Cul-de-sac

Cul-de-sac (1966) is a British crime comedy by Roman Polanski you can watch online on iFILM. Two wounded gangsters, Dicky and Albie, go to ground in a remote castle on Lindisfarne — a tidal island off the Northumberland coast that gets cut off from the mainland twice a day when the sea comes in.

The castle belongs to the jittery, hen-pecked George, played by Donald Pleasence, who shares it with his young and thoroughly unfaithful wife Teresa, played by Françoise Dorléac. Dicky, played by Lionel Stander, holds the couple at gunpoint while waiting for a mysterious boss named Katelbach to arrive and get them off the island. Katelbach does not come. The tide keeps rising and falling. What starts as a hostage situation slowly warps into something closer to a bitter farce — George unravelling, Teresa bored and scheming, Dicky growing increasingly furious.

Shot between Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, the film won the Golden Bear at the 1966 Berlin International Film Festival. Jacqueline Bisset appears in one of her earliest screen roles. Stream Cul-de-sac (1966) online on iFILM.