BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER
(Horror, 1963; d. Alberto de Martino, w. Bruno Corbucci, Giovanni Grimaldi + Natividad Zaro)

Emily de Blancheville returns home from university (self freed from consciousness + psychic material released into dream-consciousness from storehouse of knowledge/data) w/ roommate (spiritual sister: not-Emily, fellow student/psychic agent learning what Em cannot) Alice + her brother John Taylor for Em’s 21st birtdhay (when she sez she’ll be own wmn [she Scorpio, as repeatedly pointed out, symbol of pwr: wmn triumphing over patriarchy in typical Gothic drama]: homecoming revisiting heritage before finding Self), she smitten w/ JT while Alice taken by bro Rodrigue de B’ville (via his letters to Em, Alice acting out her regressive incestuous attraction); once there, finds everyone but Rod replaced: entering not-quite-home dreamland, where familiar figures stand in for others – aka archetypes – + darkest repressions played out.

Father died in her absence (consciousness expired on return to dream-home) in abbey fire (spiritual crisis, claiming img of loving "Father" soon 2B replaced by villainous not-the-fr: maturity a giving way to realism + "fallen" view of world), discovered alive by Alice on waking during (psychic) storm (fr’s cries mixed w/ thunder associating his pain w/ Em’s), being sedated (ego/consc’ss subdued during drm, soon to expire) in tower room (elevated consciousness, revelation there epiphanic: "Old Lord" [as he’s called]/God kept alive [tho disfigured] in unconscious, defacing 1st step in replacing by corrupt New) by ominous housekeeper Eleanor (superego + maintainer of status quo, turning out on side of good vindication of Her troubling mehods), scene audaciously repeated on her fainting, minus El ("L" mildly regressive, darkhaired version of blond "M") + fr but in company of Rod, his taking place of both sexual ambiguity of the disinterested love object, psychological transference from "mother" + fr to bro/NTF (as later revealed, w/ him in masquerade) step in Em’s sexual maturity.

Next day, Rod spills beans about father, saying he’s alive, escaped + insane (own insanity, now at large) + bent on realizing family curse (dysfunction + social program) stating that bloodline wd end w/ Emily’s death on her 21st (1: Em shirking twisted inheritance on finding Self (old self "dying" w/ them [Scorpio also sign of infinite death + rebirth, as in clock whose striking midnight signals change in astrological signs, 12 hrs as 12 signs], her rebirth into agency his/patriarchy’s end + 2: brother escaping own confused fate on death of "sister"/feminine self); that night, "fr" "enters her sleep" (unconscious adopting [false] sociofamilial precepts) + lures her to abbey (burned-up former House of God aka hell, suggesting incestuous undertone; also, not-the-father leading her to source [abbey as dissociated heart] of spiritual longing or lack, where rebirth will take place), where rescued just before murder, scene playing twice again, à la ritual rehearsing/preparing her for figurative death.

New doctor (physician-body, signifying new life), Larouche, takes shine to disinterested Alice (disinclination twd sexuality for characters caught in family curse/romance), continuous-take conversation in abbey on Emily’s cataleptic death by Eleanor’s "poison" (she narcotizing agent of unconscious, as w/ father) + burial (ego submerging self in order to let unconscious drama play out) explaining his motives (previous doc-friend murdered [sleeper’s transcendence of body/old self], El a plant to keep an eye on things à la similar not-self investigator Alice) Em’s own vindication/acceptance of eros (recognition of Good Body over Diseased Mind reconciliation w/ "corrupt" [Larouche a red herring] world); discovery of father in rubble there (buried under weight of collapsed spirituality) leads to Rod’s unmasking (disfigurement affected, he bearing img of fallen Father), at which point Em revives (reborn into physicality after leaving university-mind for metaphoric death, her emergence possible only after his exposure) + frightens Rod into fall into abbey well (into which ruminative doc had dropped stone: depths of unconsc, he returned to repression + true, psychic condition). Impressive, unheralded film closes as it opened, w/ addition of new-love doc (health) to coach (Self, each character integrated part of whole), now leaving oppressive past.