The Shout

This entrancing psychosexual puzzle thriller from Jerzy Skolimowski features a memorably unsettling performance from Alan Bates as an enigmatic drifter who insinuates himself into the lives of an experimental electronic composer (John Hurt) and his wife (Susannah York) living in a remote coastal cottage. Claiming to possess knowledge of Aboriginal magic—in particular a scream that can kill anyone who hears it—the mysterious stranger draws the couple into a vortex of desire and control, with the tension immeasurably enhanced by an innovative soundtrack by Michael Rutherford and Tony Banks of the pioneering prog-rock group Genesis.