The Shout ** (1978, Alan Bates, Susannah York, John Hurt, Robert Stephens, Tim Curry) – Classic Movie Review 9723

Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1978 The Shout is a thin, arty, anecdotal horror drama film from Robert Graves’s short story about a man at a mental hospital who says that the Aborigines taught him how to kill by shouting.

Tim Curry plays Robert Graves, who meets hospital inmate Charles Crossley (Alan Bates) at a cricket match. Batsman Anthony Fielding (John Hurt) and his wife Rachel Fielding (Susannah York) are putting Bates up in remote Devon, although it is clear that he despises them.

The Shout is watchable but vastly over-extended. Skolimowski achieves an atmosphere of Harold Pinteresque menace, but no tension, and audiences might wonder at the purpose of this obscure piece.

Michael Austin and Jerzy Skolimowski just cannot carve a satisfying feature-length screenplay out Graves’s short story.

Also in the cast are Robert Stephens, Julian Hough, Carol Drinkwater, Nick Stringer, John Rees, Jim Broadbent, Peter Benson, Colin Higgins and Susan Wooldridge.

It won the Grand Prize of the Jury (tied) at the Cannes Film Festival (1978).

It is notable for its avant-garde electronic score. Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, members of the rock band Genesis, worked on the soundtrack. The central theme ‘From the Undertow’ was featured on Banks’s album A Curious Feeling.

Producer Jeremy Thomas said: ‘It was fascinating watching Skolimowski work. He came from a Polish tradition, the Wajda Film School. I saw it more as an artistic endeavour by him.’ It is Thomas’s second movie as a producer. and first for his Recorded Pictures Company. It is Skolimowski’s first British movie, followed by Moonlighting (1982).

The ‘shout’ scenes were shot at the Saunton Burrows sand dunes, 2,000 acres inland from the Atlantic Ocean coastline of North Devon. Most of the location filming was shot there.

It is Jim Broadbent’s theatrical movie debut (as fielder in cowpat).

 © Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9723

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