Lighthouse starts as brutal serial killer Dr. Leo Rook (Christopher Adamson) is caught, two months later he along with several other prisoners are on-board the prison ship the Hyperion being transported to some island prison or other. However Rook manages to kill his guards & escape in a small boat to a small nearby island where a lighthouse stands, once he gets there he kills the lighthouse crew & switches the light off which causes the Hyperion to crash into some rocks & sink. Some of the prisoners & guards manage to jump ship & make it to the lighthouse island themselves where they quickly realise Rook is there also & he carries on his killing spree dispatching the shipwreck survivors one-by-one...
Retitled to the rather ambiguous Dead of Night for video release in the US this English production was written & directed by Simon Hunter & after the fantastic Tower of Evil (1972) this is easily the second best British made horror film set in a lighthouse, go on argue with me. The script takes itself extremely seriously & the whole film is played totally straight, the script also has proper adults as it's central character's rather than annoying teens who only think & talk about sex & beer like the majority of US horror films have which made for a nice change. Lighthouse is basically a dark slasher thriller set in a lighthouse, the film has a great mood & style about it but the story isn't that great & how easily does Rook, a serial killer remember, escape from that prison ship without anyone noticing he has killed two guards & literally rowed away in a small wooden boat both unchallenged & unseen. Someone wasn't doing their job properly were they? I also didn't like it that much when it slipped into standard slasher cliché territory as everyone kept on finding excuses to split up so the character's get isolated so Rook can kill them off all the more easily, didn't anyone actually figure that out? The pace is sedate but there's just about enough going on to hold ones attention, the script is fairly tight & taught which also just about injects enough personality & life into it's character's to make them interesting & worthwhile.
Where Lighthouse really scores some points with me is with it's visual style & it's genuine atmosphere & mood. Lighthouse is a terrific looking film with some great cinematography, lighting, some nicely composed & framed shots & there is a fair bit of tension generated along with one or two scares although I have to deduct a point or two since the makers used that older than dirt false scare trick of having a cat suddenly jumps out of a corner & screech at a character. The crashing waves on the rocks, the eerie lighthouse itself, the dead of night with a torrential rainstorm raging all add to give Lighhouse a great feel, atmosphere, mood & gives one or two scenes some real tension. The climax is a little silly with the two leads hanging over the side of the lighthouse on a rope which is burning but never breaks! The slasher clichés kick in again at the end to as the killer never quite knows when he's dead. There's some good gore here too, there are a couple of gory slashed throats, severed decapitated head & a couple of headless bodies. Even the CGI computer aren't that bad with one or two nice uses of CGI without ever going too overboard as it were.
With a supposed budget of about $1,800,0000 this looks great & most of that money obviously went on the look of the film rather than bad CGI or any has-been star. Apparently the film was mostly shot in the Three Mills Studio in London while the location shoot was at the coastal town of Hastings & the actual lighthouse used is the Bishops Rock off Lands End in Cornwall. The acting is pretty good from no-one I can say I have ever heard of or seen before or since.
Lighthouse is a fairly dark & atmospheric slasher film populated by proper people rather than plastic teens, if the makers had polished the story as much as the visuals then Lighthouse could have been great as it is they didn't so it isn't. Above average but maybe lacking a certain something to take it into greatness.
Retitled to the rather ambiguous Dead of Night for video release in the US this English production was written & directed by Simon Hunter & after the fantastic Tower of Evil (1972) this is easily the second best British made horror film set in a lighthouse, go on argue with me. The script takes itself extremely seriously & the whole film is played totally straight, the script also has proper adults as it's central character's rather than annoying teens who only think & talk about sex & beer like the majority of US horror films have which made for a nice change. Lighthouse is basically a dark slasher thriller set in a lighthouse, the film has a great mood & style about it but the story isn't that great & how easily does Rook, a serial killer remember, escape from that prison ship without anyone noticing he has killed two guards & literally rowed away in a small wooden boat both unchallenged & unseen. Someone wasn't doing their job properly were they? I also didn't like it that much when it slipped into standard slasher cliché territory as everyone kept on finding excuses to split up so the character's get isolated so Rook can kill them off all the more easily, didn't anyone actually figure that out? The pace is sedate but there's just about enough going on to hold ones attention, the script is fairly tight & taught which also just about injects enough personality & life into it's character's to make them interesting & worthwhile.
Where Lighthouse really scores some points with me is with it's visual style & it's genuine atmosphere & mood. Lighthouse is a terrific looking film with some great cinematography, lighting, some nicely composed & framed shots & there is a fair bit of tension generated along with one or two scares although I have to deduct a point or two since the makers used that older than dirt false scare trick of having a cat suddenly jumps out of a corner & screech at a character. The crashing waves on the rocks, the eerie lighthouse itself, the dead of night with a torrential rainstorm raging all add to give Lighhouse a great feel, atmosphere, mood & gives one or two scenes some real tension. The climax is a little silly with the two leads hanging over the side of the lighthouse on a rope which is burning but never breaks! The slasher clichés kick in again at the end to as the killer never quite knows when he's dead. There's some good gore here too, there are a couple of gory slashed throats, severed decapitated head & a couple of headless bodies. Even the CGI computer aren't that bad with one or two nice uses of CGI without ever going too overboard as it were.
With a supposed budget of about $1,800,0000 this looks great & most of that money obviously went on the look of the film rather than bad CGI or any has-been star. Apparently the film was mostly shot in the Three Mills Studio in London while the location shoot was at the coastal town of Hastings & the actual lighthouse used is the Bishops Rock off Lands End in Cornwall. The acting is pretty good from no-one I can say I have ever heard of or seen before or since.
Lighthouse is a fairly dark & atmospheric slasher film populated by proper people rather than plastic teens, if the makers had polished the story as much as the visuals then Lighthouse could have been great as it is they didn't so it isn't. Above average but maybe lacking a certain something to take it into greatness.