GHOST STORY (1981; d. John Irvin, w. Lawrence D Cohen)

1st sound wmn’s whimpering over snowy VT landscape (septuagenarian characters’ lament for lost femininity + youth awa Gaia figure’s grief over state of earth [cf actress Alice Krige’s role in 1996 global-warming Habitat]) as lawyer Sears James (last-name-first mixed-up i.d. + topsy-turvy logical consciousness in dream; also, source-novelist Peter Straub’s homage to literary avatar Henry) paces to opera (own caged aspirations) + Dr John Jaffrey (dual initials both double life + homogenous personality) stirs in sleep (rousing caretaker Milly, physician reduced to patient role + man to dependent) along w/ Ricky Hawthorne (nod to similar New England moralist Nathaniel) + Mayor Edward Wanderley (near-anagrammatic name similar insularity for Man Who Wd Be Prez but never left home; son Don tribute to Cthulhu contributor Donald Wandrei [crossed with REBECCA Manderley; he also wandering spirit akin to title ghost]?); James tells fellow Chowder Society members story about cemetery caretaker (night watchman o/t unconscious) waking to whimpering (dawning awareness of "buried" sorrow, + film/mind beginning to regard self) + drawn to fresh grave (newly turned earth arising-into-consciousness) of buried-alive man (everyone’s unfulfilled dreams) no-one ever discovers (men’s avoidance of own unquiet thots; substitute for real submerged wmn suggestion that when men repress fem’y they bury true manhood too).

In snowless NY (differently icy skyline: impact on new/younger/present of archaic/elder/past – things ain’t what they didn’t use to be in whitewashing of crime/inals), as tub overflows (meltdown; recurrent imagery elemental nature of issue) in David Wanderley’s apartment (hi-rise mind gaining overview), he grills naked sleeper "Who/What are you?" (recent bedmate his abandoned/dream Other, film beginning inquiry into great 80s theme of gender roles/identity [cf Liquid Sky, Victor/ia, All of Me, Dressed to Kill, Just One o/t Guys, Skin Deep, "Bosom Buddies", et al]) + she replies "I am you" (cf similar statements in ’89 Shocker + ’86 Lifeforce), her revelation as corpse (ghastly face both DW’s misogyny + own deteriorated fem i.d.) sending him reeling out window (losing bath towel: naked as a baby, landing poolside as into glass+concrete Eden); phone wakes twin brother Donnie (minus mustache + plus diminutive name rebirth of 80s Man out of dream of history) to summon him to funeral (call as from w/i, all art laying to rest of obsolete part of writer – Don’s profession –’s psyche) by disapproving father ("specter" haunting him maturational failure, burying exec-successful br/Other assimilation of his qualities), of whom he dreams that night, along w/ dad (latter of corpse bride: own mortality, seeing thru eyes of late, affianced David).

Next morning, Ed follows unseen "David" to bridge (transitional location; shades of Curtis Harrington’s ’46 "Fragment of Seeking", where character follows to find surprise-Self in drag: tracing not-Don, who turns out 2B woman, father’s effeminate view of spurned son) he plummets off of (son’s resolution of ambiguous relationship); not-grieving Don (choppy, schematic film playing like disinterested dream where characters ciphers, not individuals) finds photo among mementos (he psychic agent investigating what decimating elders – deteriorating ego in dream awa death – cannot) of young Chowders w/ blur-faced girl (vague fem presence coded homophilia, only late Ed reproducing + 2/3 others played by closeted gays; she also men’s unclear img of wmn in general), while Ricky drawn to boarded house (two survivors those who enquire, spurred by David-death: masculine "fall" precipitating study of reasons for it) where loony Gregory Bate + little bro Fenny (Bates, ha ha; not-David/Donald, castoff lower selves escaped from "mental home" unconscious + taken up in disused part of mind associated w/ archaic fem [younger inexplicably in slip]) who threaten to expose town (meaning Chowders, apparently, as villagers inculpable - larger social ramifications of personal drama).

