THRILLER
"La Strega" (1962; d. Ida Lupino, tp. Alan Caillou)

"Sometimes the world we create is more real than the one we live in": how misconceptions govern us + shape reality (spoken by painter: creating reality based on impression of same, he mental faculty translating real-world objects + events into dream-).

Title witch’s granddaughter (missing generation as step in cognition, or btwn truth + interpretation, lacking genuine model for own mature, fully-formed i.d. + having only img + icon to fashion self upon) Luana (from "lunar": reflected light o/t imagination; played by Ursula Andress, soon to rule She’s "Empire o/t Imag’n") just up from "the valley" (newly born, as from main character’s subconscious; 1st seen in 1st img at river framed in delta btwn 2 sheer rockfaces, "liquid" femininity hemmed in by "stony" masculinity + patriarchal order), gets dunked by 18th-Century Italian townsmen (origin of episode’s heightened, operatic tone) for allegedly practicing what host Boris Karloff refers to as "the Old Religion" (Goddess-centered spirituality; men hung up on obsolete mindset the adult still dealing w/ mother-attachment, taking out prejudices on blank-slate blonde attempting to suppress her power); rescued (diving in river bringing out fem in self, floating in from unconsc à la driftwood) by dashing novice painter Tonio Bellini de la Vega (cf Strega; also new in town: both psychic agents introduced in dream-theater to play out + resolve issues/personality) + taken to garret where domesticated à la grandma’s cat-familiar (link btwn witch + devil, as Lu btwn Tonio + muse).

Turned on by her looks, Tonio draws Lu (instead of wooing her: repressing "demonic" sexuality by fixing + objectifying it à la fetish) soon after denouncing previous model (as men Old Religion, she aka mom for transitional adolescent wanting to separate from but still unable to "betray" her [he soon falling asleep while shacking up w/ Ursula Andress]), sketching only brightness (despite director of photography Benjamin H Kline [in employ of dir]’s elegant chiaroscuro: denial of Dark Mother/sexuality; compare, also, Strega’s black "arts," she embodiment of all his repressions) while doubting her story of strega-grandma (belittling possibility of fem pwr); when she screams (resistance to his objectification) "She’s here close by, I can feel her" (asserting disavowed potential), g’ma shows up (invoked – by his dismisssal) + T locks Lu in trunk (guilty boy hiding fetish from mother + keeping 2 imgs of wmn – madonna/whore in Catholic Italy – separate), Strega (heavily madeup 50-yr-old Jeannette Nolan reprising crone-role from Thriller "Parasite Mansion": horror of the non-reproductive wmn) cursing his "blood will boil + yr hands will do the devil’s work" (recognition of masturbatory intentions) + throwing in "only a grave for the ones you love" (à la Lu in trunk: unregenerate outcome of action).

Shocked next a.m. to find sketch turned haggard (despite Lu’s Christian w’craft; cradling him beneath painted cross pieta), begging Maestro Giuliano (senex, or own higher wisdom + rationality – "hold onto your disbelief" – diametric opposite of similarly elder Strega) for answer while g’ma fashions MG effigy (parallel working of ir/rational, former threatening latter’s overthrow the unconsc threatening similar ascendancy in sleep); takes them to Sabbat, where witches’ "old" ritual actually choreographed modern dance (cf w. Caillou’s 1965 Village o/t Giants’ similarly libidinous hullabaloo): love-children hippies dawning at telecast era reviving lost magical arts + religion (not to mention sexuality) + sweeping away Tradition (dying Maestro), Tonio’s protest reaction not to (nonexistent) sacrilege but to orgiastic nature (dream full-swing, "killing" Maestro-consciousness, after which story moves back twd order + reason).

Turns to Padre Lupari (xchg’g art for religion, Maestro’s face dissolving into Christ on cross), modern eunuch "father" (vs archaic sexual-mother Strega – world now in control of ineffectual, unregenerate men) who takes Luana in (Tonio using neuter male to contain fem-w/i) + insists evil "only in mind" (psychology New Religion); as earlier lockup (in trunk), hiding her leads to tragedy (project of modern man instead Her liberation) when T discovers next a.m. wmn he murdered night before isn’t Strega (wmn’s potential pwr) but Lu (wmn’s real): light impossible w/o dark; killing archetypal femininity in self kills its projection in world as well.

Police Lt Vincoli arrives at end (return of conscious "authority"), Tonio-pursuit leading to realization of Strega’s curse ("a madman kept in a darkened cell the rest of yr life": reason/sanity can’t exist w/o the irrational, society’s madness lying in its repression of fem pwr) on discovery of crime, last shot of Lu buried up to neck (à la next yr’s similarly disembodied Gorgon) final separation of mind + body in madness/sleep, where rhyming art-as-life (opposite Tonio, whose life is art) witch still reigns: Luana ultimate dreamer, wmn doomed 2B "divided" living unreal life in schizoid man’s world.