Dead of Night

Dead of Night (1945) is a landmark British horror anthology you can watch online on iFILM. Architect Walter Craig arrives at a country house convinced he has been there before — in a recurring nightmare. The other guests gather around and begin trading stories of the uncanny, each one darker than the last, while Craig's dread quietly builds toward something he cannot explain.

Four directors split the film between them — Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, and Robert Hamer — giving each segment its own texture and register. Michael Redgrave's performance as a ventriloquist losing his grip on reality is the one most studied in film schools: an actor visibly unravelling, shot in tight close-ups, carrying an episode that still unsettles decades later.

Made at Ealing Studios, the film was one of the first to wrap separate horror tales inside a framing device, a structure that shaped anthology horror for the rest of the century. Stream Dead of Night (1945) online on iFILM.