Roman Polanski Collection (Knife in the Water / Repulsion / Cul-de-Sac) (3 Disc Set)

Knife In The Water
Roman Polanski’s first feature is a brilliant psychological thriller that many critics still consider among his greatest work. The story is simple, yet the implications of its characters’ emotions and actions are profound. When a young hitchhiker joins a couple on a weekend yacht trip, psychological warfare breaks out as the two men compete for the woman’s attention. A storm forces the small crew below deck, and tension builds to a violent climax. With stinging dialogue and a mercilessly probing camera, Polanski creates a disturbing study of fear, humiliation, sexuality, and aggression.

Repulsion
Roman Polanski's seminal psychological horror movie. Carol (Catherine Deneuve), a young girl living in Sixties' London, is repelled, yet fascinated, by men. Her radiant beauty attracts the opposite sex, but she shrinks from their advances. Her days are spent in an intensely feminine atmosphere: working in a beauty salon, and clinging to her sister Helen for love. But as she incarcerates 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. The walls start to crack, literally, before the eyes. Finally, racked and depraved through her delirium, she is left with only one instinct towards the men who invade her life - that of a killer...

Cul-de-Sac
Immediately after the box–office success of his macabre masterpiece Repulsion, Roman Polanski returned to a theme he had explored in his early classic Knife in the Water – the destruction of a fragile relationship by a maligned outsider. The resulting film was Cul-De-Sac. Donald Pleasence and Francoise Dorleac play a mismatched couple – he effeminate and petulant, she sensual and enigmatic – who share a bizarre sexual relationship, living in a remote castle. Their very isolation from the world prevents their eccentric partnership from foundering. Only an outsider can disrupt their make–believe lifestyle.

That disruption arrives in the belligerent form of Richard and Albert, two oddball gangsters straight out of a 1940's film noir, wounded, desperate and on the run. They demand shelter, and as Richard waits for instructions from his gangland boss, he slips into a dangerous round of game–playing with his unwilling hosts. But it seems that Richard is not always to have the upper hand. With it's larger than life performances, wicked black humour and superb use of striking outdoor location – the film was shot on Holy Island in Northumberland – Polanski created an exceptional film.