Strange occurance with 'Dead of Night'

On October 28th of 2006, I went to a Halloween party I was invited to at my friend's sister's place. Even before I had known whether or not this would take place I had decided I wanted to show a cool old movie I had seen a long time ago called "Curse of the Demon" (I since found out that the English title is "Night of the Demon"). But the places I checked didn't have it and I was told it was too scary for little ones who would be at the party. So I decided to settle on a different movie called "Dead of Night". I had been thinking about this up to a few days before the party but I didn't know, would I even be able to find this at any of the nearby rental places? The day before I found someplace that had it on videotape. But I still didn't remember hardly anything about this movie, I think I had seen it once a long, long time ago (like maybe 20 or 30 years ago or something like that). I didn't remember anything except there was this stupid golfing sequence in the middle and there was this great thing at the end with Michael Redgrave playing a ventriloquist with his dummy. But I didn't remember any details. I didn't remember that the whole thing was grouped together by this man who said he was having a recurring dream. I never even ended up getting to show this movie at the party, but while there I spent some time talking to my friend's brother-in-law who is pretty conversant on old movies like this. We talked and talked about different stuff, like Incubus which I just rented for the first time recently, and Outer Limits and Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Orson Welles and Herzog and Buñuel and L'Âge d'or. I told him isn't it amazing that the woman who stars in the Outer Limits episode "Demon with a Glass Hand" as a blond, Arline Martel, is the same one who is in the 2 Twilight Zones (albeit as brunettes): "What You Need" and "22" (where she says "Room for one more, honey!"). But at one point I told him something that had just occurred to me a few days ago. I was thinking that if I had my druthers I would like to start a topic on the Internet of in which movies do we see someone's glasses being broken. I could think of several examples: 1) in Hitchcock's The Birds, in the scene where the birds start to attack at the elementary school one of the little girls falls and breaks her glasses; 2) in the classic Battleship Potemkin, there is a scene on these stairs where things are falling down and breaking; 3) In the movie Lord of the Flies, the breaking of Piggy's glasses is a significant turning point; 4) I also recently rented another favorite movie of mine called The Absent Minded Professor, and at the very beginning of this the student's glasses break 5) and then there's that famous episode of the Twilight Zone called "Time Enough at Last" where Burgess Meredith breaks his glasses. And I was trying to think if there were any other movies or TV shows where this had happened.

When I got home I decided I wanted to see the movie. I opened the case that held the video-cassette and noticed that it hadn't been properly rewound, although it was much closer to the beginning than the end. I put it in this VCR I had gotten because the woman I am renting a room from dropped it once and the front broke off, but it is still functional. Once I pushed PLAY I saw that I was playing the golfing section of the movie. I rewound in the mode where you can see the image played back quickly, but soon saw that it would take way too long to get to the beginning this way. So I pressed STOP and then REWIND and rewound it till it stopped rewinding, assuming it then must be at the beginning. But when I started playing it, it started right at the beginning of the race-car-driver telling his tale. I played it for a little while and then I go, well this isn't right, let me try to rewind it again. I rewound it again until it stopped, but again it stopped right at the beginning of the race-car-driver sequence. Very strange, as I don't remember this machine ever doing something like that before.

But I figured there was some kind of problem with the tape, such that the tape started in the middle of the movie (but near the beginning). I mean I ASSUMED there was just no more tape previous to this segment, like a previous renter of this tape had damaged the rest of the tape previous to this point and the renters had cut it out. So I just started to watch it from there. But this VCR was not behaving very well, the TV connected to it was showing static on top of the picture (this does happen sometimes), so I decided to switch over to watching it on this other VCR I have (in fact one that used to belong to my friend's brother-in-law whom I had just been talking to that night). Eventually I got to the part where he (Walter Craig) talks about how the doctor would drop and break his glasses. I did a double-take in my mind -- wow, isn't that some amazing coincidence! It was a bit creepy, even.

Or WAS it a coincidence?

As I was watching the ending, seeing him drive down the road and he stops and recognizes the house he sees, I go, Yep, I bet this is what happens at the beginning too, but I hadn't gotten to see it. So I rewound the whole tape on this other VCR, and this time I did get to the real beginning and from there started to watch the movie again but this time from the very beginning like I was supposed to.