DO YOU DREAM OF SEX? DO YOU DREAM OF VIOLENCE? DO YOU DREAM OF MURDER? If you do, do not see The Night Walker!

Fresh off the smashing success of 1964’s STRAIT-JACKET, writer Robert Bloch (PSYCHO) and director William Castle rushed to repeat history with THE NIGHT WALKER. Originally planned to star Joan Crawford, who turned it down having already committed to HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE with Bette Davis – which infamously fell apart, leaving Crawford's role for Olivia de Havilland – Castle turned to Barbara Stanwyck to save the day, in what would be her final feature film role. 

Rather than Castle's go-to gimmick-fueled pageantry, THE NIGHT WALKER combined real life controversy (such as casting Stanwyck opposite her ex-husband Robert Taylor), pushing sex and violence to its zenith in adverts, and employing old world darkness by employing Henry Fuseli's painting "The Nightmare" for the film's legendary poster. Stanwyck plays a woman trapped in an awful marriage with a blind, obsessive, billionaire inventor, who unexpectedly croaks leaving her with nothing but her increasingly horrifying and disturbing nightmares for company. Though Castle's welcome lean into visual experimentation keeps things interesting, this film rises triumphantly out of the grave on the backs of the propulsive and genuinely creepy score by Vic Mizzy, and a reliably knock-down-drag-out performance from Stanwyck determined to kick the foolhardy moniker of "Hagsploitation" square in the teeth.