And Soon the Darkness (1970) – two young nurses are on a biking vacation of France, pedaling through the scenic countryside, cute as bug’s knees, wearing their short shorts, listening to jaunty pop, and having a blast. Flirty blonde Cathy likes the looks of a playboy local who zips by them on his moped, while practical Jane wants to push on to their next stop. The two argue, and Jane rides off in a huff, then thinks better of it, and goes back to find her friend, but Cathy has disappeared without a trace. The kind of movie Hitchcock would have made if he’d still been making great movies in the 70′s, And Soon the Darkness tightens slowly around your neck like a gloved hand with the gorgeous French countryside and its quaint locals slowly being transformed by (justified?) paranoia into something out of a horror show. The unsubtitled French invests even the most benign conversation with an air of menace, and while all the violence is reserved for the last six minutes, the final shot heralds the end of innocence, the end of trust, the end of summer, and the end of happiness. Never before has a vacation been so brutal. Economically made, this is a horror movie that lets you care about the characters before doing sick, nasty things to them. (Watch it!)
