The Ruling Class

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

 The Ruling Class (1972) is a biting satire of the upper class in England and has the theme, also contained in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, that true insanity may be perpetuated by those that society has considered to be normal. 

 

The film begins with a gavel slamming loudly at a dinner consisting of members of the House of Lords in England. The effect is to show a harsh demand for order to take place. The Thirteenth Earl of Gurney (Harry Andrews) addresses the royal body as he wears eight commendations on his jacket to show the weight of his commanding position. However, the number of decorations seems exaggerated and lends itself to pomposity. He talks about keeping the memory of England “green,” that is, alive. The fact that the members of the aristocracy “were once the rulers” of a great “empire” just stresses the “memory” of what once was and an attempt to hang onto a greatness that no longer exists. He adds to this outdated vision by comparing England to something “feudal” and “ancient.” 

 The camera rides along with Gurney in his Rolls Royce as he travels to his outlandishly huge castle of a mansion while the soundtrack plays men singing “God Save the Queen” in bombastic fashion. The immediate thrust is to show the lopsided privilege enjoyed by the ruling class whose only qualification to enjoy such excess is that they are related to someone who lived long ago. Lady Claire (Coral Browne) wants a drink as soon as she hears of Gurney’s return, implying she can’t tolerate the man sober. Gurney throws his clothes on the floor as he enters so that his servant, Tucker (Arthur Lowe), must gather them up, which stresses the master’s dominance over the lower-class worker. Despite his advancing years, he announces he is about to get married again to Grace Shelley (Carolyn Seymour) because all his heirs died except for his son, Jack, who he dismisses with a look at Tucker, and we shall see why. So, he wants to marry a young woman who can bear him more sons.

 His bed has massive bedposts which again emphasize his entrenched station in society. He says his position as a judge doesn’t allow him to be “unreasonable,” so it precludes his being a lover. He implies that romance, and thus love, has no place in his life by that logic. He adds “a judge has no need for other vices since he experiences the control over life and death.” He is suggesting that his absolute power over others works like an aphrodisiac. That is perverse enough, but he says these words ironically as Tucker prepares him to obtain sexual arousal through asphyxiation by hanging from a noose while wearing a tutu. He continues to talk aloud alone after the servant leaves as he puts on a military jacket while exalting, contradictorily, macho manliness in his underwear and skirt. He quotes from Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities about doing a “far better” act, and that heroic line is also ironic given the present circumstances. He grabs a sword and alternatively slides the blade in and out of the sheath, suggesting a masturbatory act. As he relives the past, which, again, is the only place where British glory resides, he swings from the rope, but accidentally knocks over his ladder, pathetically hanging himself. The resulting image is one of privileged humiliation.

 Bishop Lampton (Alastair Sim, hilarious here), the brother-in-law of Sir Charles (William Mervyn), presides over the funeral. He quotes irrelevant passages from the Bible and sputters as he questions the circumstances surrounding the manner of Gurney’s death. He says there is a rumor that Gurney took his own life, and he must be reassured that was not the case since it would be a sinful act (whereas exploitation of the poor is considered excusable). Sir Charles, Gurney’s half-brother, describes what he was doing when he died, implying the man’s sexually gratifying attempt was not consistent with suicide. Charles’s wife, Lady Claire, suggests that Gurney was always artistic. That remark is considered blasphemy to Charles, because someone in the arts would be considered by the upper class to be far too irreverent and low in society’s stratified order. 

 Matthew Peake (Hugh Burden) arrives to read Gurney’s will. He left thirty thousand pounds (roughly $60,000 at the time which would be quite a sum adjusted for inflation today) to his servant, Tucker. After the bequest sinks in, the elated Tucker yells and then sings and dances his way out of the room, feeling liberated from his economic shackles. The Bishop says some people are just focused on being “greedy of gain,” but then he undermines what he just preached by wanting to know how much his church will receive. Peake reads that the remainder of the estate goes to his son Jack, the Fourteenth Earl of Gurney (Peter O’Toole, Oscar nominated for this virtuoso performance). Charles can’t comprehend why no guardian has been appointed for Jack (whose name takes on great significance later). 

