Peter Wyngarde wears a Majex

Norman Taylor teaches psychology and does not believe in witchcraft, which is the joke the film plays on him: his wife has been working charms for years to protect his career, he makes her burn them, and his life starts coming apart that night. Night of the Eagle (1962), released in America as Burn, Witch, Burn!, reached Sidney Hayers through an unusual relay. Richard Matheson wrote the first half of the screenplay, Charles Beaumont finished it, and George Baxt rewrote the pair of them, all working from Fritz Leiber's 1943 novel Conjure Wife, which the movies have now adapted three times.

The watch gets the film's most precise close-up. At one minute to midnight Norman goes into a basement, turns his wrist, and the frame fills with the dial: MAJEX above 17 JEWELS, diamond shaped markers between the numerals, an expansion bracelet, the minute hand a hair from twelve. The respectable English name is a costume of its own. Majex was a label applied to Swiss-made watches, with movements from houses like Pierce and ETA, imported and sold by Marchand and Jobin of Hatton Garden in London. Wyngarde's admirers add a detail of their own: he was known for wearing his own accessories on screen rather than the wardrobe department's.