And Soon the Darkness is a 1970 British thriller film directed by Robert Fuest and starring Pamela Franklin, Michele Dotrice and Sandor Elès.

While having lunch at a busy restaurant, Cathy notices a handsome man drinking alone at an adjacent table.

Jane soon arrives at a rural roadside cafe, where the proprietor, Madame Lassal, warns her that the area is dangerous and that she should not be travelling alone.

En route, the schoolmistress tells Jane the unsolved murder occurred in the same wooded area from which Cathy vanished.

Jane again encounters Paul, who reveals he worked for the Surete and privately researched the case of the murdered woman.

When he breaks into the gendarme's home, Jane flees into the woods, where she stumbles upon an abandoned trailer park.

The screenplay was written by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation, both of whom had contributed to The Avengers, as had producer Albert Fennell and director Robert Fuest.

[3] Clemens said "after deciding to do a thriller we made things difficult for ourselves by insisting that all the action take place in broad daylight...

[5] They attached the director Robert Fuest who Clemens said "had a great sense of style and color in his direction.

"[6] Clemens took the project to Bryan Forbes who had just been appointed head of production at EMI Films; the two men knew each other from working together on Station Six Sahara.

Forbes later wrote in his memoirs, "One of my priorities [at EMI] was to encourage new directors who had previously been unable to get a break into feature films.

[9] It was part of an overall slate of fifteen films Forbes intended to make at EMI which cost between £5-10 million.

This slate also included The Railway Children, The Breaking of Bumbo, John Quigly's The Bitter Lollipop, Dulcima, Dennis Barker's A Candidate of Promise, A Fine and Private Place, the musical The Bernado Boys, Simon Raven's The Feathers of Death, Mr. Forbush and the Penguins, The Go Between, an untitled Richard Condon script to be directed by John Bryson, and a second film from Roger Moore, based on his own story (with a script by Julian Bond) called A Question of Innocence, which Moore was to direct.

[14] Forbes later said of And Soon the Darkness and Dulcima (another EMI movie) "the cinema and distribution arms of the company showed no great enthusiasm for either film.

"[18] Halliwell's Film Guide comments: "Slow, overstretched, often risible suspender ... long on red herrings and short on humour, but with some pretension to style.

Frederick S. Clarke, the magazine's editor, called it "a lady-in-distress picture that for suspense tops anything of its kind.

[22] Critic Alexander Walker argued the film "was shot with the precision, and limited impact, of a television drama" adding it, Hoffmann and The Man who haunted Himself "were all films obviously rushed into production to get the studio shipshape again: Forbes couldn’t afford the luxury of waiting for the off-beat, or chancing an untested project.

had then no West End ‘showcase’ cinema — and coincided with the World Cup football play-offs, a heat wave, and a general election.