The Nightcomers

A few weeks ago I watched The Innocents, a psychological horror film based on The Turn Of The Screw, and loved it. The story was compelling, the dialogue was subtle, the performances were effective and the atmosphere was haunting and eerie, so much so that I actually froze in my chair during one of the most frightening scenes. So imagine my surprise, and confusion, when I discovered that there was a prequel of sorts made a decade later called The Nightcomers. Starring Marlon Brando on the cusp of his massive comeback with The Godfather, and directed by renowned purveyor of low grade action thrillers Michael Winner, it's a bizarre, disjointed film that bounces back and forth between various plotlines and meanders with little direction for most of its runtime. Brando's performances is its most divisive element, and while his accent is so cartoonish I actually thought he'd been dubbed, it does feel like he's actually trying, and not just slumming it for a pay check as he's often been accused of doing. The film itself adds nothing to The Innocents, offering no interesting insights into the characters or the situation. I'm not at all sure why it was even made in the first place. It's more of an odd curiosity than it is a functioning feature film, and unless you're a diehard Brando fan or are desperate to kill 96 minutes, don't bother.

This film is kind of a prequel to the story in The Turn of the Screw, the Henry James novel that was turned into the film The Innocents. In The Nightcomers, Marlon Brando adopts an Irish accent and takes on the role of Quint, the country house servant who in the James novel has passed away in a violent fall or something more sinister. So this film basically presents the filmmakers idea of what happened before the events of The Turn of the Screw that led to the haunting of Bly or the corruption of the children, and in this take on the material, it is very much a sequence of events that lead to the corruption of the children. Quint and the governess engage in an explicit, sexual relationship full of nudity and bondage in full view of the children peeping into their bedrooms. The film really brings out the Freudian sexual sub-text into the text-text and as much as James was about suppression, subtlety, and suggestion, I have to say that this kind of works here. Not a great film but an inspired take on the world of Bly.

Slow but not up to the point.

Brando made this independent film following 11 box office failures. He was now middle-aged, a bit flabby, and had a reputation for being difficult to work with. Good roles had become hard to find. Director Michael Winner had an intelligent script that no one would fund. It told the story of the 'evil' lovers whose memory -- or ghosts -- are at the center of Henry James's Turn of the Screw, and sought to turn them into real human beings who were complex yet understandable. Brando had enough fame to attract funding for this low-budget film, for which Winner even waived his salary for the privilege of working with Brando. The two needed each other, and they worked very well together, since Winner was one of the rare people who didn't treat Brando like a god or royalty at that point. Here Brando was playing a lowlife loser, much like his early role in On the Waterfront, and this seemed to fit where he was at in his life and career (right before Godfather and Last Tango in Paris would rekindle his star power). As a result, this is one of Brando's most natural performances, and there is something great about this film because of it.

Besides a wooden performances from the children, (performed by much older actors), and Marlo Brando incomprehensible accent. This enticing, tragic prequel, with its bondage and feverish sex scenes, was original and a welcomed, daring take on the 1961 movie "The Innocents".

A very good hommage to The Turn of the Screw (and Jack Clayton's The Innocents). Marlon Brando is awesome, and ...fearsome.

A truly awful film with a laughably awful script and a plethora of awkward, often perverted scenes that borderlines sexism, with terrible direction by Michael Winner (more like "Michael Loser" in this case), not to mention Marlon Brando's comically disastrous Irish accent. Ruins Jack Clayton's masterpiece "The Innocents." The only redeeming factor is the score, which deserves a better film.

Marlon Brando gives a surprisingly restrained performance in a rather silly prequel to The Turn of the Screw.

To my mind, one of the most underrated films of all time, due entirely to the fact that reviewers, amateur and professional, just cannot face reality squarely. It is an unqualified masterpiece that speaks of, among other things, the impressionability of children, the necessity of intimacy over artificiality, the brutal reality of sex over the dreaminess of what we merely wish for, the question of death and what it is and many other issues including class questions. This prequel to The Innocents (the film version of the gothic Henry James novel, "The Turn of the Screw") brilliantly answers the question of how Flora and Miles came to be possessed by the spirits of the gardener and governess and it does so in a non-mystical way that sits side by side with the mystical notions of it, which it cleverly dismisses. This act explains the underlying nature of Henry James's sideways attack on the conventions of his day and strips "The Innocents" of its reality-substitute. Such substitutes will never be enough for us to live life in reality. "Last Tango In Paris" was a kind of bookend to this but Tango was far too literal. This metaphoric telling of life and death as it really is should have been celebrated. It would have and will continue to be but not by coward;u crybabies who can't or won't face life.

Brando is mesmerizing ! An very good movie not to be missed...