Gruff American gangster Dickey pushes his broken-down car along a causeway through rising seawater while his eccentric companion Albie lies inside, bleeding from a gunshot wound after a botched robbery. Cut off by the unexpected rising tide, they are on the only road to the remote tidal island of Lindisfarne in Northumberland, where, in a dark castle on a hilltop, a deeply neurotic and effeminate middle-aged Englishman named George lives with his French second wife, the young and promiscuous Teresa. Dickey breaks into the castle and telephones his underworld boss, Katelbach, to send someone to collect him and Albie. He then disconnects the phone lines and proceeds to hold the couple hostage while awaiting the arrival of Katelbach the next day.
When Albie dies from his injuries, Dickey forces Teresa and George to dig his grave. They then hold a wake, with Dickey and George getting drunk together on the beach while Teresa swims nude in the ocean. The next morning, a car approaches the castle, but instead of Katelbach, it turns out to be a bunch of George's obnoxious friends who have showed up unannounced. Dickey poses as a servant while Teresa flirts with one of the guests, Cecil. As they all sit down to dinner, the young son of one of the guests finds Cecil's shotgun and starts waving it at the crowd of people, frightening them all. He then fires it, blowing out a stained-glass window in the castle. The gun is wrestled away from the child and placed inside a hallway. George has had enough and demands they all leave, which they do, but Cecil forgets and leaves his unloaded shotgun behind.
Dickey takes off his jacket and hooks the telephone back up, while Teresa furtively takes Dickey's pistol from his coat pocket. Upon calling the hotel where Katelbach was staying, Dickey is informed that he is not going to come, so Dickey prepares to take George's car to drive to the mainland. George refuses to let him, and a fight ensues. Teresa hands Dickey's pistol to George and George shoots him several times; Dickey manages to retrieve his Tommy gun from his broken-down car, hidden in the chicken house. Too weak to fire the gun at George, Dickey collapses to the ground, laughing, and discharges the weapon at George's car, which explodes in flames.
Fearful of being implicated in the killing (and of reprisals from Katelbach's other henchmen), Teresa frantically insists that she and George abandon the castle. George is in a state of shock and seems unable to move. Suddenly, they see a car approaching. Not knowing that Dickey's boss had abandoned him, they assume it is Katelbach. Desperate and afraid, Teresa runs and hides in a cupboard. The car arrives, and it turns out to be Cecil, who has returned to retrieve his shotgun. Cecil offers to take them to the police, but George refuses to go. He watches as Cecil and Teresa drive off into the night. George goes on a rampage, destroying his art studio, then running out of the castle and down to the beach. As day breaks, he sits down on a rock in a fetal position and weeps hysterically, shouting out the name of his first wife, as the early morning tide rises around him.
Like Polanski's previous film Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-sac explores themes of horror, frustrated sexuality and alienation, which have become characteristic of many of the director's films, especially Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976).
The film was shot on location in 1965 on the island of Lindisfarne (also known as Holy Island) off the coast of Northumberland, England. Lindisfarne Castle, which served as the home in the film, is now a National Trust property and can be toured by the public; despite the passage of time, the building and its surroundings are largely unchanged.
Reception
Critical response
On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Cul-de-sac holds an approval rating of 83% based on 24 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10.[8]
