HYSTERIA

The film opens, literally, with a bang. An esteemed psychiatrist flees a private psychiatric clinic one evening, chased by cackling patients. He jumps into his car and races out onto the nearby country roads. He loses control behind the wheel and ends up dying in an explosive crash.

His former colleague, well-meaning shrink Samuel (Michael Maloney) reads about the death in his morning newspaper. He works for a clinic that offers free treatment for mental patients, but due to budgetary restrictions he's facing the axe. Because he's conscientious, he's more concerned about the fate of his patient Veronica (Emmanuelle Vaugier), a precocious schizophrenic given to stripping off and thrashing wildly in the sea.

Despairing at the prospect of not being able to help Veronica further, Samuel drives her to a remote private clinic that he believes will prove more helpful. It's run by his old mentor Langston (Patrick McGoohan), "a renegade psychiatrist forming a mysterious cult, sequestered away in a mountain retreat" we're told. Or, as Langston himself puts it, "the last, good old-fashioned madhouse".

"If two violently opposed minds in one body can be reunited, is it not possible to do the same thing with conflicting personalities in separate bodies or even ... in a group?" quizzes Langston as he takes his old protégé for a guided tour of his clinic. While being introduced to disturbed inmates such as wheelchair-bound Myrna (Amanda Plummer) and a banshee-eyed nymphomaniac (Lynn Snelling), Samuel discovers that Langston's methods are to encourage collective consciousness between his subjects and monitor their thought patterns with discreetly inserted microchips.

Effectively, his patients become capable of tapping in to each other's thoughts - which leads to interesting set-pieces such as a group orgy, more nakedness from the lovely Veronica, and ... mass hysteria! How long until Samuel himself succumbs to this new environment...?

It's perhaps not in the interests of good literacy to compare a film to an expletive. But, HYSTERIA ... well, it really is as mad as fuck.

The plot is simple and told in a refreshingly forthright manner; details are spelt out in the opening minutes, thus enabling the pace to get cracking from an early juncture. It never lets up from thereon in. The melodramatic music is perfectly pitched to match the fervour with which all concerned deliver their performances. I mean, these people perspire, they bulge their eyes out of their skulls, they shout a lot ... everyone, it would seem, is insane here.

Choppy editing and brisk dialogue further move the action along, creating a sense of near-hysteria (appropriately) which lends the film a superficial similarity to the hyper cinema of Andrej Zulawski.

McGoohan is fun in this instance. He always was, wasn't he? Whether fronting TV's iconic "The Prisoner", playing the bad guy in vintage episodes of "Columbo" or lording over affairs in David Cronenberg's SCANNERS, the late Brit was always good value for money. Maloney is intense and silly, but enjoyably so; future SAW star Vaugier is sexy but dim whenever she's required to speak more than one sentence at a time. Plummer's much better and convincingly demented in her pivotal role.

HYSTERIA defies convention by refusing to fall into a specific genre. There are darker moments that tip it occasionally into horror territory. There's a lot of humour, intentional as well as accidental. And there's a definite sci-fi aspect, albeit low-key, to be had here. Not to mention elements of the thriller genre and even, in one absurd scene, a musical number ad libbed for the confused Samuel's benefit.

Handsomely shot, tightly told and pretty stylish to boot, HYSTERIA definitely has the advantage of being made by a skilled director - Rene Daalder, the guy who first made waves with the above average MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH.

But it's still fucking bonkers, no matter how well it's been pulled together in post-production. That's not necessarily a criticism - the craziness not only matches the film's plot but ensures most scenes are riveting in their energy and unpredictability.

There certainly aren't many (any?) films to compare this messy, fun and unrelenting film to.

Cult Epics must be commended for bringing this intriguing little beast to blu-ray. Their transfer, from the original negative, is fully uncut and presents the film in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The 16x9 picture benefits from full 1080 progressive resolution and is housed as a decently sized MPEG4-AVC file on this region-free disc.

The print isn't too clean. There are blemishes from the start, such as specks and scratches. But, if you can look past them, this is a nicely filmic and satisfyingly textured proposition. Colours are a tad muted but that seems to be in keeping with Daalder's stylistic choices. Blacks are strong, depth is palpable, detail is nicely conveyed. There is a softness to events which is uncommon for a film as fresh as 1997. It's not a textbook HD performance but, given the scarcity of this film prior to this release, it seems churlish to moan about a lack of absolute perfection.

English audio gets treated to a 5.1 HD Master Audio surround track. There is some decent separation going on, come the musical moments - but by and large the very nature of this film doesn't test the technology to any great degree.

The disc opens to an animated main menu page. Newcomers are bound to be struck by the montage of images on screen, depicting madness, nudity and sex in equal portions.

From there, pop-up menus include a scene selection menu allowing access to HYSTERIA via 12 chapters.

Extras begin with a good 29-minute Making Of featurette where we find Daalder and Plummer in conversation with each other. It's a great, laidback chat that the pair share and between them they speak of its operatic nature, the themes of identity and Orwellian dystopia running through it, and their individual backgrounds leading up to how they chose their profession. Presented in 16x9 HD, this is a fascinating addition to the disc - even if it's perhaps padded out with too many clips from the main feature.

The film's original trailer runs just shy of 3 minutes in length and successfully comes across as demented. Tits and wide-eyed melodrama do their best to sell this to the uninitiated.

HYSTERIA is an odd film. Compelling, unique, shambolic, hallucinatory: I don't know, it's all of these and then some. Whether it's 'good' is another matter, but it's certainly never boring.

Cult Epics have furnished this mad movie with a very credible blu-ray release.

Also available on DVD.

Review by Stuart Willis