It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Penny is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?
Fear in the night, a suspense thriller with sinister undertones, benefits greatly from Judy Geeson who is mesmerising as a woman who had suffered a nervous breakdown, and is quite mentally fragile. The plot is pleasingly twisted and the climax suitably dramatic. It's a bit drawn out in the end, but it's an efficient thriller that is about uncertainty around what is real and what is imaginary. There are good performances from Peter Cushing and Joan Collins. It's well-handled by Freddie Francis, the prowling camerawork is effective, and the tension is well constructed till the end.
