And Soon the Darkness (1970)
Despite the title this plays out in lovely warm sunshine throughout.The StudioCanal Blu-ray looks so pretty it's like looking out through a window into the rural French countryside in this classic British thriller about two young women (Pamela Franklin and Michelle Dotrice) on a cycling holiday in France, until one of them suddenly disappears.
There's a creeping sense of dread throughout Robert Fuest's film as the script from Brian Clemens and Terry Nation slowly unfolds. Characters, including Sandor Eles, cool as a cucumber riding his scooter, come and go and you are never sure about their motivations which adds nicely to the feeling of unease.
The film is certainly a forerunner of the later trend of holiday makers in peril movies with basically all foreigners depicted as either shifty or outright dangerous, although the idea that one tourist goes missing and the other becomes paranoid was first explored brilliantly in Terence Fisher's 1950's Paris set chiller So Long at the Fair.
Fuest doesn't rely on shocks for his horror, although there are one or two later on. It's a film that claws away at the viewers psyche, the neurotic actions on screen creating anxiety in those watching as the foreboding atmosphere builds in this thought provoking and gripping film. Never has broad daylight and quaint French ideals seemed so bloody creepy.
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