The Shout

I don't even know where to start but I will try. Alan Bates is mystifying and terrifying - and I get the oddest feeling that the Coen Brothers love this movie and bit the character for Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. John Hurt plays a character who is offensively passive but very likable and he does it with flying colors - his performance is great. Susannah York's role requires great dynamic and she pulls it off menacingly. The plot is so minimal and open-ended it doesn't even feel like a plot, but the experience goes unmatched. The environments are often breathtaking and the editing, pacing, and "progression" of the plot makes the entire movie feel like a bad dream. Through the second half of the film, everything that occurs is so out-there that you can no longer question any small detail - everything is absurd but it feels organic and cohesive in it's own freakish sense. Admittedly, I don't understand the ending, but I don't even care - it still feels climactic and satisfying, and most outstanding dreams are not fully explicable either... for fans of any and all oddities... this one is not to be missed.

Previous commentators have remarked upon the similarity of the framing story of this film (that reunites the author and star of 'I Claudius') to 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'; but no one yet seems to have noticed the resemblance to Pasolini's 'Teorema', in which Terence Stamp rocks the boat of a bourgeois household with a similar mystical droit du seigneur to that exercised by Alan Bates over a youthful John Hurt's luscious wife Susannah York (who at one point has a remarkably feral nude scene on all fours), despite his unkempt appearance and army greatcoat that recall Davies from 'The Caretaker' more than Bates' earlier saturnine romantic leads.

Most reviewers seem also to be taking this tall tale of bucolic rumpy pumpy with more of a straight face than it's actual makers may have been. But it clearly needs to be seen (and listened to) more than once.

Anthony and his wife Rachel (John Hurt and Susannah York) invite a bizarre drifter named Charles (Alan Bates) into their home for lunch. Charles claims to have spent the last 18 months in the Australian outback. He also says that he's acquired the ability to kill by merely shouting.

Anthony doubts the story, so, Charles takes him out and proves it to him. Unfortunately for Rachel, Charles has even more wickedness up his sleeve.

THE SHOUT is a magnificently odd little film about magic, madness, and death. It's told via flashback in a mental institution.

Highly recommended for fans of the dark and different... Be sure to watch for Tim Curry!

'The Shout' is one of the most underrated thrillers of the 70s, and should be spoken of in the same breath as the much more celebrated 'Don't Look Now' and 'The Wicker Man'. All three put complex and original adult approaches to the supernatural thriller genre. Alan Bates ('Whistle Down The Wind') really shines in this movie as the mysterious and charismatic stranger cum shaman Crossley, who turns a comfortably bohemian middle class marriage upside down. The couple are played by John Hurt ('The Elephant Man') and Susannah York ('Superman'), and they are both first rate, as is Tim Curry ('Rocky Horror') in a smaller but important supporting role. But as good as they all are this is Bates' movie all the way in an unforgettable performance. A haunting, dreamlike puzzle of a movie that improves with multiple viewings. Highly recommended!

... interesting one, this. Possibly one of the best films made. Sumptuous music, courtesy of Messrs Banks & Rutherford. Idyllic Devon locations. Hot, liquid afternoons; a game of cricket watched by 'mad' trees, the air punctuated by the cries of peacocks and a terrifying story of a man from the outback, who exercised the right to kill his children and who can kill anyone with the Terror Shout. A man (Alan Bates) who infiltrates the lives of a couple who live in a remote cottage by a rocky coast. A man who takes the wife (Susannah York) as his own property leaving the husband (John Hurt) utterly powerless, until he finds the man's soul trapped in a pebble. The shout itself is extremely well done and it sends shivers down the spine as a maelstrom of noise hits the senses. The ending brings both the story and the the cricket game together in spectacular fashion. At the close of play, you realize you've witnessed a straight horror story that is grounded in mundane reality. Mmmm...