The Island

'Captain Simmonds' (John Hurt), on leave from the battlefields of France, arrives on the island home of 'Mrs Santander' (Jenny Runacre), with whom he's been conducting an affair, where he encounters the butler (Graham Crowden) and, unexpectedly, 'Mr Santander' (Charles Grey). 

'The Island' is an adaptation of the 1924 L.P. Hartley short story of the same name made for the TV series 'Classics Dark and Dangerous' and soon after combined with two other episodes, 'Mrs Amworth' and 'The Mannikin', into the movie, 'Three Dangerous Ladies'.  Hartley had a penchant for the supernatural but this is perhaps more in the field of the macabre, of the type that Roald Dahl would later popularise with his 'Tales of the Unexpected'.  

Adapted and directed by Robert Fuest, the man behind such Wyrd Britain gems as the two 'Dr. Phibes' movies, the Michael Moorcock 'Jerry Cornelius' adaptation 'The Final Programme' - also starring Runacre - and the Brian Clemens, Terry Nation thriller 'And Soon The Darkness', 'The Island' is a minor entry in his canon that he's tried to make the best of by bulking out the runtime with lots of tension building silence, but there's not much there there and the final payoff is underwhelming and a tad obvious but it's great to see the three leads playing off each other.

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The Shout

As you can probably infer from it's title sound is very much at the heart of 'The Shout'; the sonic experiments of Anthony Fielding (John Hurt), Crossley's (Alan Bates) playing with his wine glass, the diegetic sounds of the rural setting, the progish / ambient soundtrack by Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks of Genesis. and, of course, the mortiferous Shout itself.  The sound design by Alan Bell is the shining jewel at the heart of the movie.

The Fielding's, Anthony and Rachel (Susannah York), live an idyllic existence in a small coastal village until their lives are turned upside down by the arrival of the interloper Crossley who claims to have lived with Australian Aborigines in the outback where he has learnt their magic; a magic that he soon brings to bear on the couple.

Based on Robert Graves fantastic short story Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski brings a decidedly arthouse sensibility to the film with time jumps, sudden switches to black and white and slow motion and a deliberate and slow pace that allows the menace in Bates' performance, the confusion in Hurt's and the loss of self in York's to build to palpable extremes before the film culminates in a thunderous if perhaps slightly anticlimactic ending.

Buy it here - The Shout - or watch it below.



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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain