THE ATTIC (1979; d. George Edwards, w. GE + Tony Crechales)

Takes nearly 90m to reach (elevated) title location (TC Point of Terror taking similar to reach title moment; revelation there à la Blood Mania’s likewise "lofty" conclusion), librarian Louise (cf Killing Kind’s same-named similar) Elmore kept on ground level by demanding invalid father (à la BM, House of Terror + PoT: libidinous younger generation – now 10 yrs on – held in check by immovable patriarchal older the frustration also o/t anarchic unconscious in thrall to critical consciousness), sometimes acting-out Carrie-style by setting library + house on fire (à la KK-Louise's pyromaniac fantasy + Terry’s real-life action: implosive effect of repressed desire).

Begins w/ Louise watching Edenic home movies (replaying life at point of death, film à la PoT flashback + BM, PoT, HoT, KK + Impulse prologues, all mythic predisposition/waking-life situation 2B played out + resolved in dream; impossible angles + unlikely intimacy internal film playing in mind alone) of self + fiancé Robert (disappeared on wedding day: lost crossover potential – dream not necessarily Lou’s but of couple [or whoever filming]) while bleeding from wrists, film deathbed fantasy of ascent into madness/disintegration/revelation after freeing dream-self co-worker Emily Perkins to own unlived happily-married life (spiritual union + reconnection w/ lost masculine other) + exposing dad Wendell’s sham disability (illusion of own crippled masc agency: his jump from 2nd-floor window during fire loss of ego-consciousness at onset of sleep, faked injury guilt crippling Self’s ability to rise à la BM + PoT) before herself reuniting w/ lover(’s corpse: death-at-last yearned for thru’out film); surrounded by stuffed monkeys later 2B replaced by real (dream icons taking life as consciousness dissolves + fetishes fleshed out – the "preserved" animal-self), loosing grip on white one’s bloody tail (loss of virginity: bleeding gash) dying (expiration of Em’s own virgin-self, connection btwn Lou + film TC’s similar letting go in last film produced).

After beau’s disappearance 19 yrs before (actress Carrie Snodgress playing middle-aged tho 33 at time: pubescent loss of regressive masculinity, or intuition of own "masculine" power), became "head" librarian (consciousness divorced from body + w/drawn from world; in charge of vast mental records aka memories), new hire Emily set to replace her on retirement (sleep + death, Lou obsolete part of ego [feels "put out to pasture"] it will be function of dream to lend voice to before laying to rest) also in thrall to repressive parent (mother; Em Lou’s real-world other, her mom-oppression weight of Lou’s own exalted mother/adult self-image she has no hope/desire to emulate) + turning down offer of marriage to Californian (heaven/Hollywood for characters + production moored in Wichita, Lou’s lost "Robert Orrin Farnsworth" romance of wealth + success); keeps self liquored up (self-immolating dream-unconscious) till father barks for her on intercom (intrusive consc’ss keeping her from peace/sleep), as when masturbating later (similarly disrupting inwd, private action), to come for dinner (he "emasculated"/feminized masculine, later seen sewing [flag: past-prime America, keeping its youth/future in check]).

Fantasizes killing misogynist dad (all wmn "weak, manipulating, vindictive" [unwittingly describing wheelchair self] Lou’s own self-loathing talking) who yet valorizes "poor dead" wife (other women reminder of dad’s lost femininity, synonymous w/ crippling), later massages his legs (in incestuous league w/ own repression/recrimination), next dinner dreaming of smashing face in cake (2x cathexis of food + death/hatred disinterest in life, uncertain comedic tone director tripping over script/TC’s tragicomic attitude twd same); over lunch w/ Emily next day recounts library fire (refuting books 1st-line elderly wmn "loves" rejecting knowledge/insight in favor of passion, her act dying self immolating own memory; recounted earlier by gossip Mrs Fowler [Curtis Harrington/GEdwards stalwart Marjorie Eaton] mind’s own foretelling of Lou’s psychic function [ME fortuneteller in CH Night Tide]) w/ unembarrassed tone compensated by dad’s excoriations, he her also-crippled conscience.

At movies (cf opening + rebuffed Emily-request; brief heaven of togetherness degraded from origin; single shot of girl on phone doing scatological crossword further regression to previous-scene masturbation) picked up by sailor Richard (not-Robert) Watson, w/ whom she commiserates on feminization of Navy: dying wmn-as-victim, wed to crippled patriarchy; cf Witch Who Came from the Sea + her irrational valorization of same + Night Tide’s similar sailor, who woos similarly victimized "mermaid," bedding itinerant in motel transience of love + the flesh) + whose father also dying (he her "free" masculine other "If I were a man, I’d be a sailor"]), announcing as he mounts her "Your name is Rbt. It’s 1960. And we’re in love" (actress 14 then: when regressive masc’y similarly set adrift from core personality) satisfying self in fantasy in world that has refused her in life (making movie for self, exec-pro TC sim’y scripting own happiness [in any prev TC, scene wd end w/ his violent death, his survival here poignant]).

