Janet Freeman is a 16-year old student at Hatcher's School for Young Ladies who's tormented by horrifying nightmares concerning the dark halls of an insane asylum and a woman who says both she and Janet are insane. Her terrified screams in the night disturb the other young women who room with her, and when Janet refuses to see a doctor, the headmistress decides to send her home instead. She's accompanied by Ms. Mary Lewis, one of the teachers who's quite close to her, but upon arriving at the large, family estate of High Towers, she's disappointed to learn that her guardian, a lawyer named Henry Baxter, is not there to meet her. She's also a bit taken aback to learn Baxter has sent another young woman, Grace Maddox, to be a sort of companion to her. After dinner that night, Ms. Lewis learns Grace is actually a nurse, unbeknownst to Janet, and she also learns the root of Janet's troubles from Mrs. Gibbs, the housekeeper: her mother went insane when she was eleven and stabbed her father to death in front of her. Her mother was locked away in an asylum and, ever since, Janet has been deathly afraid of going insane like her. Janet starts to be terrorized by frightening visions, these much more realistic than her usual nightmares and concerning an eerie woman in white who has Janet follow her through the house. Janet is often found wandering the hallways by either Ms. Lewis or Grace, growing more and more terrified that what she's seeing is real. Her doctor believes she should be sent to a private sanitarium rather than the actual asylum, but Baxter, who believes Janet is merely high-strung, disagrees, fearing it would cause Janet to lose her mind. Everything comes to a head when, on her seventeenth birthday, Janet is brought downstairs for a small party and is introduced to Baxter's wife, who looks exactly like the woman she's been seeing. Hysterical, Janet stabs her to death and is promptly taken to the asylum. While being loaded into an ambulance, she sees the same woman watching her from an upstairs window. It turns out the woman she was seeing was Grace Maddox in disguise, part of a plan between her and Baxter to have Janet committed and his wife killed so he could inherit her money. The two of them are soon married, but the union immediately turns sour, as Grace learns they're going to live at High Towers and, what's more, she begins to believe Baxter has a secret lover. These angry suspicions soon turn to terror and paranoia for Grace when she's told that Janet has escaped from the asylum and should be considered dangerous, leading her to believe that Baxter is trying to have her killed, just like his wife.
From her first night at High Towers, Janet begins to experience frightening visions that are all the more vivid and realistic than her past nightmares, involving an eerie woman in white who appears in her bedroom and beckons her to follow. As Ms. Lewis finds Janet wandering the hallways the first time it happens, it suggests these aren't mere dreams, and each time they happen, they become more and more horrifying, ending with Janet coming across the woman's body with a knife plunged into her chest, accompanied by either a birthday cake with her name on it or a favorite toy of hers. The doctor is called and he suggests Janet be sent to a private sanitarium, which Baxter strongly opposes, fearing that might drive her insane in and of itself, and Janet's fear and feeling of isolation increases when Ms. Lewis has to go back to the school and Baxter has to leave again following his brief visit to check on her. Things build until her seventeenth birthday, when she encounters the woman during the daytime and becomes so frightened and distraught that she attempts to cut her wrist with a shard of broken glass, only to be stopped by Grace. Later, Baxter has Grace bring Janet down for a small get-together celebrating her birthday, where she meets Mrs. Helen Baxter... who looks exactly like the woman. This pushes Janet over the edge and she stabs her to death before anyone can stop her, leading her to being institutionalized. As she's being taken away and loaded into an ambulance, she sees the woman standing at a window, looking at her, seeming to confirm that she is insane. Janet is never seen again after that, save for a couple of brief glimpses of her in the asylum, though at the end of the movie, you do hear that she's responding well to her treatment and should be better in a couple of months.
The two villains, Grace Maddox (Moira Redmond) and Henry Baxter (David Knight), are quite a slimy pair in how, for the first half of the movie, they pretend to be concerned for Janet and only want the best for her. While Janet has known Baxter for many years, as he's her legal guardian and someone she's quite fond of (in their first scene together, she gives him a kiss that's far more than a mere peck on the cheek), she first meets Grace when she arrives at High Towers and is told Baxter had arranged for her to be a companion during her stay. Grace later confesses to Ms. Mary Lewis that she's actually a nurse and agrees with her that she'd best not let Janet know. As Janet's nightmares turn into terrifying, realistic visions during her stay at High Towers, and she begins to wonder if her worst fear of going mad like her mother is coming true, Grace often finds her in the house's hallways in the middle of the night, usually on the brink of total hysteria. She appears to be doing whatever she can to alleviate her fears: giving her sedatives, trying to reassure her that what she's experiencing are just nightmares, and even manages to stop her from slashing her wrists with a broken shard of glass. As for Baxter, he disagrees with the doctor's view that Janet should be put in a private sanitarium, feeling that would be just as bad as putting her in a real asylum, and also says he believes she's merely high strung rather than potentially mad. But, after another bad episode, he tells the doctor that he took his advice in getting a second opinion and has brought a London doctor, Sir James Dudley, down to see her. Dudley doesn't get a chance to examine her, however, as that's when Janet sees Mrs. Baxter for the first time and, convinced she's the eerie woman who's been appearing to her, stabs her to death.
