Crossley (Alan Bates), a mysterious travelling man invades the lives of a young couple, Rachel and Anthony Fielding (Susannah York and John Hurt). Anthony is a composer, who experiments with sound effects and various electronic sources in his secluded Devon studio. The couple provides hospitality to Crossley but his intentions are gradually revealed as more sinister. He claims he has learned from an Aboriginalshaman how to produce a "terror shout" that can kill anyone who hears it unprotected.
Producer Jeremy Thomas had initially wanted to get Nicolas Roeg to direct the film but Roeg turned down the offer due to being unavailable.[2] Eventually Thomas hired Jerzy Skolimowski due to Skolimowski's fluency in English as well as having been impressed with his prior work on Deep End.[2]
Because I had a great director, and a quality piece of literature, I managed to get a wonderful cast such as John Hurt and Alan Bates. Skolimowski had a sense of shooting style then, this was the second director who[m] I had worked closely with, and it was fascinating watching Skolimowski work. He came from a Polish tradition, the Wajda Film School, he had a different background to other directors I had been working with in the cutting rooms or elsewhere. And it made the film much more creative to me. I saw it more as an artistic endeavour by him.
The film went to Cannes and won the Grand Prix de Jury. We were incredibly lucky and the film was appreciated by the jury. It was a very small festival then, nothing like the Cannes Film Festival of today, it was a small event in a cinema of 800 people or so.[3]
^Chapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press p 357. Income is distributor's receipts, combined domestic and international, as at 31 Dec 1978.
^ abcChilds, Mike; Jones, Alan (1978). "The Shout". Cinefantastique. Fourth Castle Micromedia. Retrieved 4 February 2024.