 

Tucker, now feeling emboldened by his economic freedom, struts in smoking a large cigar and drops a decadent, large piece of pottery to get everyone’s attention as he announces Jack’s arrival. Jack walks in looking like a traditional (and historically inaccurate) depiction of Jesus Christ, with long blonde hair and beard, and wearing a monk’s robe. Sun from the windows comically bathes this eccentric man in celestial light. For the moment he seems rational, saying he will leave the monastic life and return to society with their help. He asks to pray for “love and understanding,” which Claire says she does every night and suggests with a withering look at Charles that it hasn’t been successful. Everyone gets on their knees (the Bishop, ironically, with some trouble) as Jack leads them in petitioning God. The fact that a royal person is called, “My Lord,” adds to the reason the unbalanced Jack thinks of himself as the reincarnation of Jesus. As he says that a prayer should rise like “incense,” the camera also moves upward. Jack then shows his delusions of grandiosity as his voice progressively becomes louder while he proclaims that he is “the King of Kings,” and “the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” all rolled into one.

 

The next shot is of Dr. Herder (Michael Bryant), who is a psychiatrist at the institution where Jack was a patient, stating that “His Lordship is a paranoid schizophrenic.” Jack may be crazy, but his words are no threat to anyone. Yet, these hypocritical Christians consider his love for all humanity to be a danger to their role of dominating society. Charles can’t understand why Jack was released, but Herder says it was a voluntary commitment. Jack was rejected by his parents at age eleven because, it must be assumed, he was different from other members of the ruling class. Herder says Jack was placed among “bullies and pederasts,” and Charles remarks, “You mean he went to public school?” Herder’s satiric answer is “Exactly.” Quite an indictment of the British education system. Herder thinks it would be a good experiment to have Jack back in society since it may ease his return into reality. He says that since he has been raised insulated as an aristocrat, a member of “the ruling class,” Jack sees God as the only entity higher than himself. When Herder’s accent indicates that he is not British, Charles’s dismissive utterance of “Ahh!” shows that the doctor doesn’t realize that Jack’s perception of the exalted status of English royalty is accurate. Historically, the English believed in the chain of being which placed the king or queen at the pinnacle of humanity, touching the Almighty.

 

Delivery men bring a large cross to the manor for Jack. He is spouting off to Claire and says that he is connected to the eternal. He mixes the exalted and the ordinary together, saying the “top hat is my miter, the walking stick my rod,” because he wants to widen salvation to corporeal experience. He interjects the Al Jolson line, “Is everybody happy?” suggesting that enjoyment, which is the goal of show business, is important in life. He says when he sees a man eating grass, he concludes that the person is “hungry,” while others will harshly judge the individual. His comment shows the different perspectives of the open-minded person and the prejudiced one, and how what some see as insanity, others might see as insight. One of the movie’s funniest lines occurs when Claire asks him how does he know he is God? His answer is both obvious and irreverent when he replies, “When I pray to Him, I find I’m talking to myself.” But, isn’t the Quaker belief that there is that of God in each of us that resonates here? The view that everyone is somewhat divine undercuts the concept that there are only a privileged few that deserve their claim to rule. And, thus, Jack, reflecting the essentials of Jesus’s beliefs, is why this mad man is a threat to the class system. He says that he received his revelation about universal love “outside a public urinal.” Another humorous line, but the mixture of the profound with the profane again illustrates how every part of life can be imbued with some greater significance depending on how broadly one comprehends existence. He says that is why he can feel what it’s like to be someone starving, accepting the “Nobel Prize,” or committing a violent act. He sheds his monastic robe, which symbolizes his desire to rejoin society to bring his epiphanies to humanity. He is wearing, appropriately, a white suit underneath. Let there be light.