After Janet is taken away to be committed, it's revealed that Grace was the woman she'd been seeing at night, part of a plot between her and Baxter to get rid of his wife, receive her money. after which they themselves become married, and for Baxter to become the sole executor of the Freeman estate. It's obvious they played the part of concerned friends to Janet quite well, as their behavior during the second half of the movie reveals them as two very toxic and heartless people, who gloat about having gotten away with their scheme and with Baxter emphasizing that no one can touch them. But, their union immediately starts to unravel, as Grace grows to suspect Baxter has a secret lover, as a woman calls and asks for him, she finds a type of cigarette he doesn't smoke in his coat pocket, and the barman claims he saw Baxter there before with another woman three weeks earlier. Baxter writes the accusations off as ridiculous misunderstandings and becomes more and more irritated with Grace when she presses the issue. Grace is further distraught when she learns the two of them are to live at High Towers, which is what Baxter has intended all along, as he's sold his apartment in London. She absolutely can't stand living there but Baxter couldn't care less, telling her he's not going to let her ruin what he's wanted for so long now that he finally has it. To prove his point, he threatens to throw her out if she doesn't stop with the accusations, and when she slaps him out of anger, he violently slaps her back, saying, "I think we understand each other." The next night, after another phone call from the mysterious woman who tried to reach Baxter at the inn, the two of them have an argument, when the lights go out. While walking around the dark house with a candle, Grace sees a glimpse of a woman in white, and immediately believes Baxter is trying to frighten her in the same manner the two of them did Janet. But, when she finds one of Janet's old toys upstairs, she calls up the asylum and is told she's escaped and should be considered dangerous; she's also told Baxter himself is already aware of this. Grace then becomes extremely paranoid, often locking herself in her bedroom, refusing to speak with anyone, and when she finds John's pruning knife at her bedside and is told Baxter borrowed it the day before, she comes to believe he helped Janet escape and is planning to have her kill her. She's pushed to the point where she decides to kill Baxter first, which she does, believing Janet will take the blame. But, when she tries to call the police, she's confronted by Ms. Lewis, John, and Mrs. Gibbs, revealing everything that's happened was their own plot to prove her and Baxter guilty, and that Janet never escaped the asylum. Grace promptly becomes hysterical and madly cries and raves about what's happened, as they call the police.
Both John (George A. Cooper) and Mrs. Gibbs (Irene Richmond) are as fond of Janet as Ms. Lewis and concerned for her well-being. Mrs. Gibbs is especially so, since she knows firsthand what Janet went through, as she rushed upstairs when she heard her screaming and was horrified to see her mother standing over her father, brandishing a knife. Relating this story to Ms. Lewis, she's still as shaken by it as Janet, and is somewhat afraid that she may indeed inherit her mother's madness or, at the very least, that her fear of it could drive her insane. Regardless, both she and John are happy that Janet is home and do their best to look after her, though it ultimately seems to have been not enough, as Janet ends up stabbing Mrs. Baxter to death and is put in an asylum. After Baxter marries Grace Maddox and moves into High Towers, John and Mrs. Gibbs stay on, despite the growing tension between the couple and Grace's increasing paranoia, the latter of which they both experience. At the end of the movie, after Grace has murdered Baxter, it's revealed that the two of them were working with Ms. Lewis in a plot to expose them as having driven Janet to madness. John and Ms. Lewis were the main movers in the plot, with John having tapped Grace's phone and pretended to be someone who worked at the asylum, telling her Janet escaped, while Ms. Lewis had been the woman Grace had seen, as well as the woman on the phone, and that they'd bribed the barman at the inn to say he'd seen Baxter there with another woman. Once Grace is hit with this revelation and is practically driven mad herself, John phones the police.
Though she never does anything overtly threatening, the woman (Clytie Jessop) Janet sees time and again is an unsettling presence nonetheless, with how she never speaks and always stares with an uncomfortable expression on her strange face, which has a scar on the left cheek. The white gown she wears and the way she appears to glide rather than walk makes her feel like a ghost, one that seems to be bringing bad omens as, whenever Janet follows her, she's always horrified to see her lying dead, with a knife sticking out of her and a birthday cake meant for Janet nearby. These omens appear to come true when Janet stabs Mrs. Helen Baxter, who looks just like the woman, to death during a get together for her birthday, only to then see the woman standing at the window when she's taken away to the asylum. But, it's then revealed that the woman was actually Grace Maddox in disguise, wearing a mask that was an exact, realistic replica of Mrs. Baxter's face (it's very much like Scooby-Doo, in how you're expected to believe that a mask could be so convincing and realistic), a disguise which Ms. Lewis later adopts in order to freak out Grace herself during the third act. And finally, while her only screentime is during Janet's opening nightmare and the flashback to when she murdered her husband, the mother (Isla Cameron) is an even more frightening figure, be it when she acts menacing towards Janet in the nightmare, insisting they're both insane after she's trapped in the cell with her, or when she's looming over her husband's body, brandishing the knife with a deranged expression on her face. It's also noteworthy that she looks somewhat like Mrs. Baxter and is seen in white both times, alluding to a possible additional incentive for Grace to dress up like Mrs. Baxter while frightening Janet.
As I said before, Nightmare is not unlike Paranoiac in that it's a visually and technically superb movie that's held back from being a bona fide classic by a rather lackluster story and cast of characters. None of the acting is at all bad but, without someone as dynamic as Oliver Reed, nobody in the cast really stands out as someone you can latch onto, except maybe Jennie Linden as Janet, and she, of course, is removed from the proceedings a little after the halfway point. Once that happens, you're stuck with the utterly despicable pair of Grace Maddox and Henry Baxter, watching as their relationship quickly grows toxic thanks to Grace's suspicions about Baxter supposedly having a lover and then becoming convinced that Janet has escaped the asylum, is hiding at High Towers, and means to kill her, which Baxter is in on. The film tries to be as suspenseful and moody as it was when Janet was being terrorized but it doesn't work because of what an awful person Grace is and it feels more like karma's paying her back. Plus, while you might not guess what's going on during the first half, you're very likely to suspect that Grace is slowly being driven mad by the same kind of plot she and Baxter used against Janet, especially when she herself gets a glimpse of a woman in white. Upon figuring that out, you can easily deduce it's being done by those who you know for sure are on Janet's side. They may try to throw you off with Grace being told over the phone that Janet has escaped the asylum but, if you're a sharp viewer who's seen a number of these types movies, you're not likely to be so easily fooled, and as a result, you may get impatient with the movie's continuing attempt at suspense and wish it would just get to the ultimate revelation.
