The Hedgehog and the Pine Cone

[gwynnega]

Taking a break from coronavirus fear and Super Tuesday frenzy to report that my story "The Hedgehog and the Pine Cone," originally published in Lackington's and reprinted in People Change, appears in the new issue of Zooscape.

The other night I watched the Fritz Lang film Secret Beyond the Door (1947). Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave are great in it, and I was totally on board for a 1940s update of the Bluebeard story...until the resolution, which had me protesting: That is not how misogyny works, and it's not how psychoanalysis works either.

Comments

[gwynnega]

Thank you!

In Secret Beyond the Door, Bennett and Redgrave marry after a whirlwind courtship. Soon after, Redgrave starts to act cold and strange. It turns out he recreates famous rooms in which men commit murders, and there's a locked room that turns out to be Bennett's room, waiting until he can kill her! Bennett sensibly runs for the hills two or three times, but she always comes home to try and fix things. She figures out (just as he's about to strangle her) that his murderous urges come from a traumatic childhood event: his beloved mother (he thought) locked him in his room. But, Bennett tells him, it was actually his sister who locked him up. The second he learns of this, his murderous urges are gone, and the movie ends with them in idyllic bliss.

To which I say: Oh, come ON.

[kore]

But, Bennett tells him, it was actually his sister who locked him up. The second he learns of this, his murderous urges are gone, and the movie ends with them in idyllic bliss.

OKAY THAT'S REALLY NOT WHERE I THOUGHT THAT PLOT WAS GOING. That's about as bad as The Seventh Veil! (Which my mother loved, except for the ending.)