Review – The Shout

This has the look and feel of a Peter Weir movie (though it was actually directed by Jerzy Skolimowski), which is to say that it’s either “cerebral” or “boring” depending on your perspective. The production’s main plot concerns an experimental musician (John Hurt) and his wife (Susannah York) who take in a man (Alan Bates) who claims to be homeless and starving. As the couple gets to know him better, they learn that he’s spent some time with the Aborigines of Australia learning their magic. His big trick is what lends the movie its title: a scream that kills sheep and knocks out his host. It’s a concept with potential, and it does supply a good shock or two. But then it turns into a parade of pasty, Brit sex as Bates’s character seduces York’s. My favorite part of the picture was the bracket, in which Bates and a young Tim Curry keep score during a cricket match played at an insane asylum. Mildly amusing