Deep End

To Godfrey Hamilton: Hi. Congratulations for your comment/review. Are you Peter Bradshaw in disguise, if I may ask? Just a word in defense of Dave Calhoun: I think Dave was effective at encouraging the average TO reader to go and watch the film. If I read your review first I might rather go to watch Bridesmaids. :) All the best, Francesca

Name the deed for what it is, dave Calhoun: Mike doesn't "fight off the advances" of Diana Dors's character; she is attempting to rape him. And Mike's method of dealing with the rival, older boyfriend of Susan is to charge him (to the nearest available cop) with paedophilic harassment. Meanwhile a friendly hooker with a broken leg has primed Mike for this by warning him to be careful of "the queers". And back at the baths, one of the instructors is drooling over underage schoolgirls. And what TO's Calhoun sees as "bizarrely beautiful" is - SPOILER AHEAD - the killing of Susan in a manner both offhand and brutal. This is a film dealing with the inherent ugliness - the 'deep end' - of sexual awakening, sexual disgust, sex-as-transaction and as such it seems peculiar to describe the dream-like necrophilia of the final images as simply a "high point". In a sense, this is a critic-proof movie; those of us who saw it on first run in 1971 will attest to its strange, compelling, haunting power. But Calhoun's review makes it seem like a coming-of-age story about a twitchy pubescent lad. It isn't - its purposes and methods are darker, uglier and , well, deeper than a casual reader of TO's review might be persuaded to expect.

I would recommend Deep End to everybody, is much more enjoyable than The Shout, another film by Skolimovsky. Now I know where I saw John Moulder Brown (the actor who plays the boy) before! He was Prince Otto in Ludwig by Luchino Visconti.

The film really gets under your skin, and it's very artistic and creepy. Worth checking out, despite it's unavailablity. If you get a chance to see it, Do!