
The Night Walker
Tormented heroine Barbara Stanwyck is haunted by an expressionistic dreamworld in 1964’s The Night Walker, William Castle’s speedy follow-up to that same year’s Strait-Jacket. The Night Walker also recycles that thriller’s template, switching out Joan Crawford for Stanwyck in the faded Hollywood star department and bringing back Robert Bloch to fashion yet another macabre storyline. This was Stanwyck’s last film and she shares the bill with ex-husband Robert Taylor, together on film for the first time since 1937’s This Is My Affair.
The trailer for The Night Walker is courtesy of the Packard Humanities Institute Collection at the Academy Film Archive, the largest known acquisition of theatrical trailers on film, deposited at the Archive by David Packard in 2009. This historically significant collection contains over 60,000 media items and has transformed the Academy Film Archive into the world’s foremost repository of motion picture trailers.
About Joe Dante
Joe Dante is a lifelong film buff who turned his obsession into a career. He got his start cutting trailers for Roger Corman and later directed the hit movie Gremlins, as well as Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Innerspace and Small Soldiers for producer Steven Spielberg. His feature films include The Howling, Piranha, Matinee, The ‘burbs , Looney Tunes Back in Action, The Hole (first winner of the 3D Persol Award at the Venice Film Festival) and the zom-com Burying the Ex. His TV directing work includes: Police Squad, Amazing Stories, the HBO film The Second Civil War, the Masters of Horror titles Homecoming and The Screwfly Solution, and episodes of Eerie, Indiana, CSI: NY, Hawaii 5-0, Witches of East End, Legends of Tomorrow and Salem. His most recent big screen credit is an episode of the anthology film Nightmare Cinema. He’s currently consulting producer on the Amblin Television/Warner Bros. Animation hit, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.
Joe is also the frequent co-host of Trailers From Hell’s official podcast, The Movies That Made Me, available everywhere podcasts are streamed and downloaded!
Not hard to see if you watch Svengoolie tonight.