"Modern noir-horror at its best...Repulsion is just simply more horrifying than anything Hitchcock every made...Polanski's entire life seems to have been nothing but one strange interlude after another, so it's no mystery as to the genesis of his macabre pair, Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac. Not only are they sister films, but each stars one of a pair of real-life sisters, Deneuve and Dorléac..." (Barry Gifford) Polanski's first English-language film is a study of madness born of repression, born of alienation. London manicurist Catherine Deneuve's doll-like features effectively mask a morbid fascination with men. One weekend, left alone in the apartment she shares with her older sister, her world of dark fantasy turns hallucinatorily real. By Sunday night, the apartment is strewn with bloody bodies. Polanski laces pity with terror, terror with humor, much of it at our expense. "What Polanski counts on," writes Andrew Sarris, "is the fact that we all fear society's invasion of our subconscious, and that we will somehow identify with the most perverted privacy rather than blow the whistle for the authorities."