NIGHT AFTER NIGHT AFTER NIGHT (1969)
Article #1574 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-6-2005
Posting Date: 12-3-2005
Directed by Lindsay Shonteff
Featuring Jack May, Justine Lord, Gilbert Wynne

A series of ripper murders are being committed by a repressed judge, but the policeman handling the case believes the culprit is a young womanizer.

When faced with a title like that, the first word that comes to mind is repetition. Unfortunately, that word ends up applying all too well to this psycho-killer movie. Though I appreciate the fact that the relaxing of standards of censorship opened up opportunities for movies to be more explicit, there is such a thing as excess. You see, our slasher here is determined to put an end to the evil in the world by killing those evil temptresses, women. Then, to illustrate these temptations, the movie embarks on an endless array of scenes of scantily clad women, leering perverts, double entendres, make-out sessions, voyeurism, etc. etc. etc.. Now, I can appreciate how some of this may be essential to understanding the characters and the situation, but this movie is so incessant with it that it comes fairly close to soft-core porn. For example, we know that the judge has a secret room full of pin-ups of naked women; do we need the camera to pan endlessly across the pinups every time we enter the room? There are a couple of good ideas in the mix; I especially like the fact that the man arrested for the murders finds himself being tried under the judge who is actually guilty of them. But the blatantly exploitative approach to the story puts me off and starts to grate after a while.