Night of the Eagle
Night of the Eagle
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Night of the Eagle

Night of the Eagle (released in the United States as Burn, Witch, Burn, also known as Conjure Wife) is a 1962 British horror film directed by Sidney Hayers, adapted by Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, and George Baxt from the 1943 novel Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber. It stars Peter Wyngarde, Janet Blair, and Margaret Johnston. Its plot follows an esteemed sociology professor who discovers that his professional achievements and successes are the result of his wife practising witchcraft.

It was financed and distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated and American International Pictures, during a period in which the two companies co-produced a number of films together. It first premiered in the United States on April 25, 1962, and in the United Kingdom on May 11.

Norman Taylor is a psychology professor lecturing about belief systems and superstition at an English university. After a scene in which his American wife, Tansy, searches frantically and finds a poppet left by a jealous work rival, he discovers that Tansy is practising obeah, referred to in the film as "conjure magic", which she learned in Jamaica. She insists that her charms have been responsible for his rapid advancement in his academic career and for his general well-being. A firm rationalist, Norman is angered by her acceptance of superstition. He forces her to burn all her magical paraphernalia.

Almost immediately things start to go wrong: a female student accuses Norman of rape, her boyfriend threatens him with violence, and someone tries to break into the Taylors' home during a thunderstorm. Tansy, willing to sacrifice her life for her husband's safety, almost drowns herself and is only saved at the last minute by Norman giving in to the practices he despises.

Tansy attacks him with a knife while in a trance, but Norman disarms her and locks her in her room. Her limping walk during the attack gives Norman a clue to the person responsible for his ill luck: university secretary Flora Carr, the wife of Lindsay whose career had stalled in favour of Norman's. Flora uses witchcraft to set fire to the Taylor home with Tansy trapped inside.

Using a form of auditory hypnosis over a loudspeaker system, Flora convinces Norman that a giant stone eagle perching at the top of the university chapel has come to life to attack him. Lindsay arrives at the office and turns off the loudspeaker, and the illusory eagle vanishes. Tansy escapes her burning home and rejoins her no longer sceptical husband. On their way out of the campus, Lindsay sees the chapel's heavy doors are ajar (left thus by Norman in his "escape" from the eagle), and insists on securing them despite Flora's protests. As she waits for him, the eagle statue falls from the roof and kills her.

Night of the Eagle is the second of three film adaptations of Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife, preceded by Weird Woman (1944) and followed by Witches' Brew (1980).

Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont were admirers of the novel and decided to adapt it. They were paid $5,000 each by James H. Nicholson of AIP, who passed the project over to AIP's regular co-producers, Anglo-Amalgamated in England. They agreed to finance, allocating the movie to Independent Artists to produce. Producer Albert Fennell bought in George Baxt to work on the script. The original script (commenced by Matheson and completed by Beaumont) was published in the Gauntlet Press edition of He Is Legend, a Matheson tribute anthology, but not in the subsequent paperback.

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