The events of the picture unfold around a chain of mysterious mass murders committed for no reason by the most ordinary people. A man climbed a water tower and opened fire with a sniper rifle on a crowd of passersby; a father of a well-to-do family slaughtered his housemates at a dinner party; a model cop shot up a holiday demonstration of his colleagues, all claiming that God had commanded them to do so…

4k movies reviews
The beginning of the film is non-trivial. And generally unusual. Some man sitting in the center of New York City on a big tank of water with a sniper rifle is shooting at people. There is panic in the streets, it is difficult for the police to get to him, despite the helicopter circling around and around, for some reason no one shoots or tries to stop this godlessness, though. And then we see one brave and reckless policeman climbing a water tower, where an equally reckless criminal is shooting from a tower at the towers of passersby. You’ll have to forgive me for this intentional tautology, but that’s where I think this review should be written, because the beginning of the movie, that’s the best thing about this movie. The end is no good at all. And the film itself, in fact, is one big and long director’s binge. But still, there are some pluses in it.

The first and the main plus is the production of the dialogues. It’s just at the highest level, for 1976! As the films of that time, most of them give away theatricality. The school of acting in America at the time, no, it’s not bad, but it’s different from what we can see today. The actors all seem to be a little dazed, the words sharp and intermittent, as if they constantly forget roles and then suddenly remember and try to catch up, because time is limited for each role. This generally characterizes many, many movies from the ’20s to just the ’70s/early ’80s. So this film is not like that. There’s realism here, there’s seriousness. On the whole, it’s as good as the movies of today. So all the nonsense it contains actually looks pretty good. And you have to admit, the movie keeps you in suspense literally until the last words of the main character, for the last half a minute.

But in the end the intrigue in the film, this mystical-scientific-real story, which is quite confirmed today, from the words of many and many contactors, so called, turns out to be just some kind of mirage, or rather a hallucination of the hero on the theme of Omen, Christ and God, which all together show the viewer one assembled from different pieces of a being who lives only in his mind in the end. Which may not be devoid of meaning to some degree, or may be entirely true.

If the film had been made today, it could have been an impressive spectacle. The idea itself here is original and has not yet been repeated anywhere else as it is shown in this film.

But again, for 1976, it’s not the worst of what was being made back then. And there was a lot being made then, no less than today.

Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (74.1 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Audio
English: Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
French: Dolby Digital 2.0

Subtitles
English SDH, French, Spanish.