A Cold Night’s Death is an American sci-fi/horror Made-for-TV Movie that first aired on ABC in 1973. It was written by Christopher Knopf, directed by Jerrold Freedman, and executive produced by Aaron Spelling. The oftentimes atonal musical score was composed by Gil Mellé.
In an isolated mountain lab, a primatologist working with NASA commits suicide by freezing to death after leaving a dire, paranoid message on tape. Two scientists—Robert Jones (Robert Culp) and Frank Enari (Eli Wallach)—arrive to unravel the mystery of his death and assess the state of his experiments. They are soon beset by threats from without and their own distrust of each other.
A claustrophobic thriller that in some ways predicts the atmosphere of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982).
A Cold Night's Tropes:
- The Dog Bites Back: The implied reason for the apes turning on the scientists is as revenge for mistreatment as part of the experiments.
- Downer Ending: Both protagonists are either dead or dying at the end of the film. Jones has been shot to death by Enari, and Enari is locked in the lab with a stuck open window, just the same way that the other scientist was found frozen to death, indicating he'll meet the exact same fate. Whatever answers they’ve arrived at seem like they’ll die with them.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: What initially seems to have happened to the scientist in the beginning. It turns out there was more to it than that.
- Enari ends up playing this trope straight. He becomes so convinced that Jones is messing with him that when Jones finally does reveal the solution, that the monkeys were responsible, he refuses to listen and ends up shooting Jones to death when Jones approaches.
- Insistent Terminology: While the experimental subjects are all great apes—chimps, bonobos, and orangutans—Jones only ever refers to them as “monkeys.”
- Maniac Monkeys: Jones theorizes late in the film that the apes killed their predecessor and intend to do the same to him and Enari. The ending indicates that he was right.
- Minimalist Cast: Jones and Enari are the only humans onscreen for most of the film. Another man helps them get settled in the beginning and there are a couple of other characters heard on tape or over the phone.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Jones after being locked out in the sub zero temperatures. He behaves exactly as you would expect someone to when suffering from freezing exposure. When the only method Jones has of getting back into the facility is to climb through the window they shovel snow through and FALL INTO THE GIANT TANK OF THAWING SNOW WATER, the audience feels it. Even though he's back in the warm facility, Jones is still showing the aftereffects of hypothermia in his conversation with Enari.
- Theme Naming: All of the apes are given names that—as Jones deduces—are nicknames for historical conquerors (e.g. Julie, Genji…)
