Hammer makes a brief return to the "mini-Hitchcock" thriller with the latter day FEAR IN THE NIGHT, on Blu-ray from Scream Factory.

Six months after suffering a nervous breakdown and just four months after meeting schoolteacher Robert (Ralph Bates, DR. JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE), twenty-two year old Peggy (Judy Geeson, INSEMINOID) gets married and is about to set off from London to the countryside where Robert teaches at a private boys school. The night before she is set to leave, she is attacked in her boarding house room by an assailant with a prosthetic arm. In spite of the concerns for her mental health from landlady Mrs. Beamish (Gillian Lind, AND NOT THE SCREAMING STARTS!) and her doctor (James Cossins, THE ANNIVERSARY), Peggy insists that they contact the police but no evidence is found of an attack. Hoping to put it all behind her, Peggy settles in at a cottage with Robert on the school grounds while everyone is away for the holidays but she finds little to comfort her in her new surroundings. Headmaster Michael Carmichael (Peter Cushing, CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN) is kindly but unnerves her with his prosthetic hand, his much younger wife Molly (Joan Collins, THE DEVIL WITHIN HER) insinuates that she really does not belong there, and she is attacked again while Robert is away. Although Robert does not believe her, he arms her with a shotgun for protection when he leaves for an overnight trip and does not know what to make of things when he returns to discover a puddle of blood and both shells empty.

Director Jimmy Sangster had helped initiate the studios gothic horror strain with CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, HORROR OF DRACULA, and THE MUMMY in the 1950s and stayed with the studio through the 1960s as a screenwriter and producer, initiating a strain of LES DIABOLIQUES-influenced psycho-thrillers alongside the studios franchise horrors. After heading to America and working in television – including repurposing his script for SCREAM OF FEAR into the Aaron Spelling TV movie A TASTE OF EVIL – Sangster was brought back to Hammer as a director to helm THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN, an attempt by the studio to revitalize the franchise with a younger lead in Bates as a replacement for Cushing. Bates also replaced Cushing when he had to bow out of Sangster's LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (on which Sangster also replaced Terence Fisher). Although he would continue to work as a writer throughout the 1970s and 1980s – with such notable credits as SCREAM PRETTY PEGGY and NO PLACE TO HIDE for television and THE LEGACY and rewriting Gary Sherman's and Ronald Shusset's screenplay for John Huston's bomb PHOBIA – FEAR IN THE NIGHT was Sangster's last directorial effort; and yet, the film's status of being a callback to the earlier Hammer thrillers feels more like a script from that period being repurposed, which was indeed the case. The setup is quite as soon as we learn of Peggy's nervous breakdown and of the remote setting long before we meet any of the other central quartet (although Collins gets a great introductory scene blasting away a little bunny rabbit). The final act of the film, however, does introduce some more diverting twists but ultimately for naught. In spite of its faults, FEAR IN THE NIGHT is still a pleasant little Hammer diversion with welcome faces (although bitchy Collins unfortunately overshadows underwritten Geeson), slick Hammer technical credits, and a sense of the mechanics of the psycho thriller contrivances laid bare. The sole feature credit of TV composer John McCabe is bookended by a boys choir piece but the rest of the orchestral score is undistinguished.

Released theatrically by International Coproductions, FEAR IN THE NIGHT was easiest to find in video stores because it had one legitimate release and two less so editions on tape. Thorn/EMI released a clamshell VHS edition under its original title while Neon Video released the film as HONEYMOON OF FEAR and Academy Entertainment released it as DYNASTY OF FEAR with a box highlighting Collins and her hunting rifle and replacing the first part of the credits with stills of the cast and the replacement title card. The film's international rights eventually ended up with the British Lumiere International who licensed the title to Republic Pictures in the 1990s as a sell-through release. The Lumiere library was acquired by Studio Canal who subsequently licensed it to Anchor Bay in 2002 in an anamorphic transfer with a commentary by Sangster. The film made its Blu-ray bow in the United Kingdom as part of a batch of Hammer restorations in 2017 which were quickly followed by similar editions in Germany. As part of their deal with Studio Canal, Scream Factory ports over the 2K-mastered 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen master but only as an extra viewing option in the bonus features. The main presentation is a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen option. The film was probably framed at the British standard of 1.75:1 while allowing for projection in either the more opened up option or at the American standard (framing-wise nothing is missing off the top or bottom unless you look closely). The HD master looks brighter and sharper than the DVD, calling better attention to Don Picton's set dressing of the school location and the studio sets of the cottage while the heightened resolution also imparts a better sense of the film's overcast and chilly look in the few exteriors. The brightness may even be a notch too bright as reflected highlights and bulbs even behind lamp shades also call attention to themselves in a manner that makes Hammer's usual technical competence seem shoddy. The mono mix is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 on both transfers (some of the earlier double aspect ratio Scream discs had Dolby Digital audio on the bonus version), and the English SDH subtitles include transcription of the opening and closing boys choir piece.

While both transfers have lossless audio, only the 1.85:1 widescreen version is accompanied by audio commentary tracks. Ported from the Anchor Bay DVD but dropped from the Studio Canal Blu-rays is the audio commentary by writer/director Jimmy Sangster, moderated by Marcus Hearn, in which he admits to remaking LES DIABOLIQUES "about five times" and that FEAR IN THE NIGHT originated as far back as 1963 set aboard a houseboat, and that his co-writing credit here with Michael Syson was typical of all of his shared credits in that he was either rewriting someone else's script for having his rewritten by others. The discussion encompasses the other psycho thrillers, which Sangster rightly identifies as "mini-Cluzots" rather than "mini-Hitchcocks," Sangster's friendship and working relationship with producer Michael Carreras who was more interested in films as entertainment than his father James who regarded them as product, and his recollections of the cast, particularly Bates who he actually did not want for either HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN or LUST FOR A VAMPIRE but regarded him as a friend and valued performer. New to the Scream Blu-ray is an audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth who also frames the discussion in the context of Hammer's and Sangster's earlier thrillers while noting Sangster as a writer as skilled at economizing, having been aware of Hammer's limitations as a production manager and producer, favoring limited casts and settings rather than scaling back screenplays when the budget was figured out. He also discusses some of Sangster's other credits – including those for Robert Baker and Monty Berman like THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS and BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE – Sangster's preference for the thriller over gothic horror, and his resentment at being credited on posters early on as Jimmy "Frankenstein" Sangster.