THE BIRTHDAY PARTY is the screen adaptation of a Harold Pinter play set mainly in the front room of a seaside boarding house somewhere in the UK. It's dark stuff indeed, unsettling in its depiction of weird events getting progressively weirder, and it's a directorial tour-de-force for William Friedkin, later to go on to make some of the most iconic movies of the 1970s. Now, I've never been a big fan of Pinter and this is a typically obtuse and unwieldy piece of work; if you're looking for sense or explanation, you'll be sorely disappointed.
The game cast sees an against-type Robert Shaw playing an on-the-edge guy visited by two sinister strangers, as played by popular actors Patrick Magee and Sydney Tafler. All three performances are excellent and naturalistic. The whole story sees the gruesome twosome driving Shaw out of his mind, so it ends up being a disturbing and disorientating viewing experience. Is it fun? Nope. Entertaining? Not at all. Engrossing? Not particularly. Maybe I'm missing something. I accept that this is more frightening as a horror film than a mundane vampire-on-the-prowl movie, but it's not something I'd choose to watch again.
The game cast sees an against-type Robert Shaw playing an on-the-edge guy visited by two sinister strangers, as played by popular actors Patrick Magee and Sydney Tafler. All three performances are excellent and naturalistic. The whole story sees the gruesome twosome driving Shaw out of his mind, so it ends up being a disturbing and disorientating viewing experience. Is it fun? Nope. Entertaining? Not at all. Engrossing? Not particularly. Maybe I'm missing something. I accept that this is more frightening as a horror film than a mundane vampire-on-the-prowl movie, but it's not something I'd choose to watch again.