The film also falls into the trap of things not gelling when you re-watch it after learning the twist, particularly given the moments where Grace and Baxter come off as genuinely concerned for Janet's well-being, even when they're the only two people discussing it. A prime example is when they talk after Janet has attempted to commit suicide by slashing her wrists, only for Grace to have stopped her and bandaged the cut she did slice into herself. Admittedly, they didn't want Janet to kill herself because they needed her to kill Mrs. Baxter, but they come off as more relieved for Janet's sake, with Grace sounding like she's close to tears and Baxter saying, "Thank God for that, anyway," when she tells him Janet didn't do herself any real harm. Also, at the end of the movie, when it's been revealed that Ms. Lewis, Mrs. Gibbs, and John have conspired to reveal Grace and Baxter for the scum that they are, there are two major issues. One, there's no way for them to have figured out they were behind it, as they effectively covered their tracks, and two, and most importantly, all they've ultimately done is driven Grace to murder Baxter out of paranoia. They still have no concrete proof of what the two of them did to Janet (no confession or anything, and Grace is definitely not going to implicate herself), and they themselves could be charged with conspiracy to commit murder after what's happened to Baxter. It seems more like they did it out of simple revenge for Janet rather than to help bring Baxter and Grace to justice and, in the end, haven't helped anybody.
While Paranoiac had some elements of Psycho, if Nightmare has allusions to any other movie, it's the 1955 French thriller, Les Diaboliques, which was one of screenwriter Jimmy Sangster's favorite films. In fact, in the 2001 book, Inside Hammer, Sangster is quoted as saying that many of the psychological thrillers he wrote had connections to that film, adding that, while he certainly wasn't the only one to do so, he likely did it more than most. The most obvious callback to that film is the reveal that what's happened was all an elaborate ploy between two people to get rid of a third person (in both cases, a man and a woman against another woman) through a death, only here, it's getting the victim to commit the death, whereas in Les Diaboliques, it's the victim's actual death. In both cases, the conspirators believe they've pulled off the perfect crime, only to be found out and brought to justice. The big difference is that Nightmare takes the revelation that occurs at the end of Les Diaboliques and makes it the end of the first act, with the second and third acts portraying the unraveling of the conspirators' plot, rather than their being found out immediately after their plan has gone through. Moreover, this film takes the conspiracy plot element and reuses it during the third act, with Ms. Lewis, Mrs. Gibbs, and John flipping it around in order to expose Grace and Baxter. David Huckvale also mentions in his book, Hammer Films' Psychological Thrillers: 1950-1972, that the moment where Janet sees the woman standing at the window while she's being taken away after having murdered Mrs. Baxter is akin to a moment in Les Diaboliques where a supposedly dead man is seen in a school photograph taken after he was believed to have been murdered.
Like I said in my review of Paranoiac, when Freddie Francis is in the director's chair, you can expect a movie to look good, if nothing else, and Nightmare is, indeed, very well-photographed. As you've already seen, the black-and-white photography is simply gorgeous, with a lot of darkness in the many nighttime scenes that effectively give off an eerie feeling of mood, and much of the movie is set in the wintertime, with snow all-around, making for some very lovely daytime exterior scenes, especially early on at the Hatcher's School for Young Ladies. There are some very expert examples of camerawork, such as an overhead shot of Grace searching a room, a number of shots revealing someone hiding a knife behind their back, and some creeping pans and movements through the house that come off as POV shots. Francis also employs some of the same filtering and lens effects he used before, both as a DP on The Innocents and as a director, most notably the blurring the edges of the screen in many instances, like in the flashback of Janet's mother murdering her father, when she remembers it in one scene, and when she's badly frightened, in order to hint at a sense of madness that could be churning and building within Janet. That said, though, Francis never goes full-on surreal with how he shoots scenes such as the opening nightmare and the moments between Janet and the mysterious woman, letting them come off as dream-like simply because of the strangeness of what's going on and their talking place in the dead of night. In fact, the only sequence that kind of goes that route is the build-up to Janet stabbing Mrs. Baxter to death, as that's shot in a very shadowy manner, with a number of extreme and suggestive close-ups, somewhat off-kilter angles, and very quick cuts during the actual stabbing. Speaking of the editing, while it is very well-done for the most part, including one simple but nicely stylistic transition from day to night, there are a handful of transitions from one scene to another that are a little too sudden, such as how the moment where Grace finds a hysterical Janet in the hallway and is trying to snap her out of her frantic mood suddenly cuts to her on the phone with Henry Baxter while the doctor sees to Janet.
As he did on Paranoiac, Freddie Francis shot some stuff on location, notably using Oakley Court and its riverside setting as the exterior and grounds of the Hatcher's School for Young Ladies, which, as I said, look beautiful when they're completely covered in snow. But, as usual, it's Bernard Robinson's sets at Bray Studios that serve as the main setting for the action, particularly his sets for the interiors of High Towers and the mental asylum that figures in Janet's nightmare in the opening. Like the Ashby estate in Paranoiac, the interiors of High Towers are often very dark and claustrophobic, with twisting and turning corridors on the upper level, rooms that are extremely creepy at night, and a great use of light and shadow, especially when you see the woman's shadow on the wall, often at the end of a hallway, and atmospheric touches like the sound of wind blowing outside in one scene. I'd say it's an even creepier setting than the Ashby estate and could easily be used in a Gothic horror film, given its architecture and overall mood (in fact, the exterior of High Towers and the main hall would later be reused in Dracula: Prince of Darkness). The same most definitely goes for the asylum hallways Janet finds herself roaming during the nightmare that opens the movie, which aren't as enclosed as the interiors of High Towers but are no less claustrophobic and have an added cold, industrial feel to them, with the long corridors lit by rows of meshed lights running along the ceiling, the steel walls and doors, and the padded cell she imagines being locked in with her mother (and is actually put in after murdering Mrs. Baxter), with a grated window near the ceiling. And finally, like in Paranoiac, Robinson gets to do his traditional inn/pub sets in a contemporary style in his construction of the one Grace and Baxter stay at following their marriage.
