Equus | 
 enlarge | Director: Sidney Lumet
Actors: Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Colin Blakely, Joan Plowright, Harry Andrews
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
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Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 10093
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 137
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 5.1 x 0.6
MPN: D1004342D
ISBN: 0792854985
UPC: 027616884244
EAN: 9780792854982
ASIN: B00007KQA2
Theatrical Release Date: 1977
Release Date: March 4, 2003
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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
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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
 A WORK OF ART June 19, 2008
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 characters who represent - in many aspects - the torments of modern society. Brilliantly interpreted by Burton & Firth, this is a theatrical adaptation not to be missed. Due to the brutal explicity of some sequences, it sounds understandable that a good number of viewers may feel shocked and tend to underrate the whole piece. I think this play - although written in 1973 - has a lot to say about us, about modern society, sexuality, religion and existential values. Give it a try and reflect upon it once you see it.
 Disturbing and terrifying April 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
"I Am Yours and You Are Mine." March 21, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
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, and suitable mental health is sought.
Richard Burton's character, Dr. Martin Dysart, doesn't just try to help his severely neutrotic and psychotic patients, he often leads them in a dysfunctional romp through the nethermind and disregards ordinary boundaries.
"Why me?" Dysart asks the referring professional when requested to involve himself with this particularly difficult, horse-maiming patient. She's already told him once, but he wants to hear it again, maybe in a new way. The answer is naturally because he's the best. He doesn't argue.
And so Dr. Dysart sluthes his way through the mind of young Alan, through his broken Stepford mum and embarrassed, muttering dad, and through the evidences of a life that not only has taken the road less travelled, but has gone crashing through the underbrush of a dark, sharp wood where no one else goes.
When Alan awakens from a nightmare to see Dysart standing above him, he wasn't the only one who wondered, WTF? In fact, Dysart's apparent conversion from general shrink to field forensic psychiatrist who just happens to be everywhere he needs to be was just a little odd. His obsession with the Strang case, however, became understandable.
Firth was excellent in this, the best part actually. I was afraid after the introduction that Burton's Dysart would be overwrought, but he settled into it well enough with occasional relapses into overacting. The complex repressed sexual themes were interesting and this film will probably appeal to fans of Burton and people interested in well-written tales of the mentally ill. I also appreciated the connection between Dysart's persistent and disturbing dreams in light of the work he did. I enjoyed this film, although it was a bit ponderous at times with Dysart's later various prolonged existential crises.
 an example of what was wrong with the 1970s March 14, 2008
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
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 insane view of the world.
Then we get to the typical 1970s crisis of conscience. We are essentially told through Burton's character that trying to cure an insane person who multilates horses is wrong. That in trying to cure him, his "uniqueness" as an individual (his insane view of the world) will be destroyed. All that was missing at the end was a call for a government program to maintain, protect and develop this unique boy along with his community of horses.
The film is a badly written mix of shock horror and the idiotic social ideas of the 1970s. I watched it because of all the critical acclaim that was showered on it. Its difficult to comprehend how this was nominated for acadamy awards, but it was. Its only value is in showing how artistically messed up that era was.
Once it gets rolling... pow! July 10, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Equus (Sidney Lumet, 1977)
I have to admit that at first, I was kind of unimpressed with Equus. Richard Burton narrating the first dream bit... it just didn't work. It seemed overdone, the symbolism was way too naked, this just wasn't Peter Shaffer. No subtlety. No tact. For that matter, come to think of it, this wasn't Sidney Lumet, either. It was about ten minutes later, during the bit where Alan Strang (Peter Firth) is relaying his first experience with a horse, that the movie really fell into place. I think that has a great deal to do with Firth and not nearly as much to do with Burton, though he does grow into his role as the movie progresses. Firth, on the other hand, gives a powerful, terrifying performance from the get-go here. His mentally disturbed Strang is a perfect fit for Shaffer's celebrated meditation on the potential damage of the mixture of sex and religion. And while Equus, thanks in no small part to its slow, unworkable beginning, never quite reaches the heights of Dog Day Afternoon or Twelve Angry Men, but it remains a powerful and disturbing film, once it takes off. And take off it does.
The cast entire do a very good job here. Joan Plowright is almost as distressing as Firth, despite being supposedly sane, while Colin Blakely plays her blustering, ineffectual husband excellently. Jenny Agutter (once again fulfilling her role as, in the immortal words of Jeff Murdock, "an advertisement for nudity!") makes a perfect love interest for Strang, teasing and coy, but willing to take the upper hand when necessary, while Burton, once he warms to the role, makes a fine psychotherapist. But what sets this apart is Lumet's interesting decision to keep Alan Strang at the same age in his flashbacks, rather than taking the more conventional choice of casting six-year-old and twelve-year-old actors to play earlier versions of the sixteen-year-old Strang; the scene I mentioned earlier, where Strang recounts his first experience with a horse, is just monumental. While it probably would be had they cast another character, by keeping Firth, the scene also gains an unsettling quality of imbalance; you know he's supposed to be six, but there he is, still his adult self. Amazing stuff.
The subject matter, in today's political climate in both Britain and America, is probably deeply unpopular; if anything, that's even more a reason to get your hands on a copy of this at your earliest convenience and indulge yourself. ****
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