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33 reviews in total

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22 out of 24 people found the following review useful:
Underrated mystery, 5 August 2003

Author: rosscinema (rosscinema@comcast.net) from Oceanside, Ca.

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I haven't watched this film in probably 20 years and I had forgotten a lot of the plot but I watched it again recently and it reminded me that this was one of the most unique and interesting mysteries I have ever seen. Story starts out with a young doctor named Robert Graves (Tim Curry) who comes to an insane asylum to help keep score of a cricket match between the inmates and the staff and sitting beside Robert is a man named Crossley (Alan Bates) who starts to tell him the story of how he ended up there. Crossley was in Devon, England and meets Anthony Fielding (John Hurt) who plays the organ in church but is always experimenting with music and sounds and Crossley invites himself over for lunch. He meets Anthony's wife Rachel (Susannah York) and during lunch he tells them he spent 18 years with the aborigines in the outback and that he had killed his own children and learned some of the aborigine black magic. He spends the night but early the next morning Crossley and Anthony walk out to a secluded area because Crossley mentioned that he learned "The Shout" that can kill anything in the general area. Anthony puts wax in his ears and Crossley does his "Shout". It kills a local sheep herder and the sheep and Anthony is saved by the wax. Crossley possesses Rachels buckle from her sandal which he uses to put a spell on her to possess her as well. These scenes are shown in flashbacks and we're not sure if this is just a made-up story from a crazy man or the real deal. We know some of it is made up because we see York's character as a nurse. The film is directed by Jerzy Skolimowski and along with the Jeremy Irons film "Moonlighting" he shows good patience in the way he tells the stories in his films. This is a very effective mystery and their are lots of images that flash during the film that are cause for discussion and one that pops in my mind is that in Anthony's work room there is a photo tacked to the wall of someone or something on all fours. Later, Rachel is nude in the bedroom waiting for Crossley and she gets on all fours that mirrors the image in the photo! The performances are excellent and Bates brooding nature is put to good use here. His quiet but demanding persona is totally believable. I really enjoyed York in this film and the nudity that she is asked to do here reminded me that English actress's have an entirely different attitude toward nudity in films. York was always an excellent actress and she was very popular in the sixties and seventies and her performance here shows why. This is a film that is intended for mature audiences who are not afraid to view something that leaves some questions. This reminded me of two other films, "Don't Look Now" and "The Wicker Man" which didn't cater to a less sophisticated mindset. Well made and extremely effective.

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23 out of 31 people found the following review useful:
A brilliant puzzle of a movie. Original and haunting., 20 September 2002
Author: Infofreak from Perth, Australia

'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!

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19 out of 27 people found the following review useful:
unusual and arty horror film involving aboriginal Australian magic; something different, 3 February 2005

Author: FieCrier from Upstate New York

I don't recall now how I'd heard of this movie, but having heard of it, I was motivated enough to get a copy from the Amazon UK site (region-free players are a must; region encoding should be abolished!).

From the very start of the movie, it's clear it will be unusual. First we see a woman drive up to a building. She is ushered into a room where there are three dead men, apparently naked, laid out under white sheets on what seem to be dining tables. She stops at the third one. Then, we see an black, likely aboriginal, man wandering in a desert or among sand dunes, and he approaches with a sharp bone. Then a man (Tim Curry) arrives at an asylum, where he is assigned the job of score-keeping for a game of cricket the patients and staff are about to begin. The other scorekeeper, one of the patients, starts to tell him a story....

That's a lot of jumping around just to start the film! There are layers in the film, due to the storytelling, and not everything is chronological, and perhaps not everything is even true.

The story involves the man telling the story (Alan Bates) and one of the men playing cricket (John Hurt). John Hurt's character plays organ at a church, when he gets there on time, anyway, and at home records a variety of sounds, amplifying them in such a way they sound unusual. He meets Alan Bates, a strange man who had learned some aboriginal magic when he lived in Australia, and Bates manages to enter Hurt's home and life.

The story structure and the involvement of an asylum called to mind The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for me, and now seeing the comments of others, I see I'm not alone. One other movie that came to mind while watching The Shout was Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) because of the Australian weirdness and artiness in both films.