Violence-wise, this is another Hammer film that opts to leave much to your imagination. You do see a fairly bloody stab wound in the flashback of the murder of Janet's father, while her mother looms over him, brandishing the knife, and there are also the moments where Janet finds the strange woman with a knife sticking out of her, Grace slashing and stabbing Baxter in the shoulder and gut respectively before finally killing him off, a shot of her wiping her bloody hands on a towel afterward, and a final shot of his body with the stab would in the gut, but that's about it, and since the movie's in black-and-white, it's not as grisly as it would have been otherwise. There is a moment where Janet attempts to commit suicide by slashing her wrist with a shard of broken glass but the actual cut happens offscreen (though, if you're like me, just the idea is enough to make you squirm), and her stabbing to death of Mrs. Baxter is shot and edited so quickly that you don't see much of anything. Special effects-wise, there's an effective miniature of the asylum that's seen during the opening, and some not so effective screen projection in the scenes where people are driving in cars.
The movie opens on a shot of a large gate in front of an imposing and creepy-looking building sitting on a hill, a shot that's completely silent, save for the sounds of dogs barking nearby. It cuts to the dark corridors inside, as the opening credits play and we're introduced to Janet, as she wanders around in the dark. She stops and swings around upon hearing a woman's voice calling to her, beckoning her to come help her, saying she knows where she is. Janet heads down a corridor and rounds a corner, as the woman's voice tells her, "Janet, I'm waiting." The voice then draws her down that hallway and to one particular door, which opens by itself just as Janet reaches for it. She walks inside the room, a padded cell, which is completely dark, save for the little bit of light coming through the grated window, and initially seems to be empty, but it becomes clear that's not the case. A figure emerges from the darkness, revealing herself to be an older woman dressed in a white hospital gown and begging for Janet to help her. But then, when she moves towards her, the door closes behind Janet, locking her in. The woman's expression and manner turn sinister, as she says, "Now, they've got us both, haven't they? That's how it should be, isn't it? We're both mad, aren't we? We're both mad!" Janet becomes frantic at this and turns around and attempts to get the door open, but it proves useless. As the woman laughs maniacally, Janet has a total breakdown, repeatedly screaming, "No!", and shaking and smacking at her head. She then sits up in bed, continuing to scream hysterically, awakening the other young women sleeping in the room with her. The lights come on and Ms. Mary Lewis rushes in and to Janet's side. She tries to calm Janet down, asking her what's going on, and Janet says she had a dream, one she's had many times before. Ms. Lewis lies her back down in her bed, telling her to try to get some sleep, and Janet's screaming stops and her rapid breathing begins to even out. Ms. Lewis leaves the room, turning out the light, but, while she's calmer, Janet is hardly at peace, as she continues grimacing and breathing in a heavy manner.
The next day, rather than see a doctor, as Mrs. Hatcher, the school's headmistress, suggests, Janet instead opts to go home for a little while. She's not happy about having to spend her final night at the school in a room separate from the other girls, and she's also disappointed upon learning that Henry Baxter won't be able to meet her at the train station and bring her home himself. That's when Ms. Lewis tells her she's going to accompany her back home. The next day, the two of them meet the family chauffeur, John, at the train station, and Janet learns that Baxter isn't at High Towers waiting for her, either. As they're being driven through the countryside, there comes a moment where Janet asks John to slow down, and then to stop. John, however, advises against it, refusing Janet's insistence, and she only backs down when Ms. Lewis steps in. However, she looks back at the building as they pass it and it's revealed to be the asylum that featured in her nightmare. Arriving at High Towers, Janet happily greets Mrs. Gibbs, the kindly housekeeper, and also meets Grace Maddox, who Baxter had sent down in order to keep her company. Though initially unsure about her, Janet decides to go along with it and has Mrs. Gibbs shows Ms. Lewis to her room. While doing so, she tells Ms. Lewis that a letter for her has arrived. That night, after dinner, Ms. Lewis tells Janet that the letter was from Baxter and was a message saying he will try to make his way down to see her soon. After Janet goes to bed, Ms. Lewis talks with Grace alone, saying that Baxter also asked her to tell her everything she knows about Janet, leading her to deduce that Grace is actually a nurse and advises her not to let Janet know of it. Grace then goes to bed and, when Mrs. Gibbs comes in to clear away the table, she hints at knowing the source of Janet's torment. Ms. Lewis asks her to elaborate, as she doesn't know, and Mrs. Gibbs tells her that, contrary to what she's been informed, Janet's mother is not dead like her father, but is in an asylum, namely the one they drove by. She then proceeds to tell her what happened that put her there, something which occurred six years before, on Janet's eleventh birthday.