 

Jack rejects his name and says he puts it in his “galvanized pressure cooker,” a sort of objectified mental image of what he wants to be rid of or not confront. His name limits him by mentally returning Jack to how others viewed him negativity during his upbringing as an outsider in the structured social system. Since he stresses distancing from his past, and also to be in conjunction with his current incarnation, he says that “the axe must be laid to the root” of the treacherous vine of privilege. He orders Tucker to burn his coronation robe and crown. When Charles objects, Jack says he must get rid of “Pride and riches, pomp and property.” His statement is in alignment with the teachings of Jesus, who preached that love makes all men equal. Charles notes that his nephew’s comment about doing away with personal property means Jack is not only mad, he is also promoting communism, which is the real threat to the wealthy.

 

Jack takes a walk with Tucker and as he shows his delusional side by acting as if he created the beauty of nature, he also illustrates his love of everything and everyone by blessing a grasshopper along with former FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover. Tucker tries to warn him about his family plotting against Jack. But he does not want to hear what Tucker is saying as he becomes rattled at the possibility of giving in to his paranoid schizophrenic tendencies. He says “that way madness lies,” which is from William Shakespeare’s King Lear, the story of a monarch who succumbs to insanity. It’s as if Jack has traded a malevolent form of mental illness for a benign one and doesn’t want to go backward.

 

After Jack runs away from Tucker, we have an internal monologue from the now rich servant who says that Jack is like the rest of his kind in that he believes only what he wants to believe. He rants about how he was a servant born of a family of servants in a nation of servants who do the bidding of the ruling class. He says he is really an “anarchist, Trotskyist, Communist, revolutionary,” and has been subversively spitting in the soup and peeing on the dinner plates. It is ironic that this man who condemns the rich says he is not satisfied with what he inherited, showing he wants to be more like what he condemns. 

 There is a hilarious visual of Jack astride his huge cross in the one of the spacious rooms of the mansion as Claire and Jack’s cousin, Dinsdale (James Villiers), Charles’s son, have their British tea. Dinsdale asks where Charles is, and Claire says he may have stopped to visit his mistress, which stresses the hypocrisy of the supposed upstanding upper-class members. Jack descends from his cross and spouts a series of Latin words chosen randomly from the Christian mass as his solemn voice gets louder but which ends with him comically singing and dancing “The Varsity Drag” in counterpoint irreverence. The effect is to undermine religious pomposity. He is joined in the musical interlude by Tucker and a couple of women, Mrs. Piggot-Jones (Kay Walsh) and Mrs. Treadwell (Patsy Byrne), who Dinsdale invited to get their backing for his political plans. They are there to ask Jack as the new worldly lord to attend a church gala. Jack, again stressing his blessing of the body as well as the soul, asks will he be “passing water” or “breaking wind” at the event? One of the women suggests that Jack should speak about “hanging, immigration, or the stranglehold of the unions,” all topics the film implies are what the bluebloods want to address to stifle any threat to their sovereignty. She adds that he should include something about the British way of life. His perspective deflates their exalted view of the island nation’s past glory by calling the country, “a fly-blown speck in the North Sea. You can’t kick the natives in the back streets of Calcutta anymore.” He tells them he will no longer speak in parables and will preach “love,” at their gathering, which includes to their shock the physical kind. When he tells them, “I will fill your bodies,” it sounds sexual as well as spiritual, and they run off after noticing the giant cross. Jack humorously calls it a “Watusi walking stick” which is in reference to the tallness of members of that African community, not a part of the world associated with European Christianity.

 

Charles returns and says to Claire the only way to keep power is if Jack has an heir, who will inherit all that Jack received once they declare Jack incompetent. He says the two of them can be the child’s guardian and thus control the family’s wealth and power. His statement about inheritance illustrates how the royal rulers have maintained dominance for centuries. They suggest to Jack that he should have a wife. He says he already was married, and when asked when it happened, he humorously says it was on “August 28th in the year of me, 1964.” He says his spouse is Marguerite Gauthier, the Camille of the opera, but Dr. Herder tells Claire that Jack was never married but he thinks he is. Herder says Jack took the character’s name from a work of fiction because she was a “martyr” for love, as Jack sees himself. Herder gives his clinical, although we will find faulty, analysis of his patient. He says that if everyone acknowledges loving goodness then “to love goodness is to love God,” so they will then love Jack. He sees Jack’s behavior as self-gratification. Claire finds his assessment neat, but wonders if it is the truth. He says their nephew rejects the name “Jack,” because that would mean he would acknowledge who he really is, and that if he ever does answer to the name of Jack, they will know he “is on the road to sanity.” 

