I saw this movie when it first aired on tv, years ago, and it has stayed with me my whole life. I still remember it. Night Cries had all the really good scary things from old tv horror movies in it. Basically, it's about a woman who was told her baby died in childbirth, but she swears she can hear it crying every night. Something is telling her, this baby is alive. So she does everything she can to track it down and everyone keeps telling her she's crazy. But the truth is, she has a supernatural connection to this child. I would have to rate this one as an old classic. I just wish it would come out on video or dvd.
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Carrigon9 December 2001
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I watched this movie last night for the first time in many many years.I forgot that I had this movie packed away in a storage locker on a VHS tape.I love this movie.Night Cries is one of my favorite made for television movies that used to air on all of the three major networks back in the late sixties,seventies and eighties.The movie has a real good cast.Susan Saint James as the mother who keeps thinking that she hears her baby crying.Remember her in McMillan And Wife?Her husband is played by a wonderful actor named Michael Parks.I am a big big fan of Michael Parks who has been in so many good movies through the years and the early television series called Then Came Bronson.If you like a mystery and early made for television movies,then you will like Night Cries.I have this movie.
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azathothpwiggins14 August 2022After a fantastic opening credits sequence, NIGHT CRIES begins.
Jeanie Haskins (Susan Saint James) has a difficult time adjusting to the fact that her newborn baby didn't survive. A very difficult time. This results in nightmares filled with bizarre imagery and the cries of an infant. While her husband (Michael Parks) awaits Jeanie's recovery, it's clear that she's not going to "get back to normal" any time soon.
As Jeanie's dreams become ever more strange and disturbing, her waking life is seriously affected, both at home and at work. However, as she digs deeper into the possible meaning of her dreams, Jeanie finds that things might not be as they appear to be. At all.
NIGHT CRIES is a superior made-for-TV horror-thriller from the sub-genre's glory days. There's also a mystery to solve, and plenty of gloomy atmosphere. Ms. Saint James is excellent in her harried, sleuthing role. Watch for William Conrad as the gruff Dr. Whelan, and TV horror vet, Jamie Smith-Jackson as the elusive Peggy... -
'Night Cries' is a well above average, splendidly atmospheric TV movie starring, Michael Parks and, Susan Saint James as a young married couple discovering that coping with the shocking death of their newborn baby girl would not only prove massively devastating, but when his wholly grief-stricken wife begins to suffer the most terrible, uncommonly vivid nightmares, a maddening repetition of identical, increasingly disturbing, faintly recognizable terror-images, and the shrill, desperate cry of a newborn baby! This unending mental miasma finally tormenting, Jeannie (Susan Saint James) so absolutely, the cries so insistent, that she becomes resolutely convinced that her baby is still alive, plaintively calling out to her by means wholly mysterious. Is this possible? Not according to pragmatic psychiatrist, Dr. Whelan (William Conrad) and her worried husband Mitch (Parks), both insist that the hidden origins of her torment are deeply interior, entirely neurotic, born of an overwhelming and debilitating maternal grief.
The fascinating themes of natural causes versus preternatural occurrences are intelligently dealt with in an adult, balanced fashion, happily, no moronic jump-scares! The earnest doctor Whelan played with enormous gravitas and great empathy by, William Conrad as he attempts to get to the bottom of these relentlessly debilitating dreams that, Jeannie insists are quite real, her adamant decision to search for her baby do much to convinced equally troubled husband, Mitch and the good doctor that her reasoning remains clouded by grief. This engrossing, frequently eerie, darkly-tinged drama is blessed with a cogent script by, Brian Taggart and the engaging text is bolstered by the wonderfully rigorous performances, especially the emotionally distraught, Saint James and the warmly likeable presence of, William Whelan effectively grounding the piece, giving 'Night Cries' an emotional gravitas usually absent from similarly intentioned, once seen, quickly forgotten TV-Movie-of-the-Week affairs.
Due to 'Night Cries' being such a remarkably visual picture it would benefit greatly from being restored for an entirely worthy DVD/Blu-ray release, especially since it currently remains another undeservedly forgotten gem from the golden age of televisual entertainment that most certainly hasn't lost any of its attention grabbing intrigue! There's an especially moving and emotionally weighty sequence wherein the plainly anxious, Jeannie is nervously shown around a familiar childhood house by kindly owner, Mrs. Delesande (Cathleen Nebitt) to perhaps confront what may or may not still lurk in the storied closet which enjoys a subtlety one all too rarely sees today.