REPULSION

One of the cinema's greatest studies of madness with Catherine Deneuve as the girl unravelling over a long, hot week one summer when she's left alone in her London flat. Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" is a classic horror film but it's much more than that. With Deneuve virtually onscreen throughout, this is an unnervingly accurate picture of mental illness and of a psychopathic personality, (it was hailed as the best psycho movie since "Psycho"), as everything within Deneuve's radar conspires against her, driving her to nightmarish scenes in which she is raped, hands reach from the wall to grab her and eventually to murder.

Her victims are anyone unlucky enough to come calling. Polanski wrote the original screenplay with Gerard Brach and Gilbert Taylor did the brilliant black and white photography but this is Deneuve's show. Hers is an extraordinary performance that really signalled the birth of a great actress while the film, Polanski's first in English, also heralded the emergence of one of the finest directors of his generation.