I can't claim to understand everything in the film. For example, at one point a character wakes up and he's temporarily confused about his identity and profession, a problem that reoccurs at least once thereafter. Additionally, there's some digging in the sand for rocks which seem related to people somehow. In spite of this, or perhaps because of this to a degree (I like some mystery sometimes), I enjoyed the movie, and I'm glad I bought it.

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10 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Why should I remember, 17 February 2003

Author: Steve Dyer from Cornwall, England

I saw this film for the first time when I was just 17 years old and it made an impression which has lasted another 25 yrs. I just cant forget it. To this day, I cannot think of another film which captures so much about the isolation of English civility from the raw power of tribal beliefs, and to bring them together in the gentility and peace of a rural Devon setting.. even the "Wicker Man" fails to gain such potency as it is set in what is from the beginning contrived to be island cultures.. remote from civil society, whereas "The Shout" is both in your face, while (as a 1970's film) hauntingly suggestive of unspoken fears and longings. As such it speaks of the era within which it was made, a time of fragile contentment and almost subversive experimentation with.. other ways of viewing the world. Bates and York's performances are also totally believable which contrasted with the other-worldly nature of the setting and story make it compelling viewing. As another review stated.. I believe this to be a thoroughly underrated film, while for me at least definitely.. a classic.

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12 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Etherial, dreamy and well made tale of the bizarre., 30 August 1999

Author: simon-118 from London

Halliwell described this as a "well made and acted but ultimately rather pointless fable" which is typical of his style of reviewing, but despite his glib conclusions one must agree that this is an excellent piece of avant-garde film-making that, in spite of its impressive cast, often strikes one as more like a short by a new director. In fact, the film may have been more effective as a short were it not that the sleepy pace lends it a dream-like and ethereal feel that is totally shattered when the shout is heard. The Shout itself is so built up that one can only expect disappointment. Yet when it finally is heard it is truly horrific and you will jump out of your seat. The scene on the sand dunes as Alan Bates yells out death to all around him and sheep are swept down dead by the cry is masterful. Similarly effective is the soundtrack by Genesis' Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, mainly based around reworkings of themes from Banks' album "A Curious Feeling" a gorgeously nostalgic sequence of music that is inventively brought into the film as a low-key presence, faintly playing in the background as if echoing on the breeze, and used by John Hurt on the church organ. The man from nowhere character Alan Bates presents is fascinating and a nice change of style for him, and it seems strange how rarely this film is aired on television and how hard it is to locate on video, despite its excellent cast and original realisation. A little known but fascinating tale of the uncanny presented like an adult fairy tale.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Shouting, 19 October 2006

Author: VideoKidVsTheVoid from Springdale, Arkansas

An utterly bewitching and fantastical film from the great Polish-born filmmaker Jerzy Skolimoski. An "abnormal" mental patient, Crossley (Alan Bates), tells a story of himself, which may or may not be true, to a young, confused looking Tim Curry during a mental institution run cricket match. He tells of how he self-imposed his way into the home of an experimental musique concrète composer, Anthony (John Hurt), who records all sorts of fascinating sounds and noises and then manipulates them with his mini-studio of electronic equipment, and his wife Rachel (Susannah York). Inside the flashback/flash forward/flash sideways, he tells them of a unique ability he has perfected, which he learned from an aboriginal medicine man while living in the Australian outback. It seems he can perform a shout that will kill anyone within a surrounding radius. He demonstrates "The Shout" to Anthony and unknowingly kills a local farmer. His presence in Anthony's home quickly becomes awkward and unwanted but he continues to force his stay with intimidation. He uses his mysterious mystical abilities to entrance Rachel into becoming almost rabid for him, and taunts Anthony with his conquest and powers. Anthony, humiliated and overpowered in his own home and life, searches desperately for a way to defeat Crossley; searches for the source of his "soul".

