Description: This Oscar®-nominated* adaptation of Peter Shaffer's Tony Award-winning play erupts on the screen with the same power and passion as the stage original. Richard Burton gives "one of his best performances ever" (Boxoffice) in this "elegant and provocative" (Newsweek) tale ofmyth and madness. What would drive Alan Strang (Peter Firth), a troubled adolescent stable boy, to blind six horses with a metal spike? Psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Burton) investigates these unspeakable acts and delves deep into Alan's psyche, confronting the mysteries of sexual passion and madnessas well as the dark demons buried within his own soul. *1977: Actor (Burton),Supporting Actor (Firth), Adapted Screenplay
Amazon.com: A film adaptation of the famous play by Peter Shaffer, Equus stars Richard Burton (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1984) as Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist who takes on an unusual case: a young stable boy (Peter Firth, The Hunt for Red October) who, in a frenzy, has blinded six horses. Their sessions reveal that the boy has a quasi-religious fetish for horses and he rides them in the dead of night, experiencing an ecstasy unlike anything Dysart has ever known. Dysart begins to question: Is the pursuit of normalcy worth the loss of individual passions? Equus features a lot of hokum--its therapy scenes are absurd crescendos of revelation and insights. But its central question has substance, the direction is energetic, and the performances are powerful; Burton, handsome and haggard, brings a complex self-loathing to his role. Also featuring Jenny Agutter (Logan's Run) and Joan Plowright (Enchanted April). --Bret Fetzer
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - movie equus review
A well-directed arthouse style movie. It is disturbing but necessarily so...brilliant performance by Richard Burton!
Rating: - A WORK OF ART
EQUUS is one of those plays you never forget after you see it. Although the theatrical version is matchless, this film adaptation succeeds in bringing into the widescreen the painful drama of these two ... Read More
Rating: - Disturbing and terrifying
This movie lacks all imagination that could have been put into the production. There is just a lot of male nudity and gore, and eerie sexual tension between the boy and his horse.
Rating: - "I Am Yours and You Are Mine."
A young man (Alan Strang played by Peter Firth) blinds a half dozen horses with a spike and sings as his response to queries when hauled in front of the magistrate. He must be nuts, the thinking goes, ... Read More
Rating: - an example of what was wrong with the 1970s
This film encapsulatates most of what was wrong with the culture of the 1970s. An insane boy mutiliates a bunch of animals. Burton (a psychiatrist) sets out to "help" the boy (somehow) by probing the boy's ... Read More
- movie equus review
- Disturbing and terrifying
- an example of what was wrong with the 1970s