At the time of its 1975 release, The Day of the Locust was Paramount’s most expensive motion picture to date. While it didn’t exactly light up the box office, time has been kind to John Schlesinger’s Tinseltown tragedy.
Drawing from Nathanael West’s final novel—published in 1939, only a year before the author’s untimely death in a car crash—the story centers on Tod Hackett (William Atherton, Die Hard), a Yale man newly arrived in Hollywood, enthralled by Expressionist art and employed as a production illustrator in a film studio art department. In West’s novel, Tod also serves as the narrator, a role absent in Waldo Salt’s screenplay adaptation.
Tod takes up residence at the San Bernardino Arms, a low-rent bungalow court filled with other showbiz strivers, including aspiring starlet Faye Greener (Karen Black, Five Easy Pieces), her vaudevillian-turned-peddler father Harry (Oscar nominee Burgess Meredith), bit player Abe (Billy Barty), and the unsettling child actor Adore (an unrecognizable Jackie Earle Haley in blond curls).
After Tod buys a convertible, he becomes Faye’s de facto chauffeur—a role he’s eager to fill, as he’s clearly smitten with the narcissistic, chocolate-obsessed actress. He’s content at first, as they both work on the same Napoleonic epic, but his contentment wanes when he sees that Faye is equally flirtatious with every man she meets. Among them are movie cowboy Earle (Bo Hopkins), Mexican cockfighter Miguel (Pepe Serna), and lonely accountant Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland with slicked-down hair)—no relation to the animated character who would come years later. Homer meets Faye when her father collapses in his living room, and the two become entangled.
With Harry’s health in decline and no money coming in, Faye takes work as a call girl. When Homer begins courting her, she moves in with him—much to Tod’s dismay—and begins spending lavishly on gowns and jewels, courtesy of legendary costume designer Ann Roth. As all of these desperate characters collide, things spiral from bad to worse to unimaginably terrible.
Faye convinces Homer to let Earle and Miguel move in, with disastrous results. As Homer slowly realizes how thoroughly he’s being used, his mental state deteriorates, culminating in a shocking act of violence during a red-carpet premiere for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Buccaneer. With Tod and Faye among the spectators, the chaotic aftermath unfolds like one of Tod’s beloved Goya paintings—surreal, grotesque, and apocalyptic—as the crowd’s desire for justice morphs into something monstrous.
Though Schlesinger had already won an Oscar for Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Day of the Locust—with its bleak view of Hollywood as a machine that grinds up all but the hardiest souls—proved too cynical for audiences at the time. That said, the film boasts a wealth of aesthetic strengths, including cinematography by three-time Oscar winner Conrad Hall, a haunting score by John Barry, and a scene-stealing performance by Geraldine Page as a charismatic faith healer modeled on Aimee Semple McPherson.
Arrow’s 2K remaster offers an array of excellent bonus features, including an oral history-style commentary with nine contributors, a new essay by Pamela Hutchinson, and insightful video essays by critic Glenn Kenny and the late film historian Lee Gambin. Gambin compellingly argues that The Day of the Locust is, at heart, a horror film disguised as a period drama—a thesis echoed years later by filmmakers like David Lynch (Mulholland Drive) and Damien Chazelle (Babylon).
What kind of film collection would this title be suitable for?
The Day of the Locust is a valuable addition to drama and literary adaptation collections in both academic and public libraries. Its origins in a classic American novel, paired with its richly layered critique of Hollywood, make it ideal for libraries with strong holdings in film history, American literature, or 1970s cinema. It also belongs in curated collections on films about Hollywood, particularly titles that challenge the industry's mythos and expose its darker underbelly. Libraries developing retrospective collections on influential directors or Oscar-recognized filmmaking talent will also find this film a useful inclusion.
What kind of film series would this narrative fit in?
The Day of the Locust would be an ideal inclusion in a film series devoted to the work of director John Schlesinger or actress Karen Black, both of whom had significant impacts on 1970s cinema. It could also feature prominently in a thematic series on “Hollywood on Hollywood”—films that depict the film industry itself, especially those exploring its more toxic, disillusioning elements. A series on literary adaptations of Depression-era American novels, or the works of Nathanael West and his contemporaries (such as F. Scott Fitzgerald), would provide further academic and thematic context. West’s tragic death the day after Fitzgerald’s own demise deepens the resonance of this pairing.