 

At the manor, Herder asks Tucker if he thinks Jack is acting oddly. But Tucker sees all the aristocrats as behaving crazily. He concludes that his assessment is true since they didn’t have to earn a living, are rich and powerful, and thus can “do just what they want to,” as nobody can curb their extreme behavior. In effect the movie is saying that the members of the upper class are above taking responsibility for their sometimes harmful actions. 

 Jack enters with Dinsdale who questions Jack’s fantasies. He says if he is God then he should perform a miracle. He takes Dinsdale’s hand and points out the amazing intricacies of muscle, tissue, and blood vessels. But, Dinsdale wants a miracle as described in the Bible. Jack says that there are millions of natural miracles every day and yet the nonbeliever, the Doubting Thomas he implies, wants the showy kind. He says he will oblige and then humorously starts doing push-ups as if to get in shape. He says he will raise a table in the air through the power of love, which he equates with the strength that “makes the puny weed split the rock.” His metaphor again stresses wanting to show how the supposedly weak can become powerful. He acts as if he has made the table rise ten feet in the air, and the drunk Tucker says he sees it, but the others accost Jack, saying there is no miracle and no Marguerite. Jack cringes from this assault on his delusion, but then hears a woman singing the Marguerite role and then sees her in full costume deliver an aria from the opera. 

 

The event is real as Charles convinced Grace Shelley to pretend to be Marguerite since Jack will not give up on his delusion of her as his wife. Charles wants her to be Jack’s bride. She is Charles’s mistress and he offered her to his brother to produce an offspring other than Jack. Claire is incensed that he brought his mistress there, but Charles reminds her of one of her affairs. The thrust here is that these people who proclaim their morality openly are secretly breaking the social rules they foster. 

 

Grace is willing to marry Jack to become part of the ruling class. Charles asks if she is prepared to marry a man who thinks he’s God. Her response is aimed at the male ego when she says, “Happens all the time.” When Jack encounters her on the grounds he says his “dream” is made “flesh,” which continues to show his wish to join the intangible with the real. He playfully pretends to imitate a bird in a mating ritual that is consistent with his message of universal love that permeates all living things. He says for him, “paradise is just a smiling face.” He finds happiness in the simple wonder of the here and now. She matches his simplicity with her version of paradise contained in the words to the song “My Blue Heaven,” which describe a fire in a cozy room and includes that line about a “smiling face.” She sings the song and he joins her in another musical number.

 

Dinsdale confronts Jack with the truth that Marguerite is really Grace Shelley and that Charles and the others know this fact and that there is a plot to deceive him. Anytime Jack is confronted with conspiracy talk he begins to crumble, and here literally shrinks to the ground. He puts on eyeglasses, something God would not need, which suggests his vulnerability advancing on him. His fear of having paranoid schizophrenia take control of him makes him run off alarmed. (The phrase that comes to mind is just because you are paranoid it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you). He yells that Tucker’s revolutionary talk about class warfare is also poisoning him. He wants to reside in his grandiosity which he associates with peace and happiness generated from love and not self-serving agendas. He struggles to rise symbolically from being brought down to practical earth by shakily attempting to climb back onto his cross. 

 

Charles tries to convince Bishop Lampton, who is suspicious of Grace’s motives, to perform Jack’s marriage. Lampton advocates caution, advising to let God’s will play out. But Charles shows his self-righteous side when he says they can't wait for God’s plan.  Meanwhile, Dr. Herder no longer wants to get involved in Jack’s treatment after the charade concerning Grace. Claire, however, dangles a grant of money to persuade Herder to continue being Jack’s psychiatrist. Herder, too, is mainly concerned about his own interests, which in this case is to fund a study of “paranoid schizophrenic rats.” He shows her his animal torture chamber where he experiments on imprisoned rodents, and makes comparisons to humans. He does say that a man is not a rat, but Claire’s stinging comment is that only a man would say that, implying she has observed many men who qualified as vermin. He says that there must be experiments on humans next. She likens his ambition to those that want to dominate others by saying, “today rats; tomorrow, the world.” Claire seduces the man to win him over. The satire in the movie is aimed everywhere, even at the supposedly reputable scientific community. 

