[The Shout] reminded me more of early [Joseph Losey-Harold Pinter] than of the Skolimowski responsible for Bariera [Barrier] and Deep End. Most people seemed to like this menacing work more than I did. It may be that I am getting tired of malignant horror films and the easy way in which they exploit our rampant paranoia. The use of noise rather than blood to generate fear and loathing is somewhat imaginative in terms of this particular genre. But ultimately I was put off by Skolimowski's Caligariesque fudging on the facts of the plot. Did the [Alan] Bates character learn to render his death-dealing shout from the Australian aborigines? Did the story of the film really happen? Or is it a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? In the modern cinema one hesitates to ask these questions for fear of offending the sacred artist. (p. 40)

Andrew Sarris...