THRILLER
"The Hollow Watcher"
(1962; d. Wm F Claxton, tp Jay Simms)

Above Ortho ("straight; upright") Wheeler’s General Store (God/Self providing for community/facets of personality, pre-credits action there predisposing material taking place in heaven/mind) in Black Hollow, NC (psychological south, name also play on female lead’s mysterious, inaccessible + unregenerate sex organs), OW besets Irish mail-order daughter-in-law Meg ("received" img of wmn, his "Your nakedness is an abomination before the Lord" after ripping her dress projection of own Puritan misogyny [he ironically right, about wrong thing]) while insulting son Hugo’s manhood (annihilating anti-deity inhibiting fecundity, discord btwn all 3 negative condition 2B resolved thru course of play); down in barn (drama reduced to earthy/animal), son gets whupped for insubordination (oedipal infraction against father who takes untouchable Meg as own) + knocked cold (ego descending to deeper level of sleep to let unconscious agents play out wish-fulfillment action), Meg then dispatching O herself (desiring his inheritance à la own pwr, in thrall to impotent son) + telling revived Hugo he did it (playing male ego to own ends by disguising own pwr) but still refusing to let him "move his things into her room" (nudge, nudge – father’s repressing her repressing him), H worried about repercussion via legendary title avenger (name treble entendre for 1: Watcher over Hollow [as eponymous film similarly scrutinizes psychological recesses], 2: all characters’ ltd vision, + 3: male leads’ vigilance over female genitals, figure sharing initials w/ Hugo W) embodied in scarecrow (wrathful Old Testament God construction meant to intimidate "bird"brains).

1 month later (script’s attention to time adding to legendary/archetypal intimations), store busy (the social Consciousness + paradoxical gregarious Unconscious, each character facet o/t self), locals speculating on Ortho’s whereabouts (sleeping mind aware of superego/God’s departure, inquiry as to greater meaning/implication) + suspecting Hugo + "that foreign wmn" (all wmn foreign – "hollow," inscrutable – in patriarchal consc’ss) who "speaks in tongues" (connection to "other" language of subconscious, traversing Atlantic à la cerebral hemispheres), all spying on letter (provincial excitement as of cutoff subconsc receiving info/communiqués from outside world) arriving same time as "pretty" stranger Sean (similar "message" [which he tears up as superfluous]; Meg’s "brother" acceptable – male – Other: spiffed-up not-the-Self arriving on Ortho’s exit) enters + picks fight w/ moonshiner (agent of intoxication, Sean ostensibly here to clear things up; whupping him as O did H proving superiority of consc’ss soon undermined); tells Meg own wife crushed under wagon (mature union thwarted in transit, lack thereof casting pall over community/Self) + inveigles self on Wheelers (outcast O reconfigured + reentering proscenium in order to resolve traumatic experience) as H departs for job (again absenting self to let mental work play out).

Not surprisingly, Sean + Meg actually married (unity among unconscious elements disguised as disharmonious reality, he representative of link to consciousness as she to unconsc) + after Hugo’s inheritance ("sibling society" to supercede patriarchy secretly reproducing same), lounging on sofa w/ Meg’s doll (mini-Watcher: man’s domain world, wmn’s domestic realm; "child we’ve never had" end of line, she/they producing only rags) H’s partially realized family fantasy (he too ltd to fully visualize future à la eponymous seer); hasn’t killed H yet because dsn’t know where $ is (material pursuit equally hollow + possibly w/o payoff), but did stuff Ortho’s body in scarecrow (Self obscured but not buried, reduced to observer status in dream; Sean calls her "eagle" + ex-wife "wren," both birds HW there to shoo away) overlooking fallow field (pointless vigil; field unregenerate world/characters under Ortho/patriarchy’s pall, pun in "overlooking" also players’ ignorance of barrenness of ambitions + possible absence of stash) – "not quite dead" not quite right, as revealed in ending + when Sean shoots its arm off (artifact proving existence, he again agent of rationality – here in "valley on the moon" unconscious – bringing occult material to consciousness) thinking it’s Hugo in disguise ("hollow"ness of own vision, bone inside archetypal reduction in dream-arena [HW/HW "spirit" informing both] where mind must deal w/ meanings rather’n dimwitted facts) out "to frighten his bride into becoming his wife" (her "custom"ary 6-month abstinence unconsc’s resistance to uniting w/ real world).

While Sean prying floorboards in barn (where $ stashed?: value in physical, "animal," location of Hugo’s beating repression of same, Sean again trying to bring buried riches to surface), H returns intact (thot castrated by Sean, whose grip on facts/reality suspect) + locals seem wise to plot (having pieced together his impulsively written letter: dapper sophisticate tripped up by own libido, arriving to intercept it repression attempt not fooling wiser "primitive" unconscious he thinks he + Meg will liberate from "terror + want" [Hugo’s condition under stingy wife’s celibacy] – the colonial/missionary deception).

That night, Sean mts Hugo downstairs (heard noise in barn: physical need announcing self in dream, H’s "gun always loaded – just isn’t gonna shoot" clueing S in to his self-awareness), following him out to find him dead (real HW gone to make way for fantastic one + ego again vacating to let final chapter play out) preceded by gun (representative unused phallus Sean confronting own unregeneracy), Watcher apparently striking him bloodily blind (again, self-realization, he truly not-Ortho/W); Meg next (busting thru window as thru eyes, Seer’s role to be seen/reveal others to selves), torching him (simultaneously destructive/revealing light) exposing skull beneath (death inside not-doll/child again her barrenness), leaving her literally clutching at straws (imposition of logo hash-marks neatly dovetailing + suggesting series as agent of exposed hypocrisy [tho another ending cd’ve had Hugo – whose story this is – having tricked Sean, cut his vocal cords, severed his arm + stuffed him in scarecrow suit to be immolated by own wife]).