True "Blonde bombshells" of a starring nature come along only once or twice in a decade, and the number from, say, 1930 to 1960 is not all that many: Jean Harlow, Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, Diana Dors, Jayne Mansfield, Kim Novak, and that about does it. Of these, Harlow died too young and as an actress was memorable mainly in comedy, Turner turned into a very good actress as the years passed, Monroe was greatly loved but her true acting talent beyond her natural charisma was not really all that great, and Novak was passable. Mansfield was Mansfield. Diana Dors, however, despite her 'blonde bombshell' reputation and being probably the least beautiful of that group (one could hardly call her even very pretty) was a very legitimate actress, out of RADA, and gave excellent acting performances right from the start of her film career. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to notice at the time, which may have been her own fault for letting that reputation get out of hand.This is the very best I have seen her, and her outing here as the doomed murderess is about as good a lead female performance as any to be seen in English films of the 1950s. It is truly amazing that both her performance and this film are not better known. Maybe the Hollywood-made I WANT TO LIVE of two years later ended up stealing this film's thunder, as they both cover the imprisonment and pending death of the protagonist. But only a portion of Susan Hayward's performance takes place inside prison walls, whereas in this film, outside the opening and some flashbacks, the entire story takes place in less than 20 days in a holding cell, perhaps 20 x 25 feet in size, and goes outside it only when the prisoner is allowed out for exercise in a high-walled yard. That there are always two warders taking shifts in the holding cell with Dors, tending to her every need but also imposing a strict regimen upon her, somehow adds to the total claustrophobia of the film, and it is irrepressibly morbid from beginning to end. But it is also terrific! Although the major burden falls on Dors, every performance in the film save one is exceptional, that one being Michael Craig's as her suicidal boyfriend. Craig is a good actor, but he was the wrong choice here, as he simply never really seems like the kind of guy who could be brought to suicide by unrequited love. Lawrence Harvey might have been perfect for it. But the great Yvonne Mitchell, as the youngest warder, is superb. It seems as though, from beginning to end, she has but one expression, which never changes, on her face, yet we see the feelings she is hiding underneath at every moment, and ultimately learn that those feelings are not confined to only the prisoner's situation.Some reviews have mentioned this film as an indictment of capital punishment, but I don't see it that way, and only once in the entire film is anything said in that direction: One of the warders says that we mustn't forget the person Dors murdered, and another one answers that "...another death will not bring her back". Unlike in the Hayward film, we know right from the beginning that Dors is guilty of this crime, and although to the very end she never repents the murder, we still feel sympathy for her (I felt a lot more for her than for the Hayward character), surely a reaction engendered by the excellent screenplay, Dors' superb performance, and J. Lee Thompson's inventive direction. Given the budget and the acting talent on view here, I do not see how this film could have possibly been any better, and it should prove a major discovery to anyone now seeing it for the first time.

Mesmerizing from beginning to end. Black and white photography, impeccable, giving you the feeling of the scene just by placing the camera in a position that exactly will tell you before hand what's coming. Amazing.And then there is the actress.She, unlike ANY actress of that period, appears most of the time with her face washed up and her hair with 4 inches of black roots, totally unconcerned with her looks for the camera, but she is ACTING. She is acting a storm, what an excellent actress!!In the flash backs the actress becomes DIANA DORS... Fully done with platinum hair, made up to kill and slipped into a dress too tight to believe, it could be painted on her naked body. The story takes its time to develop and little by little it starts building up the tension of her character. The timing is perfect, we get more and more involved with her suffering and waiting as anxiously as herself about her destiny.I don't have words to tell you what a superb movie this is, a film that I think will be impossible to produce nowadays, maybe Charlize Theron came close to this type of character in "Monster", but the feeling of the movie is totally different, the results of the 50s are the results of a civilization gone with the wind.To me, this movie is a masterpiece.

This is a powerful movie. Diana Dors is the star. She's on screen virtually the whole time and turns in a fine performance. It's not what we expect from Diana Dors: She is not a sex pot or glamor girl.She plays an unhappy young woman who is taken in by a man. She kills him -- very early in the film; so this is not a spoiler. She is sent to prison. Much of the film is set in prison and there are many flashbacks.Yvonne Mitchell is also superb as a sympathetic prison matron.In her later years, Dors went from voluptuous to very large. She is shocking in the first movie I ever saw her in: "Baby Love." And she's large, good, and naked in the fine "Deep End." The woman could act and that is very clear in "Yield to the Night." She wears no, or very little makeup. The close-ups show a pretty but unglamorous woman.It's film noir in structure. And it's one of the few in which a woman is the primary character. Look for this one!

This film proved that Diane Dorrs was a superb serious actress. The obvious comparison to the tragic case of Ruth Ellis 12 months earlier only served to make a good film even better. The whole cast gave their heart and soul to it. A must for people who have not yet viewed it.