Herostratus

1967

Action / Drama

3
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 61% · 3 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 61% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.7/10 10 501 501

media suicide attempt poet celebrity cult film

Plot summary

When a young poet hires a marketing company to turn his suicide into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture.

Director

Don Levy Photo
Don Levy

Top cast

Helen Mirren Photo
Helen Mirren as Advert Woman
Mona Hammond Photo
Mona Hammond as Sandy
Antony Paul Photo
Antony Paul as Pointer
Brigitte St. John Photo
Brigitte St. John as Dancer
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
1.28 GB
956*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
2 hr 23 min
Seeds 3
2.39 GB
1424*1072
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
2 hr 23 min
Seeds ...

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by gohb 6 / 10

Sadly, dated

In its time this movie must have been a mind-blowing experience. It's still worth seeing for its overall bravura and the performances of Michael Gothard and (in a lesser role) Mona Hammond. But in 2022 it has little we haven't seen many times over. The experimental style, the critique of capitalist exploitation, the existential dread, the failures of history...you know the drill. It's all as true as it ever was, of course, but there are subtler and less pretentious ways of telling the story now. The film is also frighteningly sexist, in a way that was acceptable in the late 1960s but no longer. And dare I say it, the protagonist's emotional story arc was hackneyed even then. I'll admit, though, that the ending was a genuine surprise, the most thoughtful part of the film for me.
Reviewed by Chris-Ketteridge 8 / 10

Herostratus

I remember seeing this rather amazing film at - I think - the ICA or possibly Everyman in 1968. The story concerned a ypung man who decides to commit suicide publicly on television. He was played by Michael Gothard who did also appear in British horror films. I remember the abattoir sequence as it was accompanied on the soundtrack by a track from an album called Indo Jazz Fusions. There was also a scene shot in the large pedestrian prcinct close to St Pauls Cathedral. I just loved it as it was so unusual and different at a time when British films were so boring and dull in the main.Does anybody own the negative and or 35mm copy for it to get onto DVD?
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