Sidney Hayers was an editor first, and it shows: he made fear out of pacing and suggestion in two early British horrors, then spent decades as a dependable pair of hands in television. Night of the Eagle is the one to see.
Fi1m perspective
The thing to know about Sidney Hayers is that he spent the 1940s and 1950s in the cutting room before anyone let him direct, and he never stopped thinking like an editor. His horror films keep the horror off screen for as long as they can and show you the faces of the people who believe in it instead, in close-up, cut a beat sooner than you expect. Night of the Eagle (1962), an occult thriller, works almost entirely this way. Very little is shown; the pace tightens; the film trusts you to do the frightening yourself.
He had come up through the sound department and as a focus puller, then editing, with second-unit work on A Night to Remember (1958). Features followed from 1959. Circus of Horrors (1960) made his name for lurid, striking thrillers on modest money, and Night of the Eagle two years later is the film most people mean when they say his name. After This Is My Street (1963) the features became rarer and less remarked upon. The Trap (1966), a wilderness adventure about a marriage under strain, is the last of them anyone argues for, and from the middle of that decade he was mostly a television man.
Television suited him, or at least it kept him working. He directed episodes of The Avengers, which we like a good deal: the mysteries are thin, and it is Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg and the wit that carry them, which is exactly the kind of series a director who knows how to keep things moving can serve without getting in the way. The Persuaders followed, then a long American stretch on Knight Rider, The A-Team and Magnum, P.I., and second-unit action on A Bridge Too Far (1977). The word that follows him around is journeyman. It is fair. It is also what a journeyman is for: the episodes arrived on time and made sense, and that is rarer than it sounds.
We came to Night of the Eagle expecting a period curiosity and found, somewhere in the middle, that we were no longer breathing evenly, with almost nothing on screen to account for it. The fear is in the cutting and in how long Hayers is prepared to wait before he lets you see anything at all. The rest of his output is largely undistinguished, and there is no point pretending otherwise. Start with Night of the Eagle, follow it with Circus of Horrors if you have a taste for the garish, and treat the decades of television as the day job they were.
Biography
Sidney Hayers (24 August 1921 – 8 February 2000) was a British film and television director, writer and producer. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, he began his career as a film editor before directing his first feature, Rebound (1959).
Among the films he directed are Circus of Horrors (1960), Night of the Eagle (1962) and The Trap (1966). His television credits include episodes of The Avengers (1961), The Persuaders! (1971) and The New Avengers (1976–77). He later directed episodes of American series including Magnum, P.I. (1980), The A-Team (1983), Knight Rider (1982), Baywatch (1989) and The Fall Guy (1981). He also worked as second-unit director on A Bridge Too Far (1977).
Hayers died of cancer in Altea, Spain. He was married to actress Erika Remberg.