 

Jack seems to have regained his positivity at his cross-recharging station, as he blesses with increasing loudness a varied list of living things, including “the mighty cockroach” and “W. C. Fields,” and himself on his wedding day. The beleaguered Bishop hilariously stumbles through the matrimonial ceremony as Jack throws confetti in his face and clasps his hands in triumph when the Bishop mentions God’s name. The overwhelmed Bishop struggles to continue as the continually drunk Tucker irreverently interrupts the service. However, Charles pushes the wedding forward. When asked if he will love his wife, Jack says, “From the bottom of my soul to the tip of my penis.” It’s funny, but it again shows how he merges spiritual and physical love together. The Bishop yells “Blasphemy!” because of Jack's remarks and, following the exchange of vows, collapses on the altar begging God to forgive him.

 The reception is a sham (like the wedding), as pointed out by Grace, since there are no guests and it all takes place under a small tent with a few subpar sandwiches and “a deformed wedding cake,” which appears to resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Grace does like being called “Your Ladyship,” and promises that she still belongs to Charles even if he has given her away, which adds to the fraudulent feel. Jack, however, in his innocence, delights in Grace and passes out party hats. The film also breaks the fourth wall, as it does now when Grace addresses the audience directly while she is doing a striptease for her wedding night. Her decadent worldly experience contrasts with the childlike Jack who rides into the bedroom on a tricycle. He says “dignity has nothing to do with divinity,” which shows how he deflates any idea that higher status is not accessible to all because, as he tells Grace, “God loves you.” 

 

The next morning Grace is ravenous after Jack not only rode his bike but also her. She teases Charles by saying that he should be happy Jack was not impotent since having an heir is his idea. Tucker continues on at the mansion just because now he can be belligerent and insult his superiors. For example, he tells Herder that he is just after money and follows his “hypocrite’s oath.” Herder is angry about the wedding, but is told that he has his grant, which means he is part of the upper-class conspiracy. Meanwhile, in contrast, Jack is very sweet toward Grace, bringing her flowers, and doing magic tricks. He says unhappily that, “Love is my theme, and it frightens them, happiness my gift, and they run.” Some might say that is exactly the true God’s assessment of ungrateful humans. 

 

Herder conducts a series of experiments in his attempt to understand Jack and cure him. But he is confounded by Jack’s responses as he looks at ink blots and says they all remind him of himself, God, most likely because he feels He made everything. If he didn’t answer God, he would say they remind him of ink blots, which is called concrete thinking, not allowing for any other form of abstract interpretation. Jack sees God in all things and the outside world suggests nothing else is at work. When given a lie detector test, Herder asks Jack if he is God. When he says “No,” the machine registers that Jack is lying. So, he truly believes he is divine. At a group of severely ill mental patients, Jack is able to calm them down and get those there to sing a hymn about healing others. The film here is stressing its argument that those considered deranged may not be the ones in the institutions. 

Grace has become pregnant and is close to birth. Jack mirrors Grace’s physical discomfort because he is empathetic, whereas the unfeeling Charles shares no similar pangs. Herder tries one last experiment to “cure” Jack. A Mr. McKyle (Nigel Green) arrives at Herder’s request. There is a loud, crackling lightning storm going on which fits what is about to occur. McKyle is a mentally ill individual who says he has electricity coming out of his eyes and fingers. He calls himself the “High Voltage Messiah. The Electric Christ. The AC/DC God.” Herder has brought in a rival claiming to be the deity to challenge Jack’s claim of being Jesus Christ. McKyle is there to, as it were, shock Jack out of his belief that he is God. McKyle calls himself “Jehovah from the Old Testament. The vengeful God!” He fits in more with the impression of God being able to punish sinners with thunderbolts. He says he has obliterated false Gods before. His stance fits in more with the way the ruling class sees God. McKyle sees advancing the concept of love as the true madness since he sees Earth as a failure where “I dump the excrement of the universe.” To him, the planet is an infertile place not capable of allowing love to grow. Jack’s advocating universal love is in line with the New Testament that accepts all people, including the lower classes. Jack hallucinates the electrical charges coming out of McKyle’s fingers, and he cringes. He tries to gain strength up on his cross whereas McKyle puts his finger in a light socket to supposedly recharge. The scene so upsets Grace that she goes into labor with midwives attending to her. 

