rev Aug 29-30-31/ Sept 1, 2021.
Kate is then shown by the fireplace, as if forged by it, determined to make herself look as hot as possible, to be unrefusable this time, note, please, her unbra’d breasts pointing through
then she goes in for a big kiss, he gives it to her
but they immediately pass by each other
But then it is precisely because Kate’s role is so cryptic that it appeals to me. What IS she doing in the movie? What clues do we get that she is somehow part of all this? We now come home, to see her having got all dressed up, and set up a dip in front of a painting of…a Black Sun,
there are also two interesting sculptures at her gateway, a head, maybe his, and a gate, hers, is she a gate?
she sits, nervously waiting to spring something on the hub
when he comes home, she is excited, eager to please, the fire is on, dinner in front of the fire, the whole bit, he is like “shit”,
then we see what I have called a spacey-hippie painting, with a sort of spiritual message, Hilma af Klimt, 1975, but for her, bespeaking her, it means that between hell and heaven she is the embodiment of the Black Sun, far sentience, this tells me for the first time that whatever it is about her that is causing this curious behavior between them, of which we only see the negative space, and are as confused as she is, it comes from far out in the darkness of the universe, it is a big, primal secret
then when he quickly says, no thanks, I’m exhausted, I’m going to bed, she is crestfallen, meaning that the picture, in picture play, speaks to her sudden depression, and being caught in a black out too, so an incursion of the Black Sun into their life
but then she regroups and tries again, comes in to the bedroom, saying we have to talk, he is untying himself, it seems that they have an impressionist still life at the foot of their bed,
and this time the rebuff comes with but a glimpse at a painting I very much wanted to see more of, but this is all we get, casting their marriage into a haunted place, like a country road in winter, ice cold, for some reason unspecified
on my rendering of this scene, redreaming it, her effaced self is expressed by the unshown picture, she is shown profiled by the empty road, as if to say that her breasts, exposed in cleavage here, are yearning to be touched
she then actually accosts him, begging him to fuck her, but he wont
when I redream these scenes, it is to work them out better so that the agency that is blocked can come out, but then she is upset so comes at him, but has to pass through the mirror
this struck me as odd, the arrangement of things around their bed
what this means is that she comes round from the Foot to the Side of the bed, and through a mis an abyme consisting of a mirror casting the primrose path of the other painting out into an eternal dimension, the end result of her accosting him will be that they lay perpendicular to the bed, across it, this is a demonic position in bedding, and usually the site of pornographic encounters, not love, for that reason, thinking ahead to the conclusion of how this might’ve gone in a more realist contemporary movie today, as why would there be any question if she is a virgin still, just give her the test, with a finger, so that bruteness means that as she comes through the nexus of emptiness and manipulation, she is possessed by a demon from Demon Lover (1975), which I watched in double feature with this yesterday, and it is by that demon,
like the demon-size familiar in Demon Lover
their entanglement or angel wrestling would involve a more brutal act, a finger to check if she was a virgin (cryptically, I will concede that all this reverberates off some non-movie memories, weird, as always that the formation is still in my mind). I will also mention at this point that even though she only made like three movies total, Monica Tidwell was known in 1975 still, no doubt, for her Playboy layout in 1973 (like the third time I have encountered this particular connection in the bowels of 70s horror), so she had showed herself off, and, it will be noticed, at 19, she was a redhead from Louisiana, who had what was called at the time, saddled with some legend of hotness based on color and stereotype of crazy redheads, a firecrotch,
which, though she had ample breasts, seemed to be her primary profile (the theory being that all pinups had one outstanding feature which was then by “gore” of form of the star-shape of the body put front and center and everything else conforms to it
then, too, a few years later, ending her acting career, she again played a strangely unreal prostitute
who strips nude for her client right there up close on the couch, side by side, only for them to attack him as a group, the ambient sleep demon attack shot
at which point in viewing time hurricane Ida wobbled east toward New Orleans
all of which indicates that in the spaz nature of the nexus between viewer and movie itself there is a gap as in the actual movie her plea, when he backs off, recoils only to the point where they have, she has known in advance, he told her, that there was an issue that needed to be worked out, and they are working on it, as indicated by the scene ending with a heart to heart on a bedspread that loozy whoosy oceanic, perhaps a foreshadow of their consummation at the end
so, she does have, in my view, a ”demonic” (peculiar psychodynamic) profile, but the movie kept things under wraps to make the ending a surprise.
