Review for Repulsion: Digitally Remastered Edition

Roman Polanski has lived a life punctuated by tragic events; his mother died in Auschwitz when he was a child, he grew up in a Krakow Ghetto during the Second World War, and in 1969, Charlie Manson and his 'family' brutally murdered his pregnant wife Sharon Tate. On top of this, in 1977, the American authorities arrested him for a sexual encounter with a 13-year-old girl. Not to undermine these awful events, one thing still grates at the mind: when a filmmaker's private life outshines his professional career it is a sin against cinema, after all Roman Polanski is a maker of movies.

It all started in 1962 when a twenty-nine-year-old Polanski directed Knife in the Water. What came next was a macabre tale of isolation: Cul-de-Sac (1965). It was with Repulsion (1965) that Polanski made a tense psychological thriller in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). With The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), Polanski produced a perfect parody of the vampire film. His first American movie catapulted him to into fame. Rosemary's Baby (1968) is a claustrophobic and ill-omened masterpiece. Polanski also made: Macbeth (1971), Chinatown (1974), The Tenant (1976), Tess (1979), Pirates (1986), Frantic (1988), Bitter Moon (1992), Death and the Maiden (1994), The Ninth Gate (1999), The Pianist (2002), Oliver Twist (2005) and The Ghost Writer (2010).

Thanks to the DVD distributor Odeon Entertainment, a new digitally remastered edition of Repulsion is due for release in the UK.


Carol, a young French girl living in London, is repelled, yet fascinated by men. Her radiant beauty attracts the opposite sex, but she shrinks from their advances. She spends her days in an intensely feminine atmosphere: working in a beauty salon, and clinging to her sister Helen for love. Things start to go astray when Helen goes away with her married boyfriend. As Carol imprisons herself in her sinister, shadowy flat, men begin to invade her dreams, night and day, mixing her terror, with delight as bizarre hallucinations take hold of her mind. Racked and depraved through her delirium, she has only one instinct towards the men who invade her life…


Disc: This outstanding release has a brand new widescreen 1.85:1 HD transfer with a restored original mono soundtrack. The black and white contrast is perfect and the psychological sounds of ticking clocks and buzzing flies will reach out of your speakers with a razor-sharp ricochet. The only problem is there are no subtitles for the hard of hearing. We can only hope this is remedied when Odeon Entertainment release Polanski's Knife in the Water and Cul-de-Sac later in the year.


Special Features: The 47-minute interview with Clive James from 1984 is a great feature, placing Polanski's career into a personal context. It is a sincere, shrewd and straightforward discussion. The 8-minute interview with the replacement cinematographer Stanley Long contains some interesting antidotes. The exploitation trailer ('fact and fantasy are fused in a frantic fury of repulsion') undermines the film (in a jovial kind of way) while the stills gallery contains some noteworthy promotional material. The commentary track by Polanski and Deneuve is delightful. How often do you get to listen to a master talk about his movies? It is impossible for Polanski not to pick holes; after all, he is a perpetual perfectionist.


Verdict: Like Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Polanski's Repulsion is a masterpiece of the macabre. It screams with spine-chilling tension and distorted delusions - do not watch it alone with the lights turned off, it will give you nightmares! Carol (Catharine Deneuve) is a psychologically unbalanced woman who experiences delusions of rape. As these hallucinations invade her life, we share the same sting of wild terror. Taps drip, phones ring, clocks tick, dogs bark, flies buzz in a never-ending cycle of fear. The rotting potatoes and decomposing rabbit carcass to symbolise Carol's deteriorating state of mind is a stroke of genius. For £11.99 (from a certain DVD supplier) if you do not already own Repulsion go out and buy it. Next to Rome, Open City (released by Arrow Films in March) this is one of my contenders for 'release of the year'.

If you are interested in seeing what Polanski did before his feature debut Knife in the Water, you can watch his short films here. They cement the distinctive style of his future films.