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Turns out the diary of a mad housewife is Compendium Maleficarum, who knew? The wide-angled opening fantasy of the suburbanite in the kennel plays first as a regional response to Altman's Images, then as a brick of Bergman expressionism wryly dropped in Middle America. Supermarkets, car washes and cocktail parties comprise the world of the heroine (Jan White), seething with muted desperation. At home she endures the macho ennui of her husband (Bill Thunhurst) and the libidinous surliness of her daughter (Joedda McClain), an intruder in demonic masks stalks her dreams. "Oh, do I detect a hint of middle-class morality?" Domestic servility and countercultural swinging leave a void in the middle, a visit to the neighborhood mystic tentatively fills it, "the whole bell, book and candle routine." To George Romero, the occult simultaneously exposes society's breakdown and the limits of radicalism. Awakening to the haze of belief and fear around her, the kitchen-counter sorceress contemplates a new identity, conjures forth a younger lover (Raymond Laine), embraces her inner virago. (Donovan on the soundtrack as she shops for magic wares: "And when I look in my window / So many different people to be...") The dark art of women's lib, Shelley's "strange panacea in a crystal bowl." Much material from Juliet of the Spirits, The Graduate and Faces is taken stock of, "the Rosemary's Baby bit" is explicitly acknowledged. Weed and tarot cards and shotgun greetings, the ultimate escape is really a change from one leash to another. Anne Sexton's "Her Kind" has a contrasting timbre, the Day of Wrath strain ("just living up to the image") culminates in Martin. With Ann Muffly, Neil Fisher, and Esther Lapidus.
--- Fernando F. Croce |