Films involving Limb & Spinal Conditions

Limb & Spinal Conditions: Major Films no photo.

Title	Night Digger, The (1971)
Alternative/Original Title
Disability	Blind Limb
Country	UK
Length	100
Genre	Horror
Rating	3
Director	Alastair Reid
Cast	Patricia Neal Pamela Brown Nicholas Clay
Notes	A blind woman lives with her daughter in a large house. The daughter wants to move out and work full-time in a hospital. This news brings on what looks like a faked and faint heart attack in the mother. Parallel to this are shots of a motor cyclist riding along. The daughter limps which resulted from a ruptured aneurin (I must have misheard this since aneurin is a vitamin though she does mention blood on the brain). It also turns out she is adopted. The young man on the motorbike turns up at the house and endears himself to the mother. He is given a job doing house repairs. The daughter who didn't at first like him later sleeps with him. But we're given clues that he isn't what he appears to be and is responsible for a series of murders around the country. Finally the daughter finds her independence and goes off with him to the Scottish Highlands. But living there she discovers what he gets up to in his spare time and when he realises she knows about this he rides his bike over a cliff edge. There is no real insight into why he commits the murders. Despite the screenplay by Ronald Dahl and the music by Bernard Herrmann there isn't enough mystery and suspense to hold one's interest. The blindness and heart condition of the mother and the daughter's own limp are present to explain her isolation and frustration.

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