IMAGES

GB / US
1972
1hr 41mins
Dir: Robert Altman
Starring: Susannah York and Marcel Bozzuffi

An unstable children’s author finds herself engulfed in apparitions and hallucinations while staying at her remote holiday home

This excellent psychological horror features a short scene on the Irish network where Susannah York drives Rene Auberjonois to a train station so that he can go back to London. This used Killiney station, on what is now part of Dublin’s DART network but at the time was pure CIE, and a fake ‘DIE’ sign has been installed as a prop! The sequence opens with a shot of a short, locomotive hauled train in the platform, and ends with 2600 Class DMU No.2654 leaving the station heading southbound towards Bray. There is then one later shot of a Class 2600 DMU arriving as the loco-hauled train is departing. As an interesting aside, Susannah York was writing a children’s book called In Search of Unicorns at the time of filming. After finding this out, Robert Altman decided to make York’s character in the film a writer of childrens’ tales and asked York to quote parts of the fairy-tale in the movie. York thus received a writing credit for the film as the text was from her book – “In search of Unicorns” a book for children.

A loco-hauled passenger train stands in Killiney station at dusk. The steam at the far end is not emanating from a steam locomotive, but instead from a steam heat generator van.
This lovely shot shows the station’s proximity to Killiney Bay. It is just a two minute walk to the beach.
This is the main station building at Killiney, looking down Station Road towards Killiney Hill. Note the rather dubious DIE corporate sign!
CIE 2600 Class DMU No.2654 leaves Killiney as night sets in
A final, overall shot of the station shows another 2600 Class DMU arriving. It is probably the same as that shown in the above shot.