As Mrs. Gibbs explains that she and Janet had been out walking while her mother was sick in bed, the film flashes back to that day. Young Janet rushes through the door excitedly, planning on running upstairs to give her mother some wild flowers she picked, and ignoring Mrs. Gibbs' telling her to take her coat off first. Mrs. Gibbs stands at the foot of the stairs, smiling as she listens to Janet running up there, only to then be horrified when Janet lets out a series of tortured screams. It then cuts to a close-up of her screaming face and then, in a quickly edited montage of shots, we see her mother looming over her father's dead body on the bed, brandishing the knife she just used to murder him, an insane expression on her face, and a birthday cake meant for Janet sitting on a table beside the bed, making for an uncomfortably innocent addition to such a horrific scene. When Mrs. Gibbs rushes upstairs and sees what's happened, she immediately embraces the hysterical girl. (This whole scene is effectively disturbing, with young Janet's piercing screams going right through you). The movie goes back to Mrs. Gibbs telling all this to Ms. Lewis, saying Janet's mother was found insane but adding that she thinks it might have been better had that not been the case, as Janet has since fretted about going insane herself. Ms. Lewis insists that's not likely to happen but Mrs. Gibbs says she's afraid that her worrying herself about it as much as she does might drive her mad in and of itself.
Later that night, Mrs. Gibbs is turning out all the lights and is about to head up to bed, when she's startled by a noise in the room across from her and sees a shadowy figure appear in the doorway. However, it turns out to be Ms. Lewis, who had come down to grab something to read and promptly heads back up to her room. She herself is somewhat startled when the lights at the top of the stairs go out, but then remembers it's just Mrs. Gibbs and continues on to her room, when she turns and sees the door to Janet's room is ajar. Walking to it, she looks inside and is surprised when she finds Janet isn't there. She walks down the hall to the left of the room and nearly runs into Janet when she rounds a corner ahead of her. She asks her why she's out in the hall and she says she had what she thought was a dream. After asking Ms. Lewis if she saw anyone else and getting a "no," Janet wonders how she ended up in the hallway if it was just a dream. Ms. Lewis leads Janet back into her room, where she tells her she dreamed about a woman standing at the foot of her bed, staring at her, and then beckoning her to follow her. She adds that, when she walked out into the corridor after her, the woman had gone, and that she was looking for her when she ran into Ms. Lewis, confirming it wasn't all a dream. Ms. Lewis suggests that she might have been sleepwalking and, when she starts to worry that she's going mad, she tells her that she's simply high strung and overly imaginative. Janet simply says, "If you say so," though she's obviously far from convinced, and gets back into bed. Ms. Lewis tucks her in and Janet says she wishes she didn't have to leave the next day, but Ms. Lewis tells her that Grace will take care of her in her stead. She tells Janet good night and heads to the door, but when she looks up before closing it, she sees that Janet is still very crestfallen and troubled in how she's looking down rather than at her. When she leaves the next day, she talks to John as he drives her to the train station and it's obvious they're both concerned for Janet. John says he'll look after her as best as he can but adds that he knows she needs a lot more and hopes that Grace will be able to help her.
That night, it's a windy evening at High Towers, and the camera creeps through the house, up to Janet's room, where she's asleep in bed. She then awakens and gasps upon seeing the same woman from before standing at the foot of her bed. The woman turns and walks to the open door, glances back at Janet as she sits up in bed, frightened, and walks on into the corridor. She again turns and looks at Janet before heading on down the corridor, as if motioning for Janet to follow her. As scared as she is, Janet can't contain her curiosity and walks out into the hallway, following the woman. She rounds a corner and sees the woman disappear into a dark room at the end of that particular corridor. Janet slowly approaches that room and peeks inside, where she sees the woman lying on the bed, a knife sticking out of her chest, and a birthday cake meant for Janet sitting next to the bed, the candles being the only source of light there. Terrified, Janet ducks out of the room and runs down the hall, back to her own room, only to find the doors closed and locked. She frantically tries to open them but can't get them to budge, when she feels a hand on her shoulder. She spins around and sees that it's Grace, who asks her what's going on. Janet then descends into complete hysteria, crazily muttering and laughing, while Grace shakes and slaps her, trying to bring her back to her senses. The film then cuts to Grace talking with Henry Baxter over the phone, telling him what's happened and that the doctor is seeing to Janet. When she hangs up, the doctor comes downstairs, telling her and Mrs. Gibbs that he's sedated Janet and gives Grace some pills for her. The doctor leaves and Mrs. Gibbs goes back to bed, while Grace says she's going to stay up and look in on Janet from time-to-time. It's then revealed that, while the doctor may have given her some sedatives, Janet is not asleep, still frightened by what happened and tossing around restlessly.
The next day, after Henry Baxter arrives and speaks with the doctor, telling him he believes Janet is merely under a lot of stress and disagrees with his suggestion to put her in a private sanitarium, he goes up and visits with Janet. He apologizes for having not met her when she came home from school, saying his wife hates to be left alone, and tells her he can't stay, but says he might take her with him to London one day when she's better. He also promises not to let them take her away and put her in the asylum. He leaves and Janet lies back down in bed, as the camera pans up to the window and the light coming through slowly dims until it's totally dark, acting as a simple but interesting transition from day to night (there is a dissolve in there, however). Janet is awakened by the sound of the doorknob rattling and looks up to see someone trying to open it from the outside. She asks who it is but gets no response and the knob then stops moving altogether. Slowly, Janet gets out of bed and opens the door. Peeking into the hallway, she sees no one there, but steps out into the dark corridor and looks from right to left. She sees a shadow trail across the wall at the end of the hallway to her left and slowly walks down there to investigate. When she rounds the corner, she sees the shadow trail across an open door at the end of the hallway and walks down there, ending up in the bedroom that once belonged to her parents. When she walks to the foot of the bed, the memories of that horrible day come flooding back and quickly become too much, causing her to rush out of the room and back to her own bedroom. This time, she's able to open the doors and get inside, but after she locks the doors, she turns around and is horrified when she again sees the woman, lying on her bed, a knife sticking out of her. Hysterical and frantic, she bolts back out and rushes down to the house's main hall, only to faint when she runs into a man at the bottom of the stairs. Grace comes rushing in and the man, John, picks Janet up and helps Grace in bringing her back to her bed. However, Janet doesn't want to stay in her bedroom again and Grace allows John to take her to her room instead. As she lingers behind in Janet's room, Grace appears confused about Janet's reaction and picks up her portable radio and her favorite childhood doll. She then goes to her bedroom, sending John to bed, and gives Janet some pills, asking her what happened. Janet doesn't answer, but asks Grace not to leave her by herself. She then mumbles about not knowing who the woman is, asking how she could be dreaming about someone she doesn't know, and wondering what she wants. Grace tries to console her, telling her that dreams simply can't be explained, and tells her to go to sleep, reminding her that the next day is her birthday.