Skolimowski uses the music and sounds that are recorded by John Hurt's character on screen (in real life made by Rupert Hine) as the metaphysical soul to this cinematic nightmare; similar in the ways David Lynch uses sound design as both an audio and visually integral mood stabilizing component in his nightmare-dream poems, or how Nicolas Roeg uses fractured time and images to a disorientating, hypnotic effect. In fact, it feels very analogous to a Roeg film. Highly recommended.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
scandalously under-rated, 8 March 2006

Author: shmekel from Australia

And I really do mean 9/10. This film is a superbly made, wonderfully acted, deliberately under-stated fantasy masterpiece. The sense of conviction, of the truth being portrayed even when the paranormal erupts into the world, is unnerving. Yes, the film as a whole is unapologetically high-brow, full of cultural allusions that many will miss (The dry psychoanalytic cracks, the Francis Bacon-inspired compositions, the inversion of Orpheus), but all that can happily be missed without in any way detracting from the film. For those who love metaphysics, the incredible thrill of the possibility of magic, this should not be missed. (The current DVD release, MOST Regrettably, has been sub-optimally re-mixed. However, for those new to the film, it shouldn't matter too much. For those who have, turn that shout up loud!!!)

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7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
the whisper, 6 August 2000
Author: jplenton from cardiff, wales

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

02/08/00

Due to the success of The Exorcist and The Omen there was an upsurge in supernatural based films in the seventies. Most relied on the Christian belief system with tales of priests battling The Devil. I know of two exceptions. Firstly The Manitou, a messy film based on Red Indian belief. Secondly this film, The Shout, which relies on Aboriginal belief. From this preamble you may ascertain that The Shout is a horror film. Only in a loose sense, it is more of a dark and mysterious drama.

The film opens (and ends) at a mental institution. The scene could be construed as a microcosm of `stereotypical' English life, with the rural backdrop, cricket on the Green, and brief thundershower. A visitor is told a strange story by one of the patients based on his past. This story is the focus of the film (cf. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)

The patient imposes himself on a young couple living near a rural village. He claims to have lived in the Australian Outback for eighteen years and has become an Aboriginal magician. He has the power to enact a `terror shout', which kills anyone within earshot. He is met with initial scepticism and humour by the couple, especially the husband; Anthony played by John Hurt (typecast as the everyman victim/underdog).

The appearance of a stranger or newcomer (in this film the patient/storyteller) is a familiar premise in film. The newcomer acts as a catalyst for change, gradually exposing the hidden `underbelly'/underlying tensions and secrets of the family or community visited. Cf. Knife in the Water, Cul De Sac, The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, Vampyr, The Witches (1966), and that's only mentioning films I have seen this year.

*spoilers*

The stranger's choice of `victim' could be because Anthony is having an affair. Note introductory dialogue `that man had a wife who loved him'. The stranger leaves for a period, but as the affair resumes, promptly returns. Perhaps the story is in Anthony's imagination, brought on by guilt.

Another theme is religious belief. The initial conversations between the stranger and Anthony are on Christian theology. The topic is not continued as the onus shifts to belief in the magician's power. Anthony can only seek retribution by believing absolutely, he too becomes a magician, but this costs him his `mind'. Note how both `magicians' end up in the asylum. Anyone with unorthodox or unwanted beliefs is hidden away.

Are the magician's powers real or fantasy? He is telling the story remember and openly admits to changing it on whim. The ending chaos could be part of the story or delusion. The film leaves behind a lot of loose strings and unanswered questions. It is up to the listener/viewer to decide.

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10 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
An eccentric, but curiously compelling tale, 27 July 2000

Author: Afracious from England

This is a strange film about a sinister man named Crossley (Alan Bates) who invades the lives of a man (John Hurt) and his wife (Susannah York) in a sleepy English town. He tells the story to a fellow scorer at a cricket match (Tim Curry), and we are left to try and disentangle it.

Crossley tells the couple that he spent eighteen years in the Australian outback, and that he killed his children when they were born. He also tells them he met a magical man in the outback, who taught him how to shout to kill. The scene when Crossley 'shouts' on the sand dunes is good. The shout kills sheep, birds and a shepherd. The sound is good too. The film was made in Dolby system sound, which is rare for that time. During the 'shout' the effect is impressive. The ending is rather weird. Alan Bates is good as the creepy Crossley. It's an odd film, that is curiously compelling to watch.

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12 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Mmmm..., 1 August 2000
Author: Stee-3 from Preston, England

... 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...

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