Product Details

• Actors: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Yvonne Furneaux, Patrick Wymark
• Directors: Roman Polanski
• Writers: Roman Polanski, David Stone, Gérard Brach
• Producers: Gene Gutowski, Michael Klinger, Robert Sterne, Sam Waynberg
• Format: Black & White, Original recording reissued, NTSC
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: April 21, 1998
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (128 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0767807707
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,520 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Roman Polanski was still a newcomer to the world of cinema when he unleashed this unforgettable exercise in skin-crawling terror. Repulsion was the Polish director's first film in English, but that hardly mattered: much of the movie is as wordless (and as weird) as the silent Nosferatu. The young Catherine Deneuve plays a Belgian girl stranded in '60s London, a shy beauty with no social skills. When her sister leaves their shared flat, Deneuve goes gradually, quietly, completely mad. Her world becomes Polanski's paintbox, as the devilish director distorts reality via a series of surrealistic touches (grasping hands that protrude from elastic walls) and out-and-out murderous horror. Very few films cast the kind of eerie spell that this 1965 classic achieves, and it clearly points the way toward Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. As with most of the director's work, what is unsettling is not the overt violence, but the terrifying sense of emptiness and isolation, and the boiling unease inside one's own mind. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb--and Terrifying--Psychological Examination, March 5, 1999

By 

Jesse Solomon "j.s." (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Repulsion [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Roman Polanski's first English language film, made three years following the international acclaim for "Knife in the Water" and three years before his American masterpiece "Rosemary's Baby," is a marvelous dissection of paranoia and sexual psychosis amidst contemporary culture, with a phenomenally subtle, moving performance by Catherine Deneuve and camerawork so coldly precise that the horror seems to bloom naturally from the mundane landscape of the film. Deneuve plays Carole Ledoux, a Belgian beautician who lives in London with her frivolous sister. When the sister and her married boyfriend leave to vacation together in Italy, Carole begins to isolate herself in her apartment in a sexual and violent frenzy. The movie becomes more and more subjective as Polanski plunges into Carole's mind and her psychoses, but what's stunning about Polanski's dissection of Carole's consciousness is the way that the director moves so brusquely from an objective perspective into his protagonist's fears without bluntly heralding the transition. We've already become part of Carole's awareness before we realize it. In this sense, "Repulsion" mirrors both Luis Bunuel's "Belle de Jour" and "Un Chien Andalou" in its precise, logical progression that expresses what is in fact illogical. The movie never feels like it's caught up in dream logic whatsoever--it's all starkly real and flat, until the scene reveals itself to be a subjective or illusory perception. This idea that Polanski can thrust us into the mind of his protagonist before we're ever really aware of the fact that we're in a subjective reality becomes more and more frightening as the film progresses, making us complicit in the camera's perspective. Terrifying, too, is Deneuve's ability to make us both afraid of Carole and for her; because Polanski and Deneuve craft Carole as an aggressor who perceives herself as a victim, "Repulsion" forces us (indeed, right into its final frame) to reevaluate our relation to Carole and renders our position as spectators horrifyingly uneasy. Polanski didn't match this kind of expert craftsmanship until 1974 in "Chinatown"--itself one of the two or three greatest films ever made.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cinematic masterpiece., March 5, 2002

By 

Penguin Egg (London, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Repulsion [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This film charts the slow descent of a French girl, Carol, played by Catherine Deneuve, into madness and horror. The acting in this film is superb, and especially by Deneuve, who brings to her part a delicate balance of vulnerability and strangeness. Right from the start, there is a sense that this beautiful, introverted, seemingly harmless girl, is not 'quite all there.' Give her a slight push, and she will tumble into total madness. As a performance, it is reminiscent of Anthony Perkins in Psycho.

The camera is on Carol all the time, and we see events unfold through her paranoid and schizophrenic mind. We feel her isolation. The mundane is amplified -the ticking of a clock, the sounds of the street outside, the toiling of the bell from the next door nunnery-and made to seem menacing. She is dependant on her sister to such an extent that when her sister goes to Italy on holiday, leaving her alone, she loses her lifeline on which to grasp for human contact. Her isolation is so intense that other people become a threat. Those who are a menace to her, such as her landlord, are treated in the same manner as those who wish her well, such as her boy friend. She can no longer tell the difference. The madness in her mind is made manifest on the screen: Huge cracks appear in the wall symbolising the cracks appearing in her mind. Hands come out of the wall and touch her. Her nightmares torment her with physical contact of men, the one thing that horrifies her, and which are made utterly believable by the vagueness of the camerawork and the silence on the soundtrack-how very much like a real nightmare. The structure of the film is marvellous, as is the cinematography. There is not a shot or a frame wasted as every scene, every shot, builds up to show Carol's loosening grasp of reality.

One of the greatest films of the 20th Century. On every level, this film not only works, but works brilliantly. Roman Polanski is a genius, and this film is his cinematic masterpiece.

100 of 126 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Movie is great - This DVD release is HORRIBLE, March 13, 2006

By 

M. Williamson (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Repulsion (DVD)

Don't buy this. Seriously. Someone is bound to release a better version. This is PAN AND SCAN, cropped at 1:33, and seems to be transferred from some sort of used tape...Like a 3/4 inch VHS. There are visible tape flutters and wrinkles throughout the film. And no it's NOT the print. The film is fine. It's the transfer. cheap, cheap, cheap.

The compression is abysmal (notice the obvious scan lines on the titles) and the sound is piss poor. How is it possible this is the only way this film is available in the US? Disgraceful.