One climactic, erotically-charged encounter with Joe (Musante) and Muriel (Jan Sterling, jarring and powerful in her own right especially in the subway car sequences) where Joe says “do you really want me to do that, lady?” is unsettling and revealing in its suggestive power and truth. The scariest, though least surprising thing about “The Incident” (the film is deliberately unclear *which* incident - there are many, and that’s the film’s point) even before a collision course with anti-social cretins, is that the criminals in their abhorrent attacks on the already sparring married couples and conflicted, tell them the truth about who they really are as human beings.

This video description contains mild thematic spoilers. All others in their company are limited, trapped, contemptuous and cynical, even with the repeated and ironic refrains of one older white male passenger of, “there are decent people here!” Yet, as intrusions and other assorted atrocities against women and men play out in flagrant, unblinking view of a passenger car with seven men (including two military men) in it where, exactly, are the “decent people”?īrock Peters and Ruby Dee in “The Incident” (1967). None of the characters held captive by the relentless subway violence is honest or truthful about who they are as people - except, possibly both the film’s lead male terrorizers.Īs played by then-film debutant Martin Sheen and the excellent Tony Musante, first-rate and razor-sharp as Joe, the sadistic terrorizers are extremely realistic and even downright intoxicating to the point of crude magnetism and sex appeal.

“The Incident” is like a Milgram experiment (see later “Compliance”, 2012) in malevolence and anthropology in which characters are first seen in their own habitats, acting out their own mix of frustrations, depravities, hatreds, angers, violence, addictions and longings. Peerce’s film in color would taint, scar and obstruct these desperately selfish and troubled reptilian creatures of New York City. The stark black-and-white footage feels like a potent mirror of our true primal selves as human beings, that disturbing, unregulated self.

We’re held hostage by the shocking, depraved torment and terrorizing of no less than 14 passengers in a single New York City subway car at roughly two in the morning during what feels like an eternity. Larry Peerce’s “The Incident” is a savage, unremittingly intense experience parked rude and hostile, claustrophobically right up in our faces. Jan Sterling as Muriel in this screen grab from “The Incident” (1967), a fascinating and deeply disturbing film.

The incident 1967 cast