Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

MartinHafer This is a relatively low budget sci-fi film set in what should be the distant future. And in this future, diseases have mostly been eliminated. However, it's strange that the entire picture looks like Britain circa 1980! It reminds me a bit of "Gattaca" where the astronauts are shown boarding the ship in black suits--presumably because space suits would have cost a lot! This is not a major problem...but a problem.In this futuristic world, folks are intrigued by any death that occurs to a young person...since they happen so infrequently. And, because of this, a sleazy TV show wants to follow someone as they die...because, as one of the execs says, "death is the new porn"! And, that person they've chosen (Romy Schneider) wants nothing to do with fame or money...she just wants to die in peace. And, she eventually flees to the poor part of town...where she can blend in and be anonymous. So, they use their newest invention to follow her surreptitiously...a camera embedded into a reporter's skull (Harvey Keitel). So, what he sees, the world sees as well.In some ways, the film is very prescient. After all, in this future, reality television is king...just like it is today. It's also a bit like watching "Network". But you can't help but think that for folks to be unfamiliar with death you'd THINK the world would have changed in some way...with newer styles of clothes, cars and buildings. I think this film is worth watching. However, I also think Bernard Tavernier's direction is, at times, rather slow...not bad but slow. And, at the end it becomes glacially slow!! Because of that, as well as the constricted affect of most of the actors (definitely NOT Keitel), the impact of the film is lessened and the film loses steam. Overall, good but not great.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Futuristic movie about this TV reality show that has a person die live on TV from some unknown and incurable disease who's ratings have been going through the roof. It's up to the shows producer Vincent Ferreiman, Harry Dean Stanton,to get new contestants who are about to die on the show for a fee of $500,000.00 to $600,000.00 and let them do the dying for him live on TV! The latest contestant Kathy Graves, Romy Schneider, has been told by her quack doctor who works for the reality show a Dr.Mason, William Russell,that she's got not more then two months to live. Even though Kathy who seems to be full of life with a pair rosy cheeks and California surfer girl complication looks like the very picture of health! Kathy soon gets a bit fed up in becoming a TV star by dying live on the air and goes into hiding in the slummy section of Glasgow Scotland at a church run flop house for the homeless. It's later that reporter Roddy,Harvey Keitel, is hired by the TV studio NTV to track Kathy down with a TV video camera implanted in his head. It's then that Roddy like Gregory Peck in the 1969 film "The Chairman" can record Kathy's every movement up until the moment she dies of her fatal disease which will be broadcast live on NTV!As Roddy gets to know Kathy his opinions about her suddenly change in that she's not only some hot dish, in the cold dreary and drizzling Gasgow surroundings, but he suspects that she's nowhere as sick or dying of an incurable disease as he's been told by his boss TV producer Ferriman. In fact later Roddy's build in his skull video camera malfunctions that also provided him, who lost his sight by being a POW in some unmanned past war, with the ability to see.***SPOILER ALERT*** Joining sides with Kathy, who's now his both eyes and ears, that blind and clueless Ruddy gets to her, with Kathy's directions, first husband Gerald Mortenhoe's, Max Von Sydon, house on the Scottish coast who for the last six years has been writing classical music and getting drunk on 12 to 25 year old bottles of scotch whiskey. It's then that the truth comes out about Kathy's so-called fatal illness which is not only not fatal but had been made up by Ferriman and quack doctor Mason just to have her as a contestant on his top rated TV show "Death Watch"! You can't really blame Kathy in what she did at the end of the movie in seeing that her whole life was turned upside down by being exploited and humiliated by TV producer Ferriman. The best part about all that was that Ferriman had no way of getting Kathy's last moments on earth broadcast on his show since his cameraman Roddy, with his head installed TV video camera out of commission, had no way of recording it.

fwatherton This movie foretold the downside of the "reality TV" craze twenty years before it happened. Wonderful brooding cinematography around greater Glasgow at its most depressed. This is definitely a film which deserves to be in greater circulation and better known than it currently is. Romy Schneider's last film, ironically enough, and an excellent very real performance in a fairly artsy 70s vein. I should note I saw this in Glasgow some years ago, and it was the European cut, not what sounds to be a bowdlerized American version which misses some of the point.

Infofreak I had been wanting to watch Deathwatch for years mainly to see Keitel and Stanton on screen together in something other than The Last Temptation Of Christ. I never managed to find a copy so I was excited when it was shown here on tv a couple of weeks ago. This movie is superb! Intelligent script, beautiful direction and photography, and faultless acting from Romy Schneider and Harvey Keitel in particular. PLEASE try and see this haunting and increasingly more pertinent film, it will resonate with you for a long time.