Brilliant and touching

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Blistering performances.

I watched this movie and had no feelings. There is nothing special. It is not really funny. It is not really scary. It is too clean and simple. At the end of the movie I had the feeling that I wasted my time. There was nothing really entertaining - not even the black cat at the end that survived the killer.

I marveled at this film because it pulls off a quite complete double reverse in the traditional methodology of a Greek drama. There are some great soliloquies and the main characters carry on a bit like folks in a No Exit play by Sartre. Human nature is exposed with the ruthlessness of an artist that likes to see his characters bare to the bone with skin peeled back for added color. Metaphorically of course, not like the Passion of Christ where the main character ends up looking like hamburger. The Penthouse is psychological destruction in the form of Virgina Wolf. Complete and devastating but not in a cheap trash psycho thriller way. I totally related to this modern day "Greek Drama".

If Peter Collinson's intention when writing and directing this film was to present the most bizarre characters imaginable, then he has succeeded admirably. If, however, he was trying to make a serious thriller with genuine excitement, realistic situations and a meaningful underlying moral subtext, then he has failed utterly. The story has married estate agent Bruce Victor (Terence Morgan) and his secret lover Barbara Willason (Suzy Kendall) shacking up in a penthouse suite in an unfinished tower block. A pair of knife-wielding hoodlums turn up, posing as meter readers, and proceed to hold the adulterous lovers at knifepoint. Bruce is tied up and forced to look on as the lecherous intruders get Barbara well-and-truly drunk and then degrade her for their entertainment. The film is based on a stage play, and it comes across - unsurprisingly - as a very stagy, talky affair. This is not necessarily a weakness (films like Sleuth, made five years after this, proved that stagy and talky films can actually be very good). However, The Penthouse is not only stagy and talky - it is very unpleasant too. The characters are awfully hard to like and their predicaments are extremely difficult to care about. Director Collinson frequently demonstrated a fascination with violence and aggression during his career, and this is a perfect vehicle for his favourite two themes. Collinson also had a fondness for stylistic flourishes in his movies, but here his outlandish camera angles and visual/aural tricks seem merely self-indulgent and meaningless. For the first twenty minutes, the film's surreal style is oddly enjoyable, but it pretty soon becomes wearisome. On the whole, The Penthouse is a failure and the fact that it is rarely-seen ought to be viewed as a blessing in disguise!

This is the only movie I regret not having got up and walked out! Although it is some 30 years since I had the misfortune of seeing this film in the cinema, I have never forgotten what a thoroughly unpleasant experience it was -- with unlikeable characters and stupidly unbelievable circumstances. I can forgive all sorts of things in a film if there is at least one redeeming quality, but you can look in vain for it here. I am amazed that its rating is as high as it is since I would have given it a minus rating were this possible.