A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, investigates the savage blinding of six horses with a metal spike in a stable in Hampshire, England. The atrocity was committed by an unassuming seventeen-year-old stable boy named Alan Strang, the only son of an opinionated but inwardly-timid father and a genteel, religious mother. As Dysart exposes the truths behind the boy's demons, he finds himself face-to-face with his own.
Acting
Burton and Firth's volcanic two-hander
Direction
Lumet makes talk feel like action
Writing
Peter Shaffer's unstageable play, somehow staged
Director
Sidney Lumet
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Peter Firth originated Alan on stage and kept the role for film, rare for Hollywood adaptations. Burton reportedly drank heavily during filming, adding raw desperation to Dysart.
The 1973 play shocked London with its nudity and blasphemy; by 1977, the film arrived as psychoanalysis itself was being questioned. Alan's 'worship' predicted how we'd later pathologize fandom and obsession.
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