Harold Pinter's first full-length stage play, The Birthday Party, was 10 years old when William (The Exorcist) Friedkin directed it for the cinema in 1968. In some ways, it was already a period-piece by then, Pinter's use of a combination of silence and excruciatingly banal dialogue to generate precipitous dramatic tension having been absorbed by contemporary theatrical mythology long since. Are the sinister McCann and Goldberg real? Or do they exist only in Stan's head? At the end, we're none the wiser. But Friedkin's claustrophobic direction, with the tormented Stan as its focus, has taken us through a master study in understated horror. The handheld camera, so fashionable in modern television drama, has rarely been used to such hypnotic effect. As Stan, Robert Shaw is mesmerising in his descent to animal-like submission. Sydney Tafler's Goldberg and Patrick Magee 's McCann make a truly terrifying double act. Cult television fans will appreciate an early appearance by Helen Fraser (these days best known as a sadistic prison warder in Bad Girls) as the easily seduced neighbour. Now that Friedkin's film is itself over 30 years old, the scent of mothballs ought to be even more pronounced. Its decrepit seaside boarding house setting and the drabness of the peripheral players are redolent of the distinctly non-swinging side of the 1960s in which it was made. But more than anything, The Birthday Party is about unspecified terror and the sort of inner demons that lurk in all of us.
On the DVD: Excellent sound quality helps to make this a compellingly theatrical experience: never has the noise of tearing newspaper been more menacing. And the picture quality retains the grainy authenticity of the original print. Special features include brief backgrounders on the history of the play and Friedkin's career, and a slide show of still s from key scenes. --Piers Ford