Night of Fear 1973

In a stark opening vignette, Horse Girl rides a horse through the countryside, dismounts, and ties the animal to a tree. A bedraggled man, later revealed as The Man, appears, unties the horse, and startles it into a panicked bolt. The woman, unaware of the man, gives chase and discovers his ramshackle cabin. Inside, the man attacks from behind and locks her in a room. He then retreats outside, pulls a hidden lever in a power box, and the next moment is etched by a brutal act: the horse is shot and dismembered. The opening credits roll, flashing some of the film’s most shocking moments to come, setting a tone of menace and claustrophobic danger that will haunt the spectator.

Following a near-miss with a removal van, a woman’s car veers off the road and tumbles down a hill, slipping away from the highway. Unable to reverse back to safety, she forges ahead along a lonely dirt backroad. The driver of the van stops to help, only to watch her drive away, leaving behind a sign that reads “dead end no way through.” The tension intensifies as the woman continues along the treacherous path, the landscape closing in around her.

Her journey ends in a crash into a large ditch, and she is knocked unconscious. When she regains consciousness, a bedraggled man is approaching, a white rat perched on his shoulder. She finds shelter in the car as he attacks, smashing the windscreen with a shovel. The woman manages to escape, but the deranged pursuer keeps close on her heels. She loses him in the dense brush and, after dark, returns to the car and sounds the horn for help. In a cruel echo, the man responds by ringing his shovel against the foliage in time with the horn, a unnerving reminder that he is always near.

The chase resumes, night swallowing the landscape as she flees once more. She encounters an uncanny sign—an impaled horse head, a likely remnant from the film’s opening sequence—before arriving at a cabin. She explores the space, only to fall unconscious again and slip into a nightmare in which the man appears, holding a skull before his genitals in a disturbing vision.

She wakes to find the deranged man attempting to enter the cabin. As in the opening, the man activates the secret power-box handle, but this time the result is a new, horrifying assault: a wall panel opens and rats pour into the room to devour her. The camera lingers on the eerie, almost ritualistic tableau: cats watching the grisly feast while the man sits outside, his presence chilling and quiet as he appears to masturbate.

The film closes with law enforcement closing in on the cabin. A cautious police presence questions the man, who is busy feeding his chickens. When the officers depart, a cage high in the bamboo reveals a cat and a human skull, leaving a final, unsettling image that lingers long after the screen fades.