“Pinter's premise in this prototype of the ‘theater of the absurd' is that, ‘though we prefer to subscribe to the view that there's a shared common ground, a known ground' for our communal interpretations of the world, this ground is ‘more like quicksand.' The dialogue of The Birthday Party, oscillating between banal, ridiculous and vicious, undermines any prospects for finding a ‘meaning' in the film, and throws the audience back onto its struggle to impose sense onto art and onto life in general. In the hands of the master of the horror genre, William Friedkin, this study in ambiguity becomes a menacing and terrifying experience. Robert Shaw as Stanley, the drop-out from society, brilliantly conveys a sense of the disunity at the core of the self as he is reduced to chaos at his unwanted birthday party. But the true subject of this film is the form of cinema itself--its structure, pacing, intensity, imagery, interactions, development--detached from any ‘theme' or coherent narrative ‘content.' In place of the intellectual comfort of a plot or a moral, the viewer is left with polymorphous emotions and intimations of possible meaning that refuse to be channelized into a settled structure.” Charles Guignon