THRILLER
"God Grante That She Lye Stille" (1961; d. Herschel Daugherty, tp Rbt Hardy Andrews)

Begins, like Black Sunday, w/ woman being burned at stake by aged sourpuss (own eros burning self up under Puritan repression) for similarly vague + absurd reasons (concatenation of witchcraft + vampirism suggesting wmn’s power as inherent drain on masculinity, demanding response) + cursing townspeople (repressed material always returning to take psychic toll), threatening havoc when spirit + body reunite (i.e. her spirit + his body: disdained sexual union + devastation to male ego when buried Pwrful Female in self reasserted, against title declaration).

Flash-fwd 300 yrs (à la Woman Who Came Back + Devonsville Terror; original action so long ago as 2B archetypal) to witch-descendent Lady Margaret Clewer’s 1961 (tho looking 1861, as does maid Sarah: they together anachronistic wilting wmnhood) return to estate (emergence into dream-consciousness) soon after father’s death (extinguishing of patriarchal consc’ss permitting archetypal drama to unfold in un-conscious), w/ no mention of mother (Meg both, possession by ancestor introjection of the Spectral Mother, or wmn’s psychic link to mature self-img), on eve of 21st birthday (cf similar ’63 Blancheville Monster), inheritance her coming into own at frontier of sexual maturity (virginal blonde to lookalike ancestor Elspeth Clewer’s earthy/worldly brunette: approachable face of threat world-consc’ss getting right w/t inevitable); encounters EC’s ghost (own shadow sexuality + pwr) at window (on threshold, curtain-veil hymen beyond which lyes the Sexual Self), causing her to swoon (ambivalence twd new persona throwing her into borderline state).

Thus weakened, Dr Edward "Stone" (rigid masculinity: Lady M’s own + that of dreaming male ego [tp adapted by man from Lady Cynthia Asquith [cf "Lady" MC]’s source story] reasserting self on encounter w/ Her) shows up, followed by dour Vicar Weatherford (played, as was original Inquisitor-type, by Thriller regular Henry Daniell: reappearance of archaic figures eternal nature of drama, of elder male [patriarchy]’s repression of vital fem force), who acquaints him w/ Clewer family history (he not only clergyman but historian: religion’s part in oppression of wmn thru time + how that history written on [men’s] soul) via moldering book (outdated nature of obsession).

Shrill, fearful Una O’Connoresque maid leaves (departure of Meg’s vulnerable child-fem self), replaced by sensible Nurse Emmons (new img of mature femininity emerging), whom Elspeth-possessed M tries to knife in sleep (trying to eliminate emergent i.d.), consequences + reason for which elided by commercial break (+ possible SciFi Channel editing for time) as tho less than dream, even - token "stab" at new img; next morning, M displays acquiescence to death (old-self vulnerable fem still on way out) troubling to smitten Doc (43-yr-old Ronald Howard old-enuf-2B-her-[not-the]-father, arriving on latter’s death: unable to usher her into erotic life - especially while at war w/ Her very spirit - attraction instead twd pallid non-being), who consults corpulent psych/iatrist (earthbound soul, which tells him of her "heart" condition [physical health, Stone physician ignorant of needs/condition of body + of her innate desires]) played by Victor Buono, whose coy + suggestive mannerisms indicate both homophilic affections of the psyche + large-looming sexual issues for middle-aged + single man whose other male association is w/ similarly campy Daniell.

That night, while Doc downstairs admitting (similarly bachelor) vicar, Meg rouses to permit Elspeth entrance: Self moving/pulled in opposite directions, E’s need to embody self imperative of eros to manifest in world, foiled in end when vicar + doc burst in at moment of death (they = death, for woman/soul trying to reconcile madonna/whore dichotomy imposed by dualistic men/consciousness) + E returns to grave (M’s departing soul arising + proceeding there itself), sight of 2 men watching her defeated spirit returning to repression (dream on, gentlemen) triumph benefiting no one.

Meg’s death end of Elspeth’s "cursed" family line (resolution of hero’s own issues of unquiet, buried femininity, throwing "baby" [in romantic sense] out w/ bathwater) leaving him, presumably, w/ apparently admiring + closer-in-age Nurse Em, "laying to rest" own archetypal fem – i.e. Mom + Buono – that kept him from her, Meg the reconfigured not-the-mother img now freeing him to love another.

As with most traditional witch stories (cf Woman Who Came Back, Lights Out "Beware This Woman," City of the Dead/Horror Hotel), subtext specifically about male heroes (!) militating against emergent pwrful wmn; post-feminist witches mostly wmn triumphing over male oppression (TV "Crowhaven Farm," The Craft, Witches of Eastwick, et al).