Hands Up!

A 1981 autobiographical prologue appended to a film Skolimowski shot in 1967 gives HANDS UP! an eerie time warp quality. Although the question of official censorship was put to rest by 1985, paranoia haunts the film in many forms through startling imagery that includes an ominous hooded figure, hellish flames, and a portrait with an accusatory eye. The director kicks into full surrealist mode with mysterious views of post-Apocalyptic wreckage, and segues into ritualized sequences of symbolic buffoonery.