The Night Digger

Patricia Neal+Bernard Herrmann + Neal's husband Dahl.Plus Pamela Brown and Nicholas Clay.It does make a decent film,it does not make the classic thriller we could have expected .

Neala nd her mother ("you could have got married when you were YOUNG" said Clay to an infuriated Neal).A spinster who lives with her over possessive mother ,Neal's character recalls Nell's past in Shirley Jackson's "the haunting" (masterfully transferred to the screen by Robert Wise,then butchered some years ago).A good thing in the last minutes :the director does not show ,he lets us imagine what terrible thing happened .Today such a quality has become rare.

But if you have read Dahl's wonderful short stories ,you may be disappointed by his script,including pointless characters such as the minister and his wife who want to become a woman and a man respectively. Besides the two women's story and Nicholas Clay's do not hang very well.

The Road Builder is sadly not very well known, and that's a shame because this psychological thriller is a real gem and would certainly benefit from being more widely seen. The film is based on a book by Joy Cowley, although there were apparently some changes made to the story (I don't know what since I've not read the book). One of the more surprising things about this film is the fact that the screenplay was written by popular children's author Roald Dahl, although clearly he did also have a taste for the macabre if Tales of the Unexpected as well as his children's book 'The Witches' are anything to go by. The film is a strange love story at heart and we focus on a house inhabited by an old spinster and her middle aged daughter Maura. Their lives are changed one day when a young stranger on a motorbike turns up and they agree to let him stay. The young man becomes a popular figure in the house rather quickly, especially with Maura. However, there's something strange about him as evidenced by his sudden bursts of depression, apparently owing to the tragic death of his parents.

Most of the plot takes place in a grandiose mansion and it makes for a really good location for the movie - it's very isolated and is nice to look at. The atmosphere is very good throughout and this excellently compliments the plot which is thoroughly dark and largely unpleasant. The plot doesn't move particularly quickly, but it's always interesting thanks to the way that the characters are built up progressively and director Alastair Reid focuses on their relationship with one another. The acting is very good and the film stars Roald Dahl's then wife Patricia Neal in the lead role. She gets on well with the other two main players, Pamela Brown and Nicholas Clay and these actors help to ensure that the film works well. There's not a great deal of shocking moments, but the way that the unpleasant happenings are handled works very well as it's nasty yet completely believable. It all boils down to a very good ending and The Road Builder is certainly a film with a 'sting in the tail'. Overall, I really hope this gets a decent release soon because it's a great thriller and well worth seeing!

Many people will say that this film was a botch up job of Joy Cowley's novel, but they would be wrong.

While I have to admit that the type of filming they used in the 70's is not among my favourite, it worked well for this film because it gave you insight into how each character saw things.

Patricia Niel was perfect as the spinster who was stuck caring for her blind and horrid adoptive mother, and who slowly but surely becomes sexually aware of the young drifter, played by Nicholas Clay.

Some parts of the film are vaguely confusing, but one comes to grasp them after rolling the idea around in ones mind for a while.

This film was very well done for an era that produced some awful movies that completely butchered famous books, and used skin instead of actual acting to portray a film.

The Night Digger aka Road Runner is a very watchable film, that sneaks up on you rather than attacks you head on like some psychological thrillers do.

Roald Dahl has always been a good story-teller, and this movie, for which he wrote the screenplay, is no exception. It's a macabre love story with a somewhat unexpected ending. Very good acting and story-telling. I recommend this film for all Roald Dahl fans. 7/10.

Another one of those great forgotten movies of the 1970s. I caught this on late night TV about 20 years ago and have never forgotten it.

It was about a young man named Billy (Nicholas Clay) helping out Maura Prince (Patricia Neal) and her elderly mother (Pamela Brown) in their crumbling old house in England. Neal starts to fall for him (despite their age difference)...but she's not aware of what he does when he goes out alone every night...

Spooky little horror film. When I first saw it it was edited for TV so there were some unexplained pieces (like a bit about something that happened to him as a child which explains what he does as an adult) and, I assumed the violence was gone. I was finally able to see the entire uncut film and loved it! It wasn't a blood and guts horror movie--it's an excellent psychological horror. In fact the two violent acts in it aren't even shown! It concentrates on Billy and Maura and their feelings and thoughts. Clay and Neal are such great actors that just their expressions tell you what they're feeling. The growing romance between them was touching and believable. Also there's an excellent score and the ending was a stunner! This film has an R rating for some dialogue and a lengthy nude sequence with Clay. Well worth catching just for Clay and Neal.

This movie is available on DVD through the made to order system with the Warner Brothers Archive Collection. It's complete and the transfer is pristine. Well worth getting. It might disturb you but you'll never forget it. Avoid the cut version on TCM.