Night Watch
Though Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor never made a bona fide horror film, she came very close in 1973 with this stylish London-set thriller about a high-strung society woman who thinks she sees a dead body in the abandoned house next door - though the police and her husband (Laurence Harvey) have their doubts about her story. The film marked a reunion for Taylor with director Brian G. Hutton, a former actor who had just guided Taylor through the melodramatic love triangle of
X, Y and Zee (1972).
In fact, Hutton was something of a go-to director at the time for Taylor and her husband, Richard Burton, whom Hutton had directed in
Where Eagles Dare (1968). Hutton was vocal in his affection for the couple, noting in this film's press materials, "I love working with Elizabeth. I can joke with her, while I regard her as a stunning professional who does her work marvelously. But she doesn't take everything in between too seriously, and neither do I. We both like to kid around when we're not actually involved in getting a scene right. And that's great. After all, making a movie is six months at least out of anybody's life. There have to be some laughs, too. Because that's six months that you're never going to get back." Hutton's directorial career would be sporadic after this film, followed only by
The First Deadly Sin (1980) and
High Road to China (1983).
Night Watch was a rare example at the time of a film being adapted from a Broadway play shortly after its stage debut, in this case a thriller penned by Lucille Fletcher (whose
Sorry, Wrong Number was famously filmed in 1948 with Barbara Stanwyck). The play debuted on Broadway in February of 1972, and Jack L. Warner was also bidding for the rights which stipulated the film had to be made within a year. The project ended up being snagged well before the Broadway premiere by Joseph E. Levine, who had a close relationship with American distributor Embassy Pictures, and ushered through by fragrance and jewelry company The House of Fabergé through its Brut Productions, a short-lived attempt to get into film financing named after one of its fragrances. Pay attention to the yellow container of another Fabergé perfume, KiKu, sitting on Taylor's dressing table.
The film was originally announced with George Maharis starring in the Harvey role and Fred Coe set to direct, but Taylor's involvement meant she would be linked to people she had been associated with before such as her director and her leading man, with whom she had starred in her first Oscar-winning role,
BUtterfield 8 (1960). Harvey's signing was announced on May 10, 1972, and production later had to halt in August for four weeks when Harvey had to undergo an emergency appendicitis operation. Other mishaps on the set included Taylor breaking a finger when she fell on the set. Nevertheless it was a generally harmonious shoot, with the gourmand cast members turned on to two of Taylor's favorite dishes during the production, chili con carne and barbequed lamb.
Harvey was also optimistic about the project, telling reporters at a press conference in his usual curmudgeonly tone, "Now that the world has stopped unzipping its flies- cinematically speaking - it's possible to get back to making entertaining films again. Barely a kiss passes between Elizabeth and myself in this film, but it does have a good, strong story - and I'm convinced that that is what audiences want. The time of nude scenes played like wrestling matches has now passed - and personally I'm very grateful that it has. It's made it such a boring time in movies... It takes a lot more than one youthful, exuberant idea to sustain a career in films. Now, thank heavens, a lot of the more experienced talents, who have learned the hard way over long years, are back in business again. That's going to inject more valuable life blood into the business. I just can't believe that television - all those tiny ideas for tiny minds - can keep people away from interesting movies."
Harvey's comments are especially ironic considering this film was shot by veteran British cinematographer Billy Williams, who had famously lensed the nude wrestling match in Ken Russell's
Women in Love (1969) along with another famous button-pushing film of the era,
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). In fact, no expense was spared on the talent behind the camera for this film including gowns by Valentino, jewelry by Van Cleef and Arpels, and costume design by Yvonne Blake, an Oscar winner for
Nicholas and Alexandra (1971).
Night Watch opened in America on August 8, 1973 at Radio City Music Hall, a familiar Taylor stomping ground including a long run for
Cleopatra (1963). It only received middling reviews and box office, a fate far less positive than the next Fabergé production,
A Touch of Class (1973), which ended up netting a Best Actress Oscar for Glenda Jackson. The American version of the film also differs from the British one in that it includes a vocal theme song at the end, "The Night Has Many Eyes," written by George Barrie with lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Since then it has become a lesser known title in Taylor's filmography, though one of its biggest fans was none other than Stephen King, who cited it as one of his top twenty scariest films of all time in his landmark 1981 book,
Danse Macabre.
Even more surprisingly,
Night Watch went on to play an historic role in relations between Hollywood and the Middle East. Though Taylor went on record saying this was "not one of my favorite films," she happily went to support it in 1979 in Cairo, Egypt for the fourth annual Cairo Film Festival, which officially ended a 15-year Arab League boycott of roughly 200 actors and filmmakers who had been blocked for "Zionist activities." As part of the
Night Watch event, she spent extensive time with President Anwar Sadat and Prime Minister Mustafa Khali before going on to visit Israel. Taylor's breaking of the boycott (which was timed to coincide with a peace accord with Israel) was soon followed by the second celebrity allowed on the list, Frank Sinatra, who performed at the Egyptian pyramids. We may still not have peace in the Middle East, but this film certainly played a minor and unexpected part in trying to find a solution.
By Nathaniel Thompson
