The DVD Review

POLANKSI BOX SET  
Three Disc Set. Released by MRA Entertainment. Available to buy now.

A 3 disc box set giving us the chance to catch 3 of Roman Palanski’s pivotal 1960’s movies which established his repuation as an auteur and allowed the opportunity to head to Hollywood (where of course tragedy would await with the murder of his wife Sharon Tate by Charles Manson’s followers.

This trio of black and white classics offers a kind of antithesis of the swinging sixties, for these are dark, strange films, the first Knife in the Water was made in Polanski’s native Poland, stunning to look at it has a young couple on a weekend boat trip having to deal with the unwelcome attentions of a young man whom has inveigled his way onto the boat, very claustrophobic but also fantastically watachble. Polanski then moved to the UK to make Repulsion, probably the best known of the trio starring the beautiful Catherine Deneauve as Carol Ledoux, a woman with serious mental problems living in a flat with her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), Carol is fascinated by the idea of sex but also terrified by it, when her sister goes on holiday with her lover Michael (played by Ian Hendry) Carol cannot handle being alone and descends completely into madness, even  going  so far as murder a man Colin who has shown an interest in her. Once seen you’ll never forget the nightmarish sequence of Carol imagining the walls of her flat cracking open with hands reaching out trying to grab her. A landmark movie of its day Repulsion has certainly lost none of it’s power. The final movie Cul-De-Sac touches on very similar themes of madness and skewed personalities and of course offers the opportunity to see Donald Pleasance in full make up, lipstick n’all. The plot sees Pleasance stuck in a castle with a pair of escsaped cons. This is an absolutley must have collection of movies by a director at the peak of his powers.