The Day Of The Locust

Part of the special series NACHTBLENDE

“Chinatown for the gays” – Liz on Letterboxd

Hollywood, late 1930s. Tod Hackett (William Atherton), a Yale graduate with dreams of artistic fulfillment, arrives in the dream factory to work as a set designer and soon finds himself immersed in a surreal microcosm of failed lives, crumbling façades, and grotesque longings. At the dilapidated San Bernardino Arms apartment complex, he encounters Faye Greener (Karen Black), an aspiring actress with more ambition than talent; her washed-up vaudeville father Harry (Burgess Meredith); the human doormat and accountant Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland); and a parade of other fringe figures, all hoping for a big break—or at least a fleeting moment of glamour before everything collapses.

What begins as quiet observation gradually tips into a feverish vision of violence, madness, and collective hysteria. Schlesinger stages the collapse of Hollywood illusion as a baroque end-times tableau, in which each character becomes a horrifying caricature of their own dreams. The film culminates in an apocalyptic mob scene and a moment seared into celluloid, posing the question of whether the American Dream has long since curdled into a nightmare.