The Shout (Classic)

The past few years have seen a welcome and long-overdue critical reassessment of the diverse 70s and 80s British output of peripatetic Polish exile Jerzy Skolimowski. Between the stunning end-of-swinging-London fated romance of Deep End (1970) and the sardonic Channel 4-financed emigré-builders black comedy Moonlighting (1982), Skolimowski also made this unsettling low-key psychological (or mythical?) horror movie from a short story by Robert Graves. Bates plays the enigmatic stranger with the alleged titular gift (or curse?) who intrudes on the married lives of Rachel and Anthony Fielding (York and Hurt, both excellent) in a story-within-a-story apparently told during an asylum cricket match. While this might sound like a recipe for Hammer- or Amicus-style OTT grand guignol, Skolimowski’s controlled and cool-eyed direction (the project was originally intended for Nicolas Roeg) ensures that The Shout can rank alongside Roeg’s own Don’t Look Now as one of the very few genuine British horror masterpieces of the 1970s. It was rewarded with the Grand Jury Prize at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.

87% – Rotten Tomatoes

6.6/ 10 – IMDB

“innovatively scored by Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford from the prog-rock band Genesis, Skolimowski’s film was always set to be an unusual artefact. But the director’s use of sound, with the help of sound editor stalwart Alan Bell, is where the film’s effectiveness resides, creating an eerie and overwhelming filmic experience.”