Australian TV Plays: Eye of the Night (24 Feb 1960)

Along with Turning Point the first in a series of ten Australian plays by the ABC in 1960. By Kay Keavney.

Premise

In the city of Melbourne, a man breaks into homes at night and terrorises women. He eludes police for two years and is called "the Barber".

In the suburb of Sunshine, a woman, Ruth Arnott, fears that a man in her own house - her brother in law, Frank - a man oppressed by his mother, may be the attacker.

The opening scenes take place at Victorian Police Headquarters with the rest at a house in Sunshine.

Cast

Beverley Dunn as Ruth Arnott
Brian James as her accountant brother-in-law, Frank Arnott
Dennis Miller as her husband Ian Arnott
Nevil Thurgood
Syd Conabere as a detective
Moira Carleton as the next door neighbour
Agnes Dobson

Production

Early Australian TV drama production was dominated by using imported scripts but in 1960 the ABC seemed to make a conscious effort to produce more local stories.

It's interesting that the first two, this and Turning Point were both thrillers. Was this safer ground after The Multi Coloured Umbrella?

This was based on an original script by Kay Keavney an experienced writer for radio as well as TV series like The Story of Peter Gray. She gets an entry in Richard Lane's superb history of radio, volume 2. A short bio at the Australian Woman's Register is here.

The story was based on the Kingsgrove Slasher. He was a man who between 1956 and 1959 would sneak into women's houses in the St George area and assault them. Not kill them but threaten them with a knife. See here and here.

To prepare for the production, director Chris Muir visited the police department to study criminal detection techniques and meet psychologists. So he said, anyway.

According to The Age Beverly Dunn "has a difficult role to play, involving several emotional scenes."

Reception

TV Times called it "a good play" in which the characters were "well drawn" and Muir's "production was possibly the best he has yet done. He has mastered the art of moving from film to studio without a hitch... his use of super close ups was, at times, horrifying... one of the best all-Australian efforts so far, a welcome and worthy pioneer."

TV Week's Frank Thring disliked it saying "it creaked out its dreary length with so many Victorian melodramatics... a trite piece" in which "every trick of the screen... was pulled out of the diretor's inadequate grab-bag... this cliched list of trivia."

The Listener In said "the story was not ambitious but it was tense and well sustained. And it was outstanding because it was the first play locally written for television which was completely at ease using local scenes and local language. It was not stagey or affected. It neither attempted an air flight into intellectualism nor grovelled in 'Dad and Dave' earthiness. Kay Keavney hadn't worried about the 'great Australian television play'. She'd been too busy with the fundamental basis of storyltelling in clear script." The reviewer did state "the telephone sequences were unpardonably bad".