Cul-De-Sac **** (1966, Donald Pleasence, Françoise Dorléac, Lionel Stander, Jack MacGowran) – Classic Movie Review 2548

Lionel Stander and Jack MacGowran star as bumbling crooks on the lam in co-writer/director Roman Polanski’s startling, humorous and strange British black comedy shocker.

The duo, one wounded and the other dying, take refuge at the Holy Island beachfront castle, off northern England, belonging to a creepy meek Englishman called George (Donald Pleasence) and his lovely but wilful young wife French (Françoise Dorléac), who are unwilling hosts.

Polanski carries off this attractively weird and often funny idea with great verve and encourages superb performances, particularly from Stander and a bizarrely camp Pleasence.

Polanski delights in the macabre in his splendidly eerie, unsettling film pitched with a sure touch somewhere between a comedy, a melodrama and a chiller. Gilbert Taylor’s black and white cinematography is startlingly good.

Also in the cast are Iain Quarrier as Christopher, Geoffrey Sumner and Renée Houston as his parents, William Franklyn, Robert Dorning, Jacqueline (then Jackie) Bisset, Marie Kean and Trevor Delaney.

It runs 111 minutes with the cut version runs 103 minutes.

MacGowran and Quarrier were also in Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers. Polanski starred Dorléac’s sister  Catherine Deneuve in his 1965 film Repulsion.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2548

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