesn’t make the most of its material. Director Dallamano demonstrates some visual flair despite some poor production values yet good location shooting, particularly during the dreams sequences. This is hardly surprising as Dallamano had begun his career, like his most famous counterpart Mario Bava as a cinematographer having previously worked as the director of photography on Sergio Leone’s first two Dollar spaghetti westerns which launched the career of Clint Eastwood. Johnson carries himself with a degree of class and child star Nicoletta Elmi does a reasonable job and appeared in a number of horror films; Elmi went on to star in Dario Argento’s Demons (1985).

Italy made many films worse than this but is one of a plethora of similar films to emerge from Italy during in the 1970s and for this reason it has been passed by. It does take a little while to get going but has its bright moments and a few very creepy frissons. Included on the disc is a documentary contextualizing the film amid other films from the period and looks at the career of Dallamano which compliments the main feature well. The disc comes with both the original Italian version and an English language version. European films from the 1960s and 1970s were sometimes filmed in both languages or even multiple languages, dependent on the actors in the films. I have to say that at times I flicked between the two and must admit to adding this film to a list of guilty pleasures and deserves a little more credit than it has received over the years. Dallamano also made Super Bitch (1973) which has also just been released by Arrow Films.

Chris Hick