Fri 29 September 2017

As part of this year’s Scalarama festivities, Social Cinema presented Symptoms, one of the underseen masterpieces of British Gothic cinema.

The film is set in an isolated country house where a neurotic woman (Angela Pleasance) invites her girlfriend to stay with her. Previously only available to see through tatty bootlegs, this BFI restoration brings out the film’s rich, dark tones and sense of creeping dread as the layers of reality slowly peel away.

Pleasance is truly mesmerising in the central role and Symptoms was justly chosen as Britain’s official entry to the Cannes Festival of 1974