Irene remains faithful to Howard, but not by choice; he never lets her leave the house and entertains no guests except his attorney, Barry Morland.

Howard spends most of his time working in his upstairs laboratory on a variety of projects, the nature of which he refuses to divulge to anyone, while Irene indulges her yearnings for an extramarital affair with recurrent dreams of a fantasy lover.

When Irene returns to the beauty shop, Joyce relays an anonymous message from George: "Pleasant dreams."

Hearing gunshots, Irene rushes inside and, in the wrecked laboratory, is confronted by Barry, who shows her he has been impersonating Howard using a prosthetic mask.

Barry, having a sudden change of heart, fights to save Irene, and the two men fall to their deaths through a gaping hole in the laboratory floor.

This time, Castle relied on Bloch's reputation as the author of the novel on which Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is based, as well as the re-teaming of Stanwyck and Taylor, who had been married from 1939 to 1951, as being sufficient to publicize the film.

It marked the end of Castle's most influential period as a director, although he would go on to produce and direct a number of additional films for Universal, and later, Paramount Pictures.

[7] Universal Pictures devised a sensationalistic advertising campaign for The Night Walker, with taglines reading: "Does sex dominate your dreams?

"[8] The key artwork featured on the majority of the film's promotional materials, showing a sleeping woman observed by a demonic incubus, is based on Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare (1781).

[6] To further promote the film, a novelization was published in December 1964 by Award Books, adapted from Bloch's screenplay by Sidney Stuart.

"[10] Variety commented on the convoluted plot, noting that it "attains its goal as a chiller, but the unfolding is so complicated that [the] audience is frequently lost.

"[11] In a retrospective review, Craig Butler of Allmovie lambasted the screenplay as being full of massive plot holes and stilted dialogue.

He credited director William Castle and lead actors Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor for their willingness to approach the poor material with earnestness and enthusiasm, but ultimately concluded that the only wholly enjoyable element of The Night Walker is the atmospheric soundtrack with its "surprisingly chilling" use of harpsichord.

It was later released on DVD by Universal Pictures and Turner Classic Movies as one of their "TCM Selects" titles on December 7, 2015, as part of a Double Feature with Dark Intruder from 1965.