LIGHTS OUT
"Beware This Woman"
(ca 1952; d. Lawrence J Schwalb, tp. Douglas Wood Gibson)

Bespectacled Dr Lawson inflating mattress (achieving erection) w/ bicycle pump (masturbation: "I have no time for females") in lab/bedroom (work + rational thot substituting for or confused w/ sexuality/unconscious), interrupted by uptight secretary Miss Abernathy (liaison btwn reclusive mind + outer/inner world) re fem visitor (screwball staple Veronica Lake; cf especially René Clair’s 1942 I Married a Witch, story 2B about rescue of bkwd male/animus/intellect by kookie fem/anima/physical) w/ unlikely name Mercy Device (mechanism by which he to achieve grace, last name close to Divine + initials à la doctor, she his feminine other), riding phantasmagoric animal (magical body: eros he soon to discover); claims house inhabited by poltergeist (playful spirit impish MD herself, "house" her sexual organs) named Caprice (fem prerogative dr too will experience, she/it also illogic in scientist's current state leading him to such quirks as sleeping on inflatable mattress in study) she wants him to investigate (nudge, nudge), dbl entendre about spending weekend explicit come-on.

Packs up mattress + relocates to her place (mind entering "other house" subconscious, he dream-agent called in to tame her even as she assists him in controlling own mischievous anima), where beset by phenomena: shower of paper declaiming "3 Moidores 4 Pence" (nonsense later revealed as key to resolution: nonsense later revealed as key to resolution [sic], flurry of paper à la thots in academic’s head), perpetually ringing phone (info trying to reach him but not getting thru, dreaming mind w/drawing from outside world when he rips cord) + skeleton in closet (sic) chanting 3M+4P (key w/i himself in enigmatic, shameful past).

Next day, colleague Dr Pearly (as in Gates, he portal onto revelatory knowledge) – a "precise + profound thinker" (as scatterbrained as Lawson: men’s charade of rightful rule) – arrives to advise, followed by quack rival Birdlip (sonic similarities to Pearly not-so-polar opposites; each Prez of respective organizations – Psychical Rsch Trust + Foundation for Pure Science – Birdlip irrational down to own name), vying for Mercy’s favor sleeping mind vacillating btwn rapidly blurring reason + fantasy. Pearly-Lawson, convinced Mercy a witch (comic conformity to P’s reference-book definition consonance w/i airtight mind), hit public records (librarian curt middle-ager à la Miss A – conduit to "another" MD, dark, set-less echo-chamber the mind w/drawing into deepest isolation to extract archetypal information; scene echo itself of similar 2-men-consulting-clerical-fem in ’45 witch Woman Who Came Back) + discover unrelated ancestral Mercy D (archetypal womanhood, men entering Mircea Eliade’s "mythical" time in order to resolve age-old [childhood] issue) also witch (present Mercy’s image of lost power + potency in world) whose tab for hanging = 3M+4P (men’s coded debt to wmn mistreated in history [aka mental + social patterning]).

Return to Mercy’s (sic: achieving grace once debt paid) to discover manifestations (frustrated, redirected shows of pwr for wmn denied legitimate outlet in male society) stopped at moment of payment (Lawson’s assuming assertive role in mktplc à la breadwinner, squelching wmn’s incipient will), excusing Pearly + Birdlip both (each doddering apparent bachelors à la spinsterly Miss A + librarian: unregenerate future-selves thwarted by take-action doc), despectacled (un-nerded, removing also voyeuristic barrier btwn intellectual + world/observed) Lawson’s unlikely marriage proposal (24 hrs into relationship, one-day time span union’s regeneration of time once link btwn eras –"cursed" name which held M in thrall to spirit world [she objectified, made immaterial, connection to ancestral counterpart as to not-the-mother in oedipal doc’s mind] – cut) reconciliation of disunited halves (un/consciousness, fe/male, ir/rational + erotic/intellectual) possible only after excessively charged anima neutralized + suppressed (as wd happen to many 50s hausfraus), his 4th-wall-defying camera-glance + Wipe to Black (cf dir’s similarly reflexive opening to LO "Dead Man’s Coat") mastering even properties of film reality.

From story by Grace (cf "Mercy") Amundsen.