SHEDDING INK

Don't Look Now

Perhaps best known for what at the time was a very explicit sex scene (Sutherland and Christie were wrongly rumored to have practiced strict realism), Don't Look Now is also renowned for the bloodless horror it creates through psychological means. The film is just plain creepy, with an uneasy sense of terror lurking around every corner of a cold, dank Venice, whose Gothic facades are used to exemplary effect (anyone who's ever spent any time there knows how easy it is to get lost) along with series of peculiar and sinister characters who keep the story off-balance and the whole milieu very unsettling. Unfortunately, Don't Look Now doesn't have much of a narrative, and former cinematographer Roeg (whose previous film Walkabout is considered a masterpiece by many) isn't really trying to tell it anyway. Despite the film's very effective creep factor, the lack of a substantial storyline is nearly its undoing.

- August 22, 2005

DVD Extras

Absolutely nothing; very disappointing for a film with so much history.

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Don't Look Now (1973)

A husband and wife come to believe that their dead daughter is trying to contact them from beyond the grave while in Venice, where the husband is restoring an ancient church.


Directed by Nicolas Roeg


Written by Allan Scott and Chris Bryant; based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier


Starring Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland

110 minutes
Rated R (sexual content, nudity, images of horror)

Movie: B-
Extras: F