Polanski's black humor at odds with sunlit location shooting in the north of England adds to the clever perversity of Cul-de-Sac. Two wounded gangsters (Lionel Stander and Jack McGowran) take refuge in a Northumbrian castle where milquetoast Donald Pleasance abides with his beautiful wife Françoise Dorléac. She is cat-like in her exquisite boredom; he, in his funny way, is as hermetic (and sexually on-the-fence) as Repulsion's Deneuve. The gangsters are alternately the cats and the mice in what was already a battle of nerves before they arrived. "(In Repulsion, Polanski) sets up each scene perfectly, introducing just enough humor or matter-of-fact behavior to get the viewer off guard. It's the same in Cul-de-Sac, which is black comedy with bullets...It's a grand send-up, an unfairly-ignored piece of comic noir that owes a true debt to Lubitsch, the first great Polish filmmaker, but makes some points purely for Polanski as well...Cul-de-Sac could remain his masterwork in this genre." (Barry Gifford)