There are other paintings in the offices and the offices are in a classic brutalist structure of the time, bespeaking the fear that institutional scientific life was getting carried away, and problematic, mad
when he has to go on another mission, spying on Kajerste, the charismatic one goes further with the theory, by what they learn exploring these templates we will be able to go into the mind and zap specific places to help those with them overcome disabilities, which, in fact, is happening.
the idea seems to be that if they identify the zodiacal profile of a person, they can then, since they know of the difference between it and others, enhance it by sending video and images directly into the mind, to change the profile, and this would be a practice way to exploit the fact that as he said earlier we have found the key to the mind, But, then, she has an interesting objection,
so far the human brain, if you zap the horion in it, to improve it, it reads those zaps not as reality, but as dreams, which means that its impulse would be to keep the results inside the head, as fantasy, and leave it at that, shortcircuting the attempt to use the profiles to improve human social life. So, a problem. This means that in the current state of sleep science in 1975 they were not yet aware of the fact that, in fact, if one has a REM Sleep disorder, and engages in a parasomiac routine, like getting up in the middle of the night to eat, see Hobson, that disorder would seem to be a gateway to enacting a profile change in lived life, if asleep. So, interesting, the point being it is searching for an ultimate solution, 70s style.
Nonetheless, and with this doubt, they go ahead with it. The first plan was to make a face mask of Kajerste then put an imposture in his place
but now it seems like Rahv has decided to go into the camp herself, the plan is to film a fake version of his effect on his followers, on videotape, to what end, I am not sure
then sneak into his camp late at night, and attach a censor or implant something, without waking Kajerste, gluing it to his head, so that it goes directly into his brain, I guess the idea is to reprogram him to not do what he does
so, basically, this is a form of dream manipulation? planting a sent dream directly into the head, to change his nature? she gets quite detailed, he will be tranquilized; the videotape, with the fake knife will be put directly into his brain, for him to act by it, he will then, upon next waking, confuse these events with the real events
that will cause him to be killed, I think. So, basically, this is a variation on mind control Manchurian Candidate style assassination, to end Kajerste’s reign of terror in India.
The problem is, she does not seem to know what Kajerste is really interested in, the child waiting to be born, that is, if Kate had a child, and she was the Virgin Mary reincarnate, in form of her ZP, then that child, it stands to reason, would be a kind of messiah, so there is a touch of The Omen series here too. But because she miscalculates what Kajerste’s mind is fixated on, it seems none of her hypnosis or arts work, he is awake
the figure on his forehead seems to be a Savoy demon figure, that is, his mind is trying to approach the state of Epigogy, when in a tingle he can see who the savior is, so I will call this, in passing, a Savoy Demon depiction of a frontal-effacing demon who lets his epagogic sense expand out past her reason to forsee any monstrous plan coming at him, so she is cooked quick, she gets the dagger and the poison, for real, dead.
it is unclear why all this is here, it might just be narrative fill, as happens in movies, or it could be an inversion of the pact that Alexei and Kate have made, to not have sex until he knows for sure if she is the virgin birther, I mean, clearly, the congressman wanted to fuck her, he is very attracted to her, he is lead down the primrose path, for her, doing it for her;but it ends up with him getting it too. So, cautionary version of the same, in between.
Then Rhav goes into Karjerste’s camp, in a midnight raid, an unexpected dimension of her character, the plan is to zap him with tranquilizer and then implant him with something so that they can control him, not vice versa, I think, unfortunately she is stabbed to death
there is also, we find out, some odd aspect in the bodies attacked by Kajerste, in the previously seen effort to impress himself onto them,
this obviously relates to the Achilles Heel, which resulted from a mother’s attempt to make her son immortal, by dipping him in Lethe, but having to keep hold of him by the heel (so, a form with something in common with extreme body magic)
It might also relate to the baculus viatoris, which Byzantine angels made use of for landing, to signify by the wobble of the landing that they are supernatural beings getting their bearing on natural earth
but then, we see that Alexei has a dream, he is maybe worrying about Rhav, and if it is going to go well, but it manifests in his mind, as worrying about Kate,
first he sees those feet of the corpse they examined today, the fact that Kajerste skewers his followers like ducks by a hunter on a hook accentuates his brutality
then he sees her in the camp, that is, this is Kajerste’s camp, but in dream form, and he envisions Kate being there, worrying him
and now she is the one who is nude with Kajerste, it is unclear. Upon first appearance nude, however, very briefly, Tidwell’s body struck me as unformed, and almost octopuslike in its fleshy excess, her breasts swinging,
he thinks back to the wrestling match they had, which continues to worry him, will she hang on til they find out, or will she, out of frustration, run off to him
he imagines, hearing her again beg him to make love to her, Kajerste doing the same, ceremonially
but, my demon formulation of the original wrestle wasn’t half off, he immediately superimposes over that a horrific image of a corpse bloating by floating in a river for a while, the breasts having hardened by rigor mortis into awful tumorous forms, so he imagines Kajerste’s touch of her as a touch of death,
then when she gets the body fusing experience, she is back in a gown but
except she is laughing, damn, so she is dead to me
