Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

MartinHafer The concept in "A Cold Night's Death" is very good...and very interesting. However, it's also a very, very simple idea...so simple that it cannot be supported in a 90 minute film...perhaps 15-20 at the most. As a result, there were significant periods of dull filler and the overall effort is one I wouldn't recommend.Robert Jones (Robert Culp) and Frank Enari (Eli Wallach) are sent to the Tower Mountain Research Station because the man running the place, Dr. Vogel, stopped transmitting five days ago. Additionally, before this be was beginning to sound more and more irrational. When they arrive in this frozen wasteland to replace him, they find the Doctor...dead...frozen in a room exposed to the elements. How did this happen? Through the course of the film they put the puzzle pieces together and Dr. Jones thinks that the apes at this research center had something to do with this!As I said, the basic idea isn't bad but you could probably sum up the plot in two or three sentences! Wallach and Culp do their best...you can't blame them. But the script just isn't enough to hold your interest...though the payoff is pretty cool...if you're still watching by then!!

AaronCapenBanner Intelligent, well-directed and acted thriller stars Robert Culp & Eli Wallach, who play researchers sent to a secluded, frozen scientific outpost to investigate why contact has been lost with the original researcher, who is doing experiments with various monkeys to test their intelligence and reactions...what is really going on? Film becomes a mysterious, cat & mouse type thriller, as the two men become increasingly at odds over the fate of the researcher, and what has happened to his results, which need to be retrieved from an audio tape. Both Culp & Wallach are quite good portraying the fear and frustration that overcomes them, and that lead to an ending that is so subtle, yet so powerful when you ponder it, that I really appreciate how intelligently it treats the audience, though it is too short, since the story had more potential developments.Still, I hope this near-forgotten film can one day get a DVD release(Shout/Scream Factory please take note!) Only way to view this film is on YouTube, and you never know when it will be taken down again...

Prichards12345 What a terrific little film this is. Made in 1973 on what was presumably a very low budget, this two-hander about a pair of research scientists experimenting on apes in a remote mountain science station is a lean and mean horror-thriller, put together with maximum conviction, a haunting atmosphere and stratospherically good performances.Robert Culp and Eli Wallach brilliantly portray the disintegrating relationship between the two men, as each comes to suspect the other with tampering with the heating systems, despoiling the food, and generally fouling things up.Having discovered the previous lone occupant of the research outpost frozen to death, it seems something very sinister is haunting the men. What could it possibly be? I won't spoil things by revealing the solution to the mystery - it works extremely well, and the moment when the nearly frozen Culp manages to get back into the station and confronts Wallach, axe in hand, is one of the classic scenes of horror, t.v. or otherwise.It's a film which draws you in gradually, relying on small moments to unsettle and rivet the viewer. This in its own way is as good as Spielberg's Duel. A treat for a first time viewer.Please, please, please somebody somewhere get this released on DVD. One of the best things ever produced by the medium, it deserves remastering preservation on a grand scale.

CatTales What could be so frightening and irrational that a scientist would choose to freeze to death rather than confront it? You'll find out.While we think of scientists as being unflinching heroic seekers of truth, they can be pretty nutty people in denial of reality (it's true!). The movie is about two different types of scientists who are trying to complete some research involving monkeys in a remote freezing mountain environment. The experiment was left uncompleted by the death of a scientist who seems to have gone insane, and died freezing to death. Regardless of the fact that the audience can more-or-less figure out who the culprit is, the last 30 seconds are incredibly chilling to see. Imagine characters debating if a shark was involved in the deaths in JAWS, but only in the last minute of film you finally see a fin circling the hero. Or a ventriloquist who insists his dummy is alive, and at the end you see it move. Worth watching in the dark for the very creepy climax. Kudos for the director's long-takes and Gil (Andromeda Strain) Melle's unsettling score.