Captain Clegg & the Night Creatures: 

A forgotten Hammer revisited

by Vaar Aragon

A swashbuckler without any swordfights.  A pirate movie with very few pirates.  A horror film with no “real” monsters. Hammer’s Captain Clegg (known as Night Creatures in the U.S.) is all of these things and a darn good movie to boot.  A much better movie than it has any right to be, given its history.

That history begins in the early sixties, when Hammer set out to remake an old ‘30’s film called “Dr.Syn”, starring Oscar-winner George Arliss as the title character.  Based on the pulp classic by Russell Thorndyke and set in the late 18th century, the Arliss movie revolved around a meek-seeming parson named Christopher Syn (Doctor of Divinity) whose past is riddled with secrets.  He dresses up as the macabre Scarecrow to lead the local smuggling ring.  He used to be the fearsome pirate Captain Clegg.  And the lovely orphan girl Imogene is actually his daughter and doesn’t know it.  This structure of deceit slowly collapses, bringing about Syn’s downfall.

A ripping good yarn, even in synopsis.  Well-suited to the Hammer style.  Producer Anthony Hinds took up his pen-name of John Elder to adapt the material to Hammer’s needs. The pre-production went fairly smoothly.  True, Hinds had wanted Christopher Lee to play Syn’s adversary Captain Collier, but he was unavailable.  Hinds did succeed in assembling a mighty ensemble.  Yvonne Romaine as Imogene.  Oliver Reed as her lover, the dashing, rebellious Harry Cobtree.  Michael Ripper as Mipps, Syn’s trusty sidekick.  And for the mercurial, gauntly elegant Syn himself, who better than Peter Cushing?  The director chosen for the film was one Peter Graham Scott, more usually employed in television.

In the late stages of pre-production, the project hit a snag.  Walt Disney Productions had purchased the rights to the Dr. Syn books and were making a TV series about the character.  They intended to edit said TV series into a longish movie for theatrical release in Europe (fairly standard procedure at the time).  Hammer, by contrast, simply owned the remake rights on a previous film version.  When the issue was brought before the appropriate courts, the verdict was this: that Hammer could only proceed with their project if it were based exclusively on the Arliss movie, did not feature a character named Dr. Syn who dressed up as a Scarecrow, and that none of Hammer’s promotional materials for the movie referred to Dr. Syn.

Quickly and desperately, the two Peters (Scott & Cushing) revised the script to meet these requirements.  The movie was shot and eventually released on the bottom half of a double bill with “Phantom of the Opera”.  By then, it was called “Captain Clegg” (U.S. title: “Night Creatures”), and had evolved into something rather peculiar.…

The film’s teaser features a trial and sentencing, pirate-style.  It seems that a tawny-skinned man has assaulted the wife of the unseen pirate captain, Clegg.  For this offense, he is sentenced to have his tongue cut, his ears slit, and to be marooned on the nearest desert island.  Pirates, it seems, cherished the domestic virtues highly.  

We jump forward fifteen years or so to England, and the town of Dymchurch-under-the-Wall.  Captain Collier (Patrick Allen) is trying to break the powerful Dymchurch smuggling ring, with the help of his stout crew and their slave, the tawny man (the pirates having carried out their sentence, he can’t talk, and I shall refer to him as the Mute from now on).  They found him on a desert island, when they were searching for Captain Clegg.  

We discover (though Collier does not) that the smugglers have a series of secret passages underneath Dymchurch.  They disguise themselves as ghosts, they have a lookout who dresses as a scarecrow and dangles from a pole a la Ray Bolger in Oz (only scarier).  And they answer to one Dr. Blyss, local vicar (sin=Syn, bliss=Blyss).  It’s fairly obvious to anyone of moderate IQ that he is the “Captain Clegg” referenced earlier in the movie (and supposedly dead, at this point in the story).  The film is also supposed to mislead you into thinking that Blyss is the Scarecrow, and then “surprise” you with the revelation that the Scarecrow is actually Oliver Reed.  Because “Night Creatures” is such an obscure movie, everyone always hears about its plot (and this particular twist) long before they actually see it.  For this reason, it’s practically impossible to tell whether the surprise element actually works.

The acting here is generally very good.  The only exception would be Patrick “I-single-handedly-ruined-Island-Of-The-Burning-Doomed” Allen, seen here as Collier.  And he is merely dull rather than truly bad.  Yvonne Romain plays Imogene (Blyss/Clegg’s daughter) as a fairly spunky woman who can escape unaided from a potential rapist - through a second story window, no less!  Harry Cobtree (Reed’s character) is a rebel with a cause, quite a cheerful and well- adjusted sort – for a Reed character, anyway.  Michael Ripper as Mipps gets to be the loyal comical sidekick but also gets at least three times as much screentime as in any of his other films.  He also gets to save the day once or twice!

As for Cushing, well, where to begin?  As the charming, innocuous vicar of Dymchurch, he’s marvelous – irresistably affable, but just a little fake (it is, after all, a cover for the real personality).  This however, was to expected.  His somewhat fragile appearance and even temperament give him a huge advantage in the game of “who, me? *dangerous*?”  His scenes with the smugglers are initially puzzling: he addresses them in an odd staccato tone that sounds as though he’s trying to imitate an American gangster.  Then, suddenly you realize that this too is just a pose, not the real Blyss (Syn, Clegg, whatever).  And so it goes: there’s this charming, daring fellow with seemingly no real malice (except towards the Mute who assaulted his wife) and yet – you have no idea what makes him tick.  At least until the very end of the movie, when you get a chance to see what’s really important to Our Anti-Hero.

As for the directing, well, there’s not much to say.  Scott lacks the brilliance of Hammer’s best directors, Terence Fisher and Roy Ward Baker.  On the other hand, the atmosphere, the storyline and the actors are all darn near idiot-proof, so the directing is okay.  The script is surprisingly good, given its tortured history.  Hinds’ usual emphasis on the cruelty of the social order is present here.  The characters, both good and bad, have a little bit more edge to them, a little bit more depth.  Also the plot is remarkably tidy – just about any other “John Elder” script has unfinished subplots running around somewhere.  Here, everything ties back into the main plot somehow, and itself gets neatly tied up in the process.  The dialogue is rather witty, for a Hammer film, and flows smoothly – I think I detect Cushing’s metaphorical fingerprints here.  

There’s some interesting changes from the source material.  Some were obviously made to placate Disney: the changing of the vicar’s and Harry being the Scarecrow.  Another case altogether is the origins of Clegg’s feud with the Mute.  In the original books, this character was mutilated in punishment for mutinying against Clegg (and killing the ship’s cook).  In this version, he is being punished for assaulting and indirectly causing the death of Clegg’s wife.  Perfectly consistent with Hinds’ sense of the romantic (or Cushing’s for that matter), not consistent with the source material.

The distribution rights to “Night Creatures” were held by Universal International at last report.  It is not available on video, but occasionally crops up on TV in both North and South America (which is how I came to see it).  There is a rumor circulating right now (end of January 2000) that some company is preparing DVDs of  a bunch of Hammer films – including Night Creatures -  for release in late ’00 or early ’01.  There is as yet no evidence that this is the case.