Don joins Chowders via photo + own story (latter snapshot of archaic/archetypal pattern he relived): American Lit teacher (imaginative history of country Straub sez is "haunted") in Florida (nation’s phallus: predominantly male history in question) who jilted faculty girlfriend (mainstream/adjustment) for mysterious Dean’s secretary (Not-the-Father’s "woman": playing out oedipal drama from safe distance of fantasy) Alma Mobley ("+ the first thing she does is seduce him," quoting DHLawrence to class: living out literature, injecting self into fiction making ghost of self to realize own spiritual meaning; also, struggling author Straub projecting self into literary world), w/ whom he has torrid affair (during which she reveals nothing of self: writer’s failure one of understanding own material, "story" reflecting Straub’s throwing over classical psychological-mystery stylists for Stephen King’s visceral ethos) climaxing in his dunking her in tub (screaming emergence alerting him her mission 2B seen); wants to go to his hometown + meet father (son instrument in drawing 2 together, his overt "femininity" leading elder to acknowledge own buried), choosing David in NY instead (material moving up coast from psychological south) when Don gets cold feet (prefers elopement: need to keep her from primal-horde father he calls "hunter" desire also to keep her on subliminal dream-level – counter to her mission), as he finds when bro calls to announce his engagement (mirroring dad's funeral-call: film/life/story beginning again; drunk, effect of x-cutting as dialog w/ self, his effort to discourage marriage again hindering her coming to consciousness).

Next morning (back in real time; Don’s "ghost" story based on his reading Blurred Girl Photo as Alma: she spirit/essence revisiting men thru’out time, aka archetype [hinted also in ’89 Girl in a Swing]), JJ dies (passing of physician-body following governing Mayor-mind) after dreaming of pulseless gurney woman rising to strangle him (deathless repressed femininity stifling men; cf related scene in Lifeforce), she returning to "take a bite out of you" (men hearing her last words in life at point of death – return to drowned fem’y, their deaths opening door for new-male wimp heroes Don + Ricky); Chowders then spill beans to Don (not ghost story: genesis of male attitudes twd wmn): 50 yrs before (1929, yr of Great Depression aka the Fall) 4 of them fell for Euro visitor Eva (as in, um, Eve) Galli (full name after legendary expat Brit stage actress Eva le Galienne, in ’79 making film comeback in Resurrection, har har), who hooks up w/ Ed (she/Alma not-the-mater, "spectral" transition-figure on way out of oedipal childhood) before all convene at her house drunk (following James’s toast to "mysteries of wmn": each exploring own private Mystique) + looking for sex (communion w/ fem Other – all fixated on same wmn aka archetype w/i rather'n real wmn w/o), Ed accidentally killing her (or not: Psycho-style frisson w/ car in lake enduring quality of fem w/i despite attempts to repress it) to keep impotence secret (male domination based on denial of own incompetence – the Eternal Verity) + all driving body into lake (repression societal construct; presence of water at their deaths return to womb, from which will emerge New Man [+ Wmn]).

Ricky offers to help Don stop ghost (everyone’s remorseless tone in face of even own disquiet men’s unreadiness yet to address issue coming to consciousness), latter breaking leg falling thru Galli staircase (Exhibit #2 of man unable yet to ascend, + film’s deflation of trad hero) + James crashing into snowbank seeking help (murderous slipwearin’ kid in backseat confirmed bachelor’s unresolved sexual history taking toll), sending Ricky out on foot (completing journey: own, awa traveler Alma/Eva’s), who flags down elder Bate (who sez A/E made him immortal: future in submission to fem/-self), car flipping over (vehicle both reorienting + halting self) when Ricky knifes him (death deflating both Wmn as New Christ + fantasy of Christ in 1st place); as ghost closes in on Don (not survivor Ricky, fellow sitting duck till emerging from car: reborn, from similarly derailed uterus as Eva), cops arrive (returning conscious authority) to winch out Galli car (waking not serving to repress occult material again [as usual in such fantasies] but communally to bring it to surface), which Ricky opens (seemingly alone: confusion, or conflation, of personal + political) to release corpse (recognition of fem quality permitted to deteriorate in self; status of life at point of immersion never disclosed, only matter that she’s dead now), dispersing ghost (no heroic act of exorcism, only acknowledgment; virtual absence of declining action also giving impression story not yet over [film effectively dead anyhow when lifeblood Krige dismissed], point simply in revealing matter to viewer [resolution of Eva’s journey], who must finish work on own).