Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski • 1978 • United Kingdom
Starring Alan Bates, Susannah York, John Hurt
This entrancing psychosexual puzzle thriller from Jerzy Skolimowski features a memorably unsettling performance from Alan Bates as an enigmatic drifter who insinuates himself into the lives of an experimental electronic composer (John Hurt) and his wife (Susannah York) living in a remote coastal cottage. Claiming to possess knowledge of Aboriginal magic—in particular a scream that can kill anyone who hears it—the mysterious stranger draws the couple into a vortex of desire and control, with the tension immeasurably enhanced by an innovative soundtrack by Michael Rutherford and Tony Banks of the pioneering prog-rock group Genesis.
Up Next in Art-House Horror
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The Brood
Directed by David Cronenberg • 1979 • Canada
Starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Art HindleA disturbed woman is receiving a radical form of psychotherapy at a remote, mysterious institute. Meanwhile, her five-year-old daughter, under the care of her estranged husband, is being terrorized by a...
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Wolf’s Hole
Directed by Věra Chytilová • 1987 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Miroslav Machácek, Tomás Palatý, Stepánka CervenkováVěra Chytilová’s subversive take on the 1980s teen-horror movie assembles a gaggle of bratty adolescents for a mysterious skiing retreat at a snowbound cabin where they find themselve...
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The Vanishing
Directed by George Sluizer • 1988 • Netherlands
Starring Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter SteegeA young man embarks on an obsessive search for the girlfriend who mysteriously disappeared while the couple were taking a sunny vacation trip, and his three-year investigation dra...