Janet awakens at around 11:00 the next morning and gets out of bed and walks out into the hall. She first heads back to her own bedroom, where Grace slept, but finds no sign of her there. She opens her wardrobe (the way she wrenches it open, you can tell she was expecting someone to be hiding in there) and pulls out a robe she puts on over her pajamas, before heading downstairs. Calling for Grace, she walks down the small flight of stairs leading to the house's main hall and sees a shadow emitting from a room off to the left. Thinking it's Grace, she walks on down, speaking to her, only to be taken aback when the shadow is revealed to be that of the woman. Terrified, Janet asks the woman who she is and what she wants, but receives no answer. Instead, the woman approaches her menacingly and Janet, frantically asking her to go away and leave her alone, rushes back upstairs, to her bedroom. Closing the doors, and still terrified and almost at her wit's end, she grabs her small, portable radio from her bed and smashes her mirror. She then grabs one of the large shards of glass and uses it to try to commit suicide, slashing open her wrist and screaming. The film cuts to a scene between Grace and Baxter, the former of whom tells him she managed to stop Janet from fatally injuring herself and put a tourniquet on the wound before calling the doctor, who's seeing to her at the moment. The doctor comes downstairs, telling Baxter that Janet is quieter now but that he's worried about her. He notices a man in the next room and Baxter explains he's taken his advice of seeking a second opinion, intending to get it from Sir James Dudley. He takes the doctor in to meet Dudley and the doctor tells Grace to bring Janet downstairs.
Sitting up in bed, looking at her bandaged wrist, the very ill-at-ease Janet hears a knock at the door and when she asks who it is, Grace enters. She tells Janet that Baxter is downstairs and Janet is somewhat happy about this, as she knows he came to celebrate her birthday with her. Grace helps her put her robe on again, telling her that Baxter knows of her attempted suicide, while Janet credits Grace with saving her life. Grace assists her in getting downstairs, where they're met by Mrs. Gibbs, and led into the room across from the stairs, where they meet Baxter, Dudley, and the doctor. They all look at her in a concerned, pitiable manner, when she sees a woman she doesn't recognize standing at the window, her back to her. Mrs. Gibbs wheels in a birthday cake on a cart and picks it up, but Janet grows tense, seeing the large knife she left on the cart, which she then takes to cut the cake. Baxter says "happy birthday" to Janet, when he notices she's staring at the woman at the window. He tells her the woman is his wife, whom she's never met, but Janet is beginning to think she has met her, as she's realizing how similar she is to the woman who's been frightening. Baxter calls to his wife, Helen, and when she turns and looks, Janet freezes upon seeing her face, as she looks exactly like the woman. Breathing heavily and frantically, Janet starts to freak out as Mrs. Baxter approaches, quickly grabs the knife on the table behind her, and stabs her in the torso several times. It happens so fast and is so shocking an act that no one is able to stop her in time, and when Mrs. Gibbs moves to her and embraces her, trying to calm her, Mrs. Baxter has already collapsed to the floor and is clearly dead. Kneeling over his wife's body, Baxter looks up at Janet, seemingly unable to comprehend what's just happened, as Mrs. Gibbs holds the hysterical, crying girl in her arms.
In the next scene, Mrs. Baxter's body is removed from the house, while Janet is carried out to an awaiting ambulance on a stretcher. As she's about to be loaded into it, Janet is shocked when she sees the woman watching her from an upstairs window, appearing to confirm that she has, indeed, gone insane like her mother. Once she's placed inside the ambulance, Baxter, who was standing outside, watching, walks back into the house, passing behind an utterly devastated Mrs. Gibbs. Inside, he sees John scrubbing the bloodstain out of the carpet and the two of them exchange looks before Baxter walks into another room and shuts the door. Upstairs, the woman watches the ambulance drive away, then sits down at a mirror and begins to roll up the edges of her face, revealing it to be a latex mask, which she tosses into a fireplace. She then removes the black wig she's wearing and is shown to be Grace, who smirks and lightly chuckles as she watches the mask burn up in the fireplace. A dissolve shows Janet sitting in a padded cell, similar to the one she dreamed about being locked in with her mother, while elsewhere, Baxter and Grace are leaving the church where Mrs. Baxter's funeral just took place. And, in an image that speaks volumes, it's revealed that the place where Janet has been placed is the very asylum where her mother is and where she wanted to stop on her way home.
Cutting to an inn, the movie reveals that Baxter has taken a room there... and is staying with none other than Grace, who's lying in bed and embraces him when he walks over to grab a cigarette from the nightstand. They talk about how, after three months of waiting, the two of them have truly gotten away with their plot, now have everything, and are married. He then leaves to head downstairs to the bar, Grace telling him she'll be down there in ten minutes, but once he's left the room, the phone rings. Answering it, Grace learns it's someone searching for Baxter and tells them he's downstairs at the bar. She then joins him there, but when she asks, he tells her he has no clue as to who might have called. The barman shows up and appears to know Baxter, calling him a regular customer, and prepares to fix a drink for Grace that she says she hates. When he looks at her, the barman appears to realize he was mistaken, and Baxter tells him he's got him confused with someone else. Grace becomes suspicious about this, as Baxter had insisted he'd never been there before, and even though he, again, says the barman was mistaken, she's rather troubled by it. The next day, Grace looks in Baxter's coat pocket for some cigarettes, but when she takes the pack out, she's surprised to see that they're menthol, which neither of them smoke. Baxter says he doesn't know how they wound up in his pocket and Grace, growing ever more suspicious, wonders if he really went for a walk the night before like he said. Later, while Baxter is at the post office, Grace is downstairs when the barman tells her there's a message for Baxter, one from a woman who wouldn't give her name but who said Baxter would know. When Baxter returns, Grace confronts him, believing this woman is someone he's been seeing behind her back, but he continues to deny it. Grace talks with the barman again and he tells her that Baxter met a woman at the inn three weeks before he married Grace. She confronts Baxter once more, this time very forcefully telling him he's not going to get rid of her, something he says he doesn't want. Grace decides she wants to leave the inn and that's when Baxter drops a bombshell on her: he's sold his apartment in London and they're going to live at High Towers, which has been his plan all along.
Things get worse once they move into High Towers. After dinner one night, they have an argument about how much Grace doesn't want to be there, and she, again, accuses him of having cheated on her while at the inn. Beginning to lose his patience over it and, once more, defending himself, Baxter tries to drop the matter and go to bed, but when Grace refuses to let him out of the dining room, he threatens to throw her out if she doesn't stop causing trouble, adding that he's not going to allow her to spoil what he now has. She accuses him of wanting to throw her out so he can bring in this other woman, and when he says he's now starting to wish there was another woman, she slaps him across the face. He retaliates by smacking her back, causing her to recoil in shock and pain, and he leaves the room, telling her he believes they now understand each other. Still in shock, Grace walks over to the mirror and sniffles when she sees the mark the slap left on her face. Mrs. Gibbs comes in to clear away the table, but before she leaves, Grace asks her if she ever met Baxter's late wife; she says she never did until the day she was murdered. She also tells Grace that, as far as she knows, Baxter has never brought another woman to High Towers. The next day, when Grace comes downstairs, the phone rings and Mrs. Gibbs answers it. Overhearing that it's someone asking for Baxter, Grace takes the phone and demands to know who the caller is, but doesn't get an answer. This, needless to say, leads to another fight between her and Baxter when he gets home, and he, as usual, denies any knowledge of who the caller, a woman, was. The argument escalates when Baxter rings for Mrs. Gibbs, only to learn that Grace gave her the night off, but before it can go any farther, the room is plunged into darkness from the fuses blowing. Baxter angrily grabs a candle and goes to fix the problem, leaving Grace alone.
Grabbing her own candle, Grace walks out into the main hall and is startled when she hears the sound of a woman softly chuckling. Moving over to the stairs, she looks up and sees the figure of a woman in a white gown disappear around the corner. Grace immediately yells, "Ha! You can't frighten me! I know what you're trying to do!", when the lights come back on. She puts the candle down on the floor and rushes up the stairs, when Baxter comes rushing in and asks what she's yelling about. Grace demands to know who the woman was she just saw but Baxter, as before, denies knowing what she's talking about and advises her to go to bed. Grace, still convinced he's up to something, goes upstairs to find out who it is for herself. Rounding the corner up there and heading down the hall, her foot hits something lying on the floor and she looks down to see it's the doll Janet often had with her while she was there. This encourages her to peek into Janet's old room but she finds nothing in there and checks the other two bedrooms on the floor. When she enters the third one, her own bedroom, she slowly creeps through it and is a bit startled when she sees the window drapery moving, but when she pulls it back, she finds nothing behind it, meaning it was just a breeze. She gets a shock when the door gets blown shut behind her and then, walks over to the door and locks it. She decides to make a call to the asylum where Janet is being kept and inquires about her, only to become terrified when she's told Janet escaped three days before, is likely in a dangerous state of mind, and that Baxter himself already knew this. Grace hangs up and sits on the bed, frightened, when she hears someone trying to come in through the door. It turns out to be Baxter, but Grace is in no mood to deal with him, telling him to go away, which he does after some futile yelling and pounding on the door.
Later in the night, while Grace sleeps restlessly, someone attempts to get inside the room, and upon finding the door locked, pushes a piece of paper underneath it, pushes the key out of the hole from the outside. It drops on the paper and is pulled back through. Grace remains asleep as the door is unlocked and the white-gowned figure from before enters the room. The woman merely lingers at Grace's bedside and takes away Janet's doll, leaving the room. The next morning, Grace awakens and is shocked when she sees a sharp knife lying on the nightstand, the blade pointing right at her. She immediately gets out of bed, puts on a gown, grabs the knife, and heads for the door, seeing that the key is gone and is now sticking in the keyhole on the outside. She heads to Baxter's bedroom, only to find Mrs. Gibbs and another servant, Ann, making up the bed. Learning he's gone to work, she asks the two women if they've ever seen the knife before but both of them say they haven't. Grace heads downstairs and tries to calm herself with a cigarette in the den. John comes in through the front door and she shows him the knife. He tells her that it could be his pruning knife, which he says Baxter had asked to borrow the day before. With that, Grace is now sure Baxter is trying to murder her, and is further creeped out when she hears the same feminine chuckling from before. She takes the knife and heads towards the stairs, atop which she, again, sees a woman dressed in white round the corner. She yells for her to stop and chases her up there. Reaching the landing, she sees someone walking across the hall to the bedroom on the other side, but when she follows them, she finds no one but Mrs. Gibbs and Ann doing their housework. Though Mrs. Gibbs denies having seen anyone, Grace insists that there's someone else in the house and orders them to search it completely, frantically yelling, "Now!", when they're slow to comply. Once she's alone, she slumps down to the foot of the bed from emotional exhaustion.