 

Tucker and Herder vouch for McKyle’s argument that humans are cruel and not loving. They say people are out for revenge, and Herder recounts the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. Jack is shaken when he hears these atrocities. McKyle says he is more in keeping with what humans are and he topples Jack and his cross. Herder pounces on Jack’s vulnerability and tells him his real name and position as the next Earl of Gurney. He informs him about the family plan to have an heir so they can declare Jack insane. As McKyle yells that he is increasing his power to millions of volts to destroy Jack as God, Jack says he is “splitting.” He envisions a huge gorilla dressed in formal clothes (the savagery hiding behind the façade of the English gentleman?) breaking through a window and tossing Jack about. As Grace’s baby is born, Jack calls himself by his real name, which according to Herder means he is cured.

 

We then see the cross burning, which implies that Jack is leaving his old identity behind. But a burning cross suggests the Ku Klux Klan, a threatening image. As the Bishop baptizes the new baby, Jack has his long hair cut and neatly combed, as he is going through a version of rebirth. But, it is a sinister incarnation, one which brings forth the savage that pretends to be civilized. 

 When they return to the mansion after the baptism, Jack, shorn of hair and his previous persona, points a rifle at them from above, pulls the trigger, but the gun is not loaded. He now seems to embrace a tool of violence. He still seems unstable as he stutters, yells inappropriate words, and then tries to gain stability. He says he “will learn the rules of the game,” which means how to be an aristocrat. After he goes for a walk, Grace admits to now loving Jack, but it was the all-loving version of the man she fell for. Jack shoots a bird on the grounds and tells the others that he was performing “a sign of normalcy” which is “to slaughter anything that moves.” The movie is saying that those in power who pretend to be civilized find it routine to destroy, even as a sport. Jack accidentally fires the rifle again and wounds a hiding poacher. The accident confirms the point being made about the upper class harming those lower down on the social ladder. Herder warns Jack that he must convince an official, that Charles invited, that he is sane, or Jack will be committed.

 Jack, wearing a suit and smoking a cigar, tries to impress Truscott (Graham Crowden), the man who must judge his sanity for legal purposes, that he is an acceptable member of the ruling class. As Truscott dismisses Herder’s opinion of normalcy because he is a foreigner (which again shows the British attitude of superiority), he undermines what he considers to be sane by snorting snuff and sneezing wildly. Jack knows about Truscott’s glory rowing days in school. He wins the man over when he starts to sing the Eton College boating song to show he reveres elitist tradition, and Truscott joins in as they pretend to row. Truscott asks Jack if he still thinks he is God. Jack says that belief is dead and regrets his wasted years heralding love when “our country is being destroyed.” He now preaches that there is a lack of “patriotism,” and “discipline’s gone,” which has weakened “the foundations of our society.” He rants against “adultery and fornication,” as well as “chaos, anarchy” and “homosexuality.” Jack’s advocating intolerance and repression causes Truscott to say that Jack has totally recovered, since he adheres to the frightening norms of the privileged class. Herder says Jack is now “a new man,” but the film’s premise here is that new doesn’t necessarily mean better.

 Alone, Jack is wearing masks that he removes, showing how he is hiding what he really sees himself to be. He admits to still being God, but he now is more like McKyle, which is God the Almighty. He now sees himself being the vengeful version of God by becoming Jack the Ripper (now we know the significance of his name). He pulls out a knife and stabs a stuffed animal to show how he will live up to his new role and recites a rhyme about the victims of the Ripper. 

