The ironic tragedy of DVD and Blu-Ray technology is that far fewer titles are now available to view than ever before. (Even Betamax and VHS had greater diversity!) Unique, hard-to-find art films from small or now-deceased distributors have fallen into a black hole of rights that guarantee many great works from around the world remain unseen and unknown.

Thankfully, fans can now post personal copies online — and in the world of cinephilia, sharing is everything! Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout (1978) is a terrific example of a great “unknown” film from the 1970s that has graciously been resurrected by another unsung angel of cinema.

Based on a Robert Graves short story and featuring an all-star cast that includes Alan Bates, Tim Curry, Susannah York, and a hopelessly young John Hurt, The Shout is a genuinely haunting psychological mystery about physical and spiritual transformation and the horrific ramifications of choice and change.

It’s a simple tale of a mysterious stranger (Bates) who settles (or unsettles) into the lives of a happily married rural couple (Hurt and York). The catch is that Bates has lived with Aboriginal Bushmen for the past 18 years and has mastered the power of magic and sorcery from ageless shamans. Slowly and deliberately he casts a spell on the couple, hoping to “catch” York into his spirit and “release” Hurt into the spirit netherworld. The Shout’s title refers to a powerful death yell (extraordinarily realized by Skolimowski and Bates) that will either kill or possess anything within its range.

Even though mysticism and magic play very important thematic roles, the film’s unusual power comes from Skolimowski’s skilful direction, including his unique flashback/flash-forward structure built around a conversation during a cricket match at a mental hospital. Skolimowski sees the ordinary as something to be very fearful of, and the extraordinary as something common and decidedly uneventful. Scenes cut off abruptly before their logical conclusions, the linear story is juggled and manipulated into unsettling rhythms that somehow makes sense, and morality and reason are reduced to ideas that have no place in this universe. Everywhere, at all times, unease prevails.

Skolimowski’s Slavic lineage is apparent in the way he presents a succession of scenes that individually mean nothing but taken as a whole mean everything. Danger lurks around every corner, no one is safe (even after death), and refuge in a mental asylum seems like the best option when confronted with the unknown. The invisible (and our collective inability to escape the invisible) is what is most terrifying — and it is through the portal of The Shout that all is realized. Watched today, The Shout feels like a movie from another world; it’s still as mysterious and threatening as when it was first released 30 years ago.

Watch The Shout online at www.youtube.com.