This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Dreadfully Boring

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

As others have said, this movie was written by British poet/author Roald Dahl as a vehicle for his wife, American actress Patricia Neal. (I thought of it recently after seeing a similar American movie "Happy Mother's Day, Love George" that featured Neal and the couple's real-life daughter Tess Dahl). The basic story is pretty good. Neal plays a lonely spinster whose domineering mother rents a room to a traveling road worker (Nicholas Clay), and Neal's character finds herself drawn to the handsome, younger man, unaware that he might be a serial killer who has buried a string of female victims along the road he is building. . .This definitely works as a vehicle for Neal, who is probably most famous for the Paul Newman movie "Hud" (even though her character in that was supposed to have been African-American, but such a thing would have simply been too incendiary in the early 1960's). She is very good in this. Unfortunately, she doesn't get a lot of help. Nicholas Clay would later play Lancelot in "Excalibur" and appear with an all-star cast in Agatha Christie's "Evil Under the Sun", but he was just too inexperienced here. For whatever reason, there was a plethora of handsome but psychotic young men in British movies at this time, and this role might have been better played by another "handsome young psycho" actor like Shane Bryant or Hywell Bennett (although neither of them might have been very convincing as a roughneck construction worker). If it have been made a decade or so earlier though, it would have been a PERFECT role for a young Oliver Reed.The directing is also a little flat generally, but the first murder (following a motorcycle ride) is pretty inspired. The Bernard Hermann score is not one of his best, but it does add SOMETHING to the proceedings. This isn't great, but it certainly deserves to be more widely seen.

The film apparently went under two titles: "The Night Digger" and "The Road Builder." I caught this film on Turner Classic Movies recently. I have always been a big Patricia Neal fan. The film was released in 1971, a tough time for actors like Neal from the "golden age of Hollywood." The times were changing fast, and film was going right with them. Middle-aged actors like Neal often had trouble finding film work, as producers and studios were catering to much younger audiences. Anyway, the story revolves around Maura (Patricia Neal) a spinster whose life revolves taking care of her domineering blind mother Edith (Pamela Brown)in a decaying England mansion. Enter a handsome handyman named Billy (Nicholas Clay) to turn their world upside down. Billy is quite a disturbed young man with a small problem: murdering women! We are given only small clues as to what turned him into such a maniac, seen in somewhat confusing flashbacks. Maura falls for Billy, despite the obvious age difference. We learn she probably eventually catches on to what he is doing, although she never really says so. The performances are good in this film. I loved Neal especially, she portrays the dowdy Maura with her usual intelligence and natural abilities. Pamela Brown as the overbearing mother is also effective. As to the young actor Nicholas Clay, he is wonderfully creepy as the the seriously disturbed murderer. The big problems with the film are the script and the obvious lack of a budget to make this film more credible. The script was written by Roald Dahl, Patricia Neal's husband of that time. Apparently the back story is Neal did not really want to do the film, but Dahl wrote it for her. The story has some confusing gaps, and the last 15 minutes or so of the film is just downright ridiculous and tough to believe. This is a case of good actors stuck in a mediocre film that could have been a more worthy one.

Another one of those great forgotten movies of the 1970s. I caught this on late night TV about 20 years ago and have never forgotten it.It was about a young man named Billy (Nicholas Clay) helping out Maura Prince (Patricia Neal) and her elderly mother (Pamela Brown) in their crumbling old house in England. Neal starts to fall for him (despite their age difference)...but she's not aware of what he does when he goes out alone every night...Spooky little horror film. When I first saw it it was edited for TV so there were some unexplained pieces (like a bit about something that happened to him as a child which explains what he does as an adult) and, I assumed the violence was gone. I was finally able to see the entire uncut film and loved it! It wasn't a blood and guts horror movie--it's an excellent psychological horror. In fact the two violent acts in it aren't even shown! It concentrates on Billy and Maura and their feelings and thoughts. Clay and Neal are such great actors that just their expressions tell you what they're feeling. The growing romance between them was touching and believable. Also there's an excellent score and the ending was a stunner! This film has an R rating for some dialogue and a lengthy nude sequence with Clay. Well worth catching just for Clay and Neal.This movie is available on DVD through the made to order system with the Warner Brothers Archive Collection. It's complete and the transfer is pristine. Well worth getting. It might disturb you but you'll never forget it. Avoid the cut version on TCM.

Roald Dahl has always been a good story-teller, and this movie, for which he wrote the screenplay, is no exception. It's a macabre love story with a somewhat unexpected ending. Very good acting and story-telling. I recommend this film for all Roald Dahl fans. 7/10.