but, then, in this dream, which is a pretty regular montage style dream, but with a not bad symbolic level glass onion formulation of thinking going on under it, it seems that unlike Rhav Alexei knows what Kajerste is really interested in, he sees the pose, with the white Savoy demon or angel representing the desired messiah for him to use as an antichrist on his forehead
and, surprisingly, because I did not see it the first time, nor would I have known what it meant, there is a flash, just one second, the child born, which Kajerste has mentioned
Now, I suppose to indicate the complexities involved in Alexei being in India, coming back in the rain, being told the correct date of Kajerste s birth, which by local knowledge confirms his evil ZP
and her being way back in NYC, she then returns to the card reader, but the card reader suspects that the young man who works for her is now working for Kajerste so tells her to never come back to her, it is no longer safe, a sort tenuous linkage to the plot (but notice, the threat of death given validity by a memorial aegis of two who died, the Kennedys
then Kate makes apologies for the young man, but the lamp over her head means she is acting blind, she does not know what’s up, that she would in any way be in jeopardy (I guess she would be, if they thought she knew where the child was),
then there’s a great sort of mind wipe shot, the sort of thing that says, this is NYC, in broad daylight, nothing is going to happen
looks to me like the Village
but then, and this part of the story is played with very slightly, the movie does slice its plot points thin, it seems that in fact upstate New York Karjerste has gathered about him a following, and she is kidnapped and driven up to a gathering, it looks like of evil hippies, shadow hippies, moonies, cultists, all the post-hippie post-60s washouts that characterized the times, she is a bit upset
but, then surprise, it turns out that Kajerste has, somehow, got from Delhi to Catskill, lickety split, he is there, in the USofA
at which point, the soothsayer sneaks in and stabs him
clearing the camp, somewhat confusedly, leaving Kate there alone, this also a bit montagey
at this point, Alexei is back, and we return to headquarters, a rather odd shot,
it is only at this point that we begin to see these strange paintings all over the headquarters. They seem to speak to the crisis of the moment. In this one, as it seems Alexei talks with the plant who brought Kate up to the camp? this one
it seems to represent the psychomachia for Kate’s soul going on at this point, she would be the sunflower figure on the left, the threat to her is on the right, what’s in the middle, as yet unclear (the child, a manifestation of the Savoy demon figure on Kajerste’s forehead. It does feel quite scirpographic, something like this. If the sleeps of Rhav and the congressman, and their mission, can be thought of as the first nightmare of the movie; then Alexei’s nightmare of worry about Kate, and it sort of being acted out, is the second nightmare, and seeing her nude in his control is seeing of the Umwelt of the story, that is, he understands she is his guiding star, but might still be the miracle ZPer virgin birther, then, the rainstorm is a script sign of the luor-orana, that is, the crossing over, Kajerste met in person by Kate is the encounter with TIND-TIRH, and that then sparks the turbulence (see previous post on Alien for more precise working out, the rising up in the turbulence of Savoy, to then introduce the arrival of the Epigogic demon, who oversees the monstrous place of sacrifice etc. Something like this
and I say “something like this” because I think Glickenhaus was at best operating by instinct almost unconsciously and since this inner psychodynamic progression was not nearly ready to be discerned, it was somehow picked out of the plot of the book, and given sight in a script of shorthand sequences, for the demons in progression here too to represent the passage. As a result, then, too, the paintings, whoever might’ve done them, and how out of it they were in 1977. we leap out into the crisis stage, I suppose the headquarters represents his movement to that stance, So that this painting
is a freeze frame version, that is, a rationalistic overcast, onto the psychodynamics that might be rumbling under it, to depict the psychomachia of the cenote, Kate displaced from fata morgana to the place of sacrifice, Kajerste precipitating as the cenote itself
and then the strange white form in the center
a precipitation of the white figure on Kajerste’s forehead
by way of Kate’s unawareness of the problem
and her appearing before him for real, the fear that raises
into the terrain of the place of sacrifice at the top of the cenote, which is why things are vacant here
and that is, his real target, which Rhav missed.
This whole trip up to rescue Kate is a bit confusing, but, again, I now argue that the images are meant to bring her in contact with Kajerste, but in a dreamlike way, to alert her to the danger, so, there is the path to danger, the road
then, next morning, it is all over, she is left sleeping in white on a bench
in abandoned camp, this is a dream image, her presence on the place of sacrifice, foreshadowing that the real interest is in her child
then the deus ex machina rescue
and reunited.
Here for decoration but as stage directing devices to move things along. Each shot we get of them sets up a step in a process, so this first view of a large painting set over a couch proposes that there has formed a vector of threat and that by a red slithering form from below, something demonic is afoot
there was another picture on the other side of the office, and the figure on the right seems to suggest a watching figure, with something going on
then we go back to the couch, and the major statement painting over it, and as the red demon form comes up there is, in fact, a central core or shaft, and it is blue, or in pain, but also, note, vaginal, so it is a symbol of the female, there is also a pink form, Kate’s body, or Kate’s child, spilling out of as if the womb of Kate, and then this purely symbolic as it were prelude to the conception of birth is added to by a figure on the right
which seems to be a Madonna figure, echoing on the Madonna in the card reader’s office
and so predicting, with the houseplant as warning, that the next phase of reincarnation is happening.
end of pt 2.
rmarts 