October Moth (1960) User Reviews (5)

"It belongs to the wind. It's not for people"

[hwg1957-102-265704 · 6/10 · 13 January 2019]

Finlay, a disturbed young man, finds an injured woman after a road accident and takes her back to the farm he runs with his sister Molly. He thinks the injured woman is his dead mother come back to them. Molly tries to save the woman and also her brother but those two things are eventually incompatible. She is helped by Tom, a telephone engineer who works nearby.

Only 54 minutes long but it is a tense film with good and heartfelt acting by Lee Patterson, Lana Morris and Peter Dyneley. Contributing to the bleak atmosphere is the splendid cinematography by Michael Reed. Perhaps the music score by Humphrey Searle is too emphatic though. It's the only directorial credit by John Kruse which is a shame as this is a taut and compelling film, well worth watching.

Cheap but effective

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 7 August 2021]

This is pretty good, a low budget independent drama with a tiny cast and isolated setting. The action takes place over the course of one night at a pitch-dark farmhouse occupied by a frightened sister and her neurotic brother, played to the hilt by Lee Patterson with perhaps a nod to Norman Bates who was making cinematic waves the same year. The paucity of the budget is obvious from the outset, but there's enough tension and drama to see this one through, and Patterson nails it.

Sombre B feature

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 18 October 2021]

An interesting rather than entertaining B feature starring Canadian actor Lee Patterson who specialised in villains. The main problem with this film is the deafening music composed by the experienced Humphrey Searle. It constantly intrudes. Wonder if that was the directors idea?

"When no one needs you, you're nothing..."

[richardchatten · 8/10 · 5 August 2021]

This early production by the enterprising team of Leslie Parkyn and Julian Wintle's company Independent Artists was Lana Morris' final film role except, appropriately, for Bryan Marshall's neurotic mistress in 'I Start Counting' (1969).

In this stark rural melodrama she's unrecognisable as the bright-eyed young ingenue of the fifties as Georgina to Lee Patterson's Lenny; a hulking simpleton who shouldn't be allowed near sharp objects let alone shotguns, and has a mother fixation to rival Norman Bates.

A darkly menacing, unnervingly claustrophobic psychodrama.

[Weirdling_Wolf · 8/10 · 30 November 2021]

A hugely talented, and versatile writer, maestro scrivener John Kruse is, perhaps, a name some thriller fans may not be all that familiar with, having had a great many successes on TV, writing many fine scripts for 'The Saint', 'The Avengers', 'The Zoo Gang, 'The Persuaders', and the excellently robust screenplay for 'Hell Drivers', Kruse, somewhat curiously, only directed one feature film, and considering how uncommonly thrilling it is, this remains an entirely baffling anomaly. His sole directing credit is the darkly menacing, unnervingly claustrophobic psychodrama 'October Moth', while a sadly neglected work remains a terrifically tense, immaculately performed British B-Picture, wherein the gimlet-eyed, persistently paranoid Finlay (Lee Patterson) zealously, and wholly misguidedly guards an injured middle-aged woman he obsessively maintains is his dead mother, Finlay's protective, increasingly anxious sister Molly (Lana Morris) is desperate to protect her mentally disturbed sibling while attempting, somewhat dangerously, to get the ailing woman out of their isolated farm and to safety. For its lean running time Kruse's doomy 'October Moth' ably provides ample distraction, and along with its palpably oppressive atmosphere, one of the film's most impressive qualities is the stark, moody chiaroscuro photography by the gifted director of photography Michael Reed, being better known for his equally sterling work on 'The Gorgon' (1964), and 'Rasputin: The Mad Monk' (1966). When the forlorn Molly stands mercilessly buffeted by a chill, spectral wind, dejectedly stating the bleak maxim, 'When no one needs you, you're nothing!', it certainly struck a rather uncomfortable chord with me.