Equus [VHS]
A film adaptation of thefamous playby Peter Shaffer,Equusstars  Richard Burton (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,1984) as  Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist who takes on an unusual case: a young  stable boy (Peter Firth,The Hunt for Red October) who, in a frenzy, has blinded  six horses. Their sessions reveal that the boy has a  quasi-religious fetish for horses and he rides them in the dead of night,  experiencing an ecstasy unlike anything Dysart has ever known. Dysart  begins to question: Is the pursuit of normalcy worth the loss of  individual passions?Equusfeatures a lot of hokum--its therapy  scenes are absurd crescendos of revelation and insights. But its central  question has substance, the direction is energetic, and the performances  are powerful; Burton, handsome and haggard, brings a complex self-loathing  to his role. Also featuring Jenny Agutter (Logan's Run) and Joan  Plowright (Enchanted April).--Bret Fetzer