Set in a lonely inn in Switzerland, Robert Muller's drama follows the fortunes of a family headed by Howard Lawrence (Gordon Jackson), his wife Elsbeth (Kathleen Byron) and their daughter (Pauline Moran) as they encounter a strange maitre d' Herr Hubert (Vladek Sheybal) and a mysterious old man with a penchant for quoting from Shakespeare's RICHARD III (Frederick Radley). Howard is engaged in a quest to retrace the steps of great Romantic poets such as Byron and Shelley; this is what encourages him to travel abroad in the first place.
Through a combination of accident and luck, the family learns about Herr Hubert's puppet-show, which is advertised as being not exactly family fare. They attend the show, and discover to their horror that the puppets are life-size; this leads them on to the discovery that they are actually human beings engaged in a macabre ritual of killing and life-creation.
From then on, the family's ordeal becomes more and more difficult to bear, involving possession, the discovery of a lair (illuminated with lurid yellow light) in Hubert's house, and the realization that past and present have been unified in a strange and sinister way.
Alan Cooke's production relies for much of its effect on the use of atmospheric music (by Paul Lewis) and rapid cutting between close- ups of Lawrence's increasingly tortured countenance and the people he interacts with - his daughter, M. Hubert, and the old man. The sequence where Lawrence discovers the lair is especially memorable, involving an abrupt contrast between dark and light.
Technically speaking, "The Night of the Marionettes" makes some awkward transitions between video and location filming - notably in the puppet-show sequence. Nonetheless the cinematography (by Nigel Walters) is both bold and eloquent, the camera sweeping past the actors in a series of extravagant pans both sideways and upwards. There are some genuinely scary moments, especially when viewers are placed in the same position as Lawrence - not knowing precisely what they will discover behind locked doors or around darkened corners.