UK, 1978
86m
35mm film, Eastmancolor, 1.85:1
Dolby System, English
A British horror film directed by Jerzy Skolimowski.
Plot Summary
At a Sunday afternoon game of cricket at a psychiatric hospital, Robert meets one of the patients, Charles Crossley, who claims that his soul was captured in a stone and subsequently “shattered into four pieces” when the stone was broken. In flashback, Crossley spins a strange yarn; he claims to have gate-crashed the home of experimental musician Anthony and his wife Rachel and proved virtually impossible to get rid of. Crossley tells them that he learnt to kill merely by shouting, a trick he learnt from the Australian aboriginals with whom he lived for eighteen years. But is he genuine or just a very skilled con-man?
Credits
Crew
Directed by: Jerzy Skolimowski
© National Film Trustee Company Ltd. MCMLXXVIII [1978]
The Rank Organisation presents a Jeremy Thomas production. A Jerzy Skolimowski film. A Recorded Pictures Company production for National Film Finance Corporation and The Rank Organisation Ltd
Produced by: Jeremy Thomas
Associate Producer: Michael Austin
Screenplay by: Michael Austin and Jerzy Skolimowski
Based on the Story by: Robert Graves
Director of Photography: Mike Molloy
Editor: Barrie Vince
Theme & Incidental Music: Anthony Banks, Michael Rutherford
Electronics: Rupert Hine
Sound Mixer: Tony Jackson
Wardrobe: David Paddon
Make up: Wally Schneiderman
Hairdresser: Betty Glasow
Art Director: Simon Holland
Photographed entirely on location in North Devon, England and completed at Pinewood Studios, England
Cast
Alan Bates (Crossley)
Susannah York (Rachel Fielding)
John Hurt (Anthony Fielding)
Robert Stephens (medical man)
Tim Curry (Robert Graves)
Julian Hough (vicar)
Carol Drinkwater (wife)
John Rees (Inspector)
Jim Broadbent (fielder in cowpat)
Susan Wooldridge (Harriet)
Nick Stringer (cobbler)
Colin Higgins
Peter Benson
Alternative Titles
L’Australiano – Italy
El grito – Argentina, Spain
Gyilkos kiáltás – Hungary
Huuto – Finland
Der Todesschrei – Germany
References
Periodicals
- Flesh and Blood no.7 p.52 – credits, synopsis, review
- Radio Times 3-9 September 1983 p.45 – credits
- Screen International 6 – 13 January 1979 p.1 – note
Books
- English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema by Jonathan Rigby pp.269-70, 270
- Horror and Science Fiction Films II by Donald C. Willis p.352 – credits
- The Vampire in Science Fiction Film and Literature by Paul Meehan p. 4, 132-133
- X-Cert 2: The British Independent Horror Film 1971-1983 pp.255-260; 293
Other sources
- BFI Southbank Guide May-June 2021 p.18 – illustrated listing