That night, Mrs. Gibbs tells Baxter of Grace's demands and that she's been hiding in her room all day. He goes up, only to find the door to her room locked. As she stands by the bed, smoking a cigarette, she tells him to go away when he knocks on the door and demands to speak with her. But, when he threatens to break it down, she reluctantly unlocks it. He comes in and asks her to explain herself, which she responds by telling him she feels safe in her room. She asks him about the knife, which he says he's never seen before, and also writes her off as drunk when she says she knows about Janet. She chases him out of the room and into the hall, but then quickly runs back to her room, takes the key out of the door, and locks it from the outside. Heading downstairs, she hears Baxter talking with someone behind a closed door. When he comes out, she demands to know who he was speaking with and doesn't believe him when he says he was apologizing to John for her behavior earlier. She chases after him, saying she knows he was actually talking to "her," but Baxter angrily stomps away through another door. Grace then crazily proclaims that she knows Baxter is hiding Janet somewhere in the house and that she'll find her, sounding absolutely insane herself. A cutaway shot reveals that someone was listening and watching from behind the door where Baxter says he was talking with John, as it lightly shuts.
Grace is then seen having an anxious smoke in the dining room the next day, and nearly jumps out of her skin when Mrs. Gibbs comes through the door behind her. Agitated and on edge, she impatiently tells her she wants nothing else and doesn't care to be told she's heading down to the village for a little bit. She's so paranoid that she looks out the window and watches her and John drive off, and is startled by the chiming of a clock. Nearly at her wit's end, she walks out of the dining room, when she hears the sound of music playing on a radio nearby. She realizes it's coming from upstairs and walks up there, trying to hone in on its source. It soon becomes obvious it's emitting from Janet's room, and when Grace makes her way to the doors and opens them, she sees Janet's old, portable radio lying on the bed, along with the doll that was taken from her room the other night. She rushes up to the bed, grabs the radio, and flings it to the floor when she's unable to turn it off, before picking it up the doll and squeezing its face. Come nighttime, Grace has, once again, locked herself in her bedroom, looking at the various items like the doll and the knife, while elsewhere, Baxter heads to his own room. Some time passes and Grace, making a decision, grabs the doll and knife and exits her room. She heads to Baxter's, where he's sitting in bed, working, and enters, slamming the door behind her. She shows him the doll, saying Janet herself dropped it where she found it, but Baxter is no mood to listen to her rambling. However, Grace forces him to listen, accusing him of helping Janet escape the asylum, hiding her in the house, and intending for her to murder her. Baxter attempts to get out of bed but Grace reveals the knife, which she's been keeping out of sight, and points it at him, telling him not to move. He tells her that Janet isn't in the house and that, even if she were, she'd never harm him; Grace says, "No, but I would." She lays out the plan she believes he's cooked up, and actually slashes his shoulder when he tries to get out of bed, saying she intends to do him in first. After she walks around the bed, he lunges at her, but she stabs him in the gut, causing him to fall back on the bed, and, saying she knows Janet will be blamed, she follows that up with two more stabs, killing him. The deed done, she wipes the blood off her hands, a satisfied smile on her face, and heads downstairs.
She goes for the phone and picks it up, but a hand emerges from the darkness behind her and breaks the connection. Grace spins around with a gasp and the person reveals herself to be Mary Lewis. She then immediately starts acting hysterical, saying that Baxter has been murdered and they must call the police. John then emerges from her left, saying she's right about calling the police, and when she says that Janet is in the house somewhere, Ms. Lewis says, "Janet's in the asylum. You should know. You put her there." She insists that Janet escaped, has killed her husband, and is hiding in the house somewhere. John takes the phone from her and, to her surprise, asks the operator to connect him to the asylum. When the connection is made, he asks how Janet is doing and, when the female doctor on the line gives the report, he allows Grace to listen for herself. The report is actually good, stating that Janet is doing well and should be completely recovered within a couple of months. John hangs up and, as Grace stands there, bewildered, he tells Ms. Lewis and Mrs. Gibbs, who has also joined them, the good news. Grace then learns that the person who told her Janet had escaped was John, who tapped the phone, that the woman she saw was Ms. Lewis, and that the barman at the inn had been bribed into claiming he'd seen Baxter there with another woman. It's all too much for Grace's mind to take, as she starts laughing hysterically, asking why, although she doesn't listen to their explanation, which should be obvious even to her, and starts repeating the question over and over again while laughing. John decides to actually call the police, and his speaking with them, as well as Grace's mad yelling, can be heard over the phone in Baxter's room, which he knocked off the hook during his and Grace's confrontation. The film ends on a shot of his shocked, dead face, which pans over to the doll lying at his feet, and then pulls back to show them both lying on the bed.
The music was composed by Don Banks, who'd already scored Night Creatures (Captain Clegg) for Hammer and would go on to do another handful of scores for them, including two more movies directed by Freddie Francis. But, while I enjoy some of his music, particularly his score for The Evil of Frankenstein, I can barely recall what he came up with for Nightmare. Seriously, this is one of the most forgettable Hammer scores ever, right up there with the main score for The Phantom of the Opera and The Revenge of Frankenstein. I remember a lot of big, bombastic pieces and some very subtle cues that try to go for atmosphere, but their actual sounds and melodies don't stick in my mind at all, and the music that plays on Janet's radio, which becomes a plot-point in one instance, is also generic. There are long sections of the movie that aren't scored, which could also account for why the music that is here is so forgettable, as it's simply not present enough to leave any kind of impression.
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