Following last year's release of his earlier work, this is an artfully presented set of Polanski's commercial breakthrough movies—Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Tenant. Given a ready-made yarn with a thread, he could concentrate on brewing his own unique, dislocating atmospheres and obsessions, and did so brilliantly.
In the dismal history of Rolling Stones '60s catalogue reissues, this is a first of sorts. This time, ABKCO... Universal... whoever... haven't got it completely wrong. Collected here, in their original European/US sleeves, are the thrashing, screaming baby Stones' first dozen 45s, including the three classic British EPs. Welcome as this is and despite the pretty sleeves, the '60s singles are far more conveniently housed in the long available Singles Collection.
Filmed in '76, the conclusion to Roman Polanski's evil-rooms trilogy returns to the urban paranoia and fracturing psyches of Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby. Polanski—who'd just taken up residence in France—himself plays the vulnerable, mouse-like new occupant of a forlorn Paris apartment, whose creeping schizophrenia grows as he feels himself falling under the influence of the previous resident, a female suicide victim. A perverse slow-dazzle.