 He rides in black like one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to a fox hunt, a custom many find barbaric at its base. When he enters the gathering there, one woman, who was talking about Jack, says, “Speak of the devil.” She is more accurate than she knows. When one of the women who visited Jack earlier reminds him of his talking about love, he is revolted by her words. The conservative talk there is against socialism, and Dinsdale says he wants to reinstate the death penalty. Jack endorses this view, saying, “The hangman holds our society together,” with the threat of punishment and fear for those who transgress the rules made by those in power. He says that they must “bring back fear,” and those in agreement among these oppressors shout “Here, here!” Jack voices the revulsion for the “common herd” of the lower classes that must be kept “in order.” He speaks of breaking people’s bodies in punishment, and then segues into a sadistic version of “Dry Bones” based on Ezekiel in the Bible. He changes the words, as he sings, “Disconnect dem bones, dem dry bones,” as he cracks his whip for emphasis. As others join in, they sing that they are voicing “the word of the Lord.” But, the context here is in stark contrast to Jack’s earlier belief that the Lord’s words advocate love. 

 

They then go off to do what Jack said earlier that the ruling class does, which is to destroy what moves, in this case, a fox. Piggott-Jones and Treadwell say that Jack is so much like his father, “it’s frightening.” They mean the resemblance is so amazing, but for us it means not only Jack, but all who are like him, are very scary. After the hunt, there is a shot of a long sword hanging on the wall of the mansion, most likely symbolizing how Jack has become a violent avenger. The sword is traditionally also a male phallic symbol, and the killer who uses it on women (think Norman Bates in Psycho) usually is substituting it as a hateful penetration of the female. It is a fitting shot as Claire follows Jack alone after a dinner. His newfound disdain for others now dominates him as he says, “It’s hard to look at people from downwind. They stink.” She comes onto him, which is a bit incestual, since he is her nephew by marriage, and when he asks if that’s the case, she says in a Cockney accent that she is. It brings out the Ripper in him, since the killer murdered women from the Cockney part of London. Since some have hypothesized that the real Jack the Ripper was a member of the nobility, it is an apt character for this Jack of the ruling class to adopt to represent the oppression of the lower class. But, this Jack is a Frankenstein monster that the elite have created and who then ironically turns on them. When Claire kisses Jack, he hallucinates that he is walking down the alleyways that the Ripper strolled along. He says to Claire, “The sword of the Lord is filled with blood,” echoing the vengeful God of the Old Testament, who punishes the sinful. She is a lustful sinner and so he stabs her. 

 

The drunk Tucker finds the dead Claire and instead of feeling grief, he rejoices that there's one less aristocrat, and praises the Lord. It is a comical statement given that a man who thought himself Jesus then turned to wanting to punish the lower class, but kills one of his own instead. The police arrive and Inspector Brockett (James Grout) finds Tucker’s communist literature incriminating. The jealous Charles suggests Brockett investigate Jack. Grace, who has grown to love her husband, is outraged. When Charles says she will never be a Gurney, she says she’d rather be dead (which turns out to be a prescient statement). Jack tells Brockett that he went to bed and heard Tucker singing which contradicts the servant’s statement he didn’t leave the kitchen until later. Grace said she found Tucker singing and dancing over the body, but Dinsdale attributes the actions to the man being drunk. However, Brockett sees it as the man celebrating Claire’s death, which he was. The other policeman, Fraser (James Hezeldine), grabs the singing Tucker, who has a suitcase and says he has a plane to catch. It seems quite suspicious to the cops. Jack starts now to quote only violent lines from the Bible. Here he says, “If thy hand offends thee, cut it off,” and the servant is the appendage in this scenario. Jack says that Tucker did it, but Tucker knows that he is being set up, and that Jack killed Claire. He says the upper class will not even stop at murder so long as they get what they want. So, the ruling elite here targets Tucker, a rebel who is against the rich and powerful. 