Emily buys her chimp (real-life counterpart to stuffed toys: archetypal images animated by unconscious) she calls Dickie (not-Richard, later dressed in sailor’s duds), to "allergic" father’s distraction (he antithetical to bestial/libidinous; vegetarian, as well [as revealed in Lou’s later "Bologna – salami – heaven!" comment, she sneaking the occasional hamburger aka lover]); calls Bureau of Missing Persons + visits travel agent (in search of lost self) nth time each, while Dickie finds fr’s $ stash ("animal" instrument by which reward gained) + later breaks dad’s glasses (debilitating the censuring consciousness) + grabs key (as above, latter eventually unlocking secret "upstairs" for poor deluded Lou).

Biking next day w/ Em (while romantic ballad on sdtrk, [including did-I-hear-that-correctly line "My corpse in the attic/With pages I’ve read"] underscores schoolgirl-crush nuances [park location quoting opening Robert film], lost beau not necessarily heteromance but lost connection w/ effective self), commiserates on similarly authoritarian mother (Em’s own stifling "adult," or critical consciousness, lack of gender polemics in all TC suggesting both sides out of balance + upsetting soul), offering poignant advice to get out while she can: mtg btwn ego + Self in natural Center, Lou means by which Em achieves "freedom"/consc’ss (in Jungian wholeness sense).

At dinner w/ Perkinses (uptight, widowed Mrs P Lou’s husbandless self in extremis, her cherished ceramics à la Lou’s stuffed monkeys [their hardness vs Lou’s plush: different modes of adapting to loss of other]), purposely echoes young David P (comic-relief noble savage à la chimp: last-character-introduced helpless Self [opposite uptight old man] – at mercy of mother + currently developing stutter [regressive masculinity again, difficulty speaking significant metaphor in last-produced TC script] – at heart of narrative labyrinth)’s accidental "Aw, shit" on breaking figurine (Lou agent of anarchy à la Dickie): 1st step in disengaging from prison of self; at home, discovers father upstairs (masculine aggressiveness coming to fore, "elevator fixed" à la path to ascension on confronting + besting own restrictive fem-self img).

On retirement (on verge of emergence: mind working against clock), asks dad for $500 he refuses (consciousness not where reward lies) then receives equivalent severance check (death: rewards of life of service, mail traditional metaphor for communiqué from unconscious) she uses to send Emily to lover/CA (soul’s ascent to heaven: freeing own pwrful-wmn-identified self, surprised travel agent’s "You’re actually going somewhere" double entendre) while back home dad rises from wheelchair unaided (Lou’s empowerment, also foreboding re-emergence of consciousness as mind progresses out of dream) to feed Dickie poisoned banana (again contrary workings of shadow as self tries to transcend, snuffing animal both dreamer separating from nuisance body + consc’ss squelching primitive, anarchic unconscious); despondent Lou mistakes lawn mower/gardener for Rbt (he à la BM + KK pool cleaners, similarly tending Eden), his gentle rebuff realization "garden" now truly inaccessible in absence of evolutionary Adam-counterpart.

In park (public Eden, action there social aspect of drama), father tips over chair + stands up (at top of hill: ascension/revelation prefiguring attic similar), causing betrayed Lou to rush him (fall down hill à la out window [cf Psycho Sisters’s similar originating + climactic falls], cracking open head final loss of conscious "authority"), search for his hidden $ (psychic reward secreted by obscuring consc’ss, she his ascendant soul searching for true i.d. – desiccated Rbt-corpse own effective lover-self) turning up little cash but attic "key" (father/consciousness possessing key to occulted wisdom) leading to discovery of missing Dickie + Rbt-corpses (her twin lost phalluses), latter falling from closet (cf Mania’s climactic corpse-falling-thru-doorway) on recognizing aged self in mirror (entire film acknowledgment of obsolescence of impotent/unregenerate self, in TC’s final film), she now locked in rm (in sim coffin: cf Mania’s "dead" pietà/character revelation + PoT’s frozen scream, scrw’s career bookended by similar insight), virtually wordless finale (last-line "I loved you Rbt" contrasting opening elderly wmn’s "I don’t know what I’d do w/o books" + scrw’s farewell to movies) reaching twd primal, pre-lingual truth.

Medium budget + Edw’s "sensitive" dir (+ everyone’s overly sincere acting, especially way-hammy 2 name leads, Snodgress + Ray Milland) ruins trash potential of script, leaving very strange hybrid as last TC testament.