 Dr. Herder arrives at the manor and is sorrowful about Claire’s death. Jack is there and Herder ponders Jack’s involvement, but dismisses it, saying he cured Jack. He is so caught up in his pride over his work he doesn’t want to see the truth about what he has created. The two men fence with their walking sticks as well as with their words. Jack says behavior by a tradesman that would seem insane, “is looked on as mild eccentricity in a lord.” Thus, he proclaims the cruel double standard of how society judges the classes. Jack’s disgust for Claire shows Herder that Jack killed her, which he admits, saying Herder and her, “were fornicating lovers. Sperm dancers!” Jack reflects that old biblical bias that shows women are the vessels that seduce men into sin. He wins at their cane fight and checkmates him by saying Herder has no proof that he killed Claire. He says that he would testify that he is a hundred percent normal, and in a reversal, would say that it is now Herder, suffering from transference, who has become the person that is paranoid. Herder tries to convince himself that Jack is “normal” but then yells that he has had his fill of the upper-class. He looks like the one who is crazy now, as he repeats Jack’s jeering chant of “cock-a-doodle-do” while hugging the black cutout that denoted Claire’s body on the mansion floor. He now knows he has created a murderer.

 

Jack announces that he will take his seat in the House of Lords, and Dinsdale plans on getting elected to the House of Commons, so that he and Jack, who he agrees with on many issues, can work together. Grace is also supportive. Charles angrily objects, but Jack, now the head of the family, reprimands him harshly. They are all against Charles now, who finds himself alone in his fight against Jack. He suffers a heart attack, removing him as an obstacle to Jack’s ascension. On the day when he is to address the House of Lords, Grace says Jack has “star quality.” But, she wonders why he is less intimate, not understanding his recent disdain for sex as something despicable. She says he shouldn’t be nervous about his address and adds, “You’ll kill them.” He ominously says, “Eventually.” She says, “you’ll get around to me, I hope.” More foreshadowing. When she kisses him he gives in to his carnal desires and then abruptly breaks it off, feeling desecrated. After she goes, he wipes off her lipstick from his lips and starts growling which grows to a shattering crescendo that sounds like the full force of all evil coalesced into one primal sound.

 

As “Pomp and Circumstance” plays, a fitting song for royalty, Herder is now ironically among the inmates he treated, including McKyle, as he receives electric shock therapy. Everything is reversed, as the innocent Tucker is interrogated for a crime he didn’t commit, the sane Herder is now among the insane, and the demon Jack is found to be respectable. Jack is sworn in at Parliament, a murderer who ironically kisses the Bible (think Michael Corleone during the baptism scene in The Godfather). The chamber’s members complain that immorality is increasing, which is due to less punishment, including “flogging,” and “hanging.” As they speak, we see the lords in attendance through Jack’s eyes, which picture them as ghostly specters, cloaked in cobwebs, as if they are agents of the Grim Reaper. Jack speaks and he says that there is “no love without fear,” which the film links to the God of the Old Testament. Jack associates the Almighty with the “sword, pike, and grappling hook,” not the tools one associates with Jesus Christ. Jack urges that they must learn to use these grizzly tools again to punish transgressors. He says that the “first law of the universe” is that “the strong must manipulate the weak!” He basically advances Social Darwinism, saying the strong thrive if they exert their power. He urges using repugnant acts of violence against those he considers unlawful, and which he himself would be deserving of receiving according to his own rules for his committing murder. He is hypocrisy incarnate. And so, this killer quotes from the biblical books of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel which praise a lack of “pity,” and say they should follow the example of a God that is the Lord “that smiteth.” Here the movie provides an example of how some can warp religion for their own twisted purposes.

 

Jack receives a standing ovation as the members sing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” as the film cuts back and forth between the actual happenings and Jack’s apocalyptic view of the world. The film ends with a stylized scene from Jack's viewpoint where the beautiful Grace sings to him and he sees himself in the alleys where Jack the Ripper prowled. While in an embrace he stabs and kills her. There is then a shriek that mirrors Jack’s which conjures up for me Marlon Brando’s final words in Apocalypse Now: “The horror. The horror.” The last words we hear are of Jack Jr. who repeats, as his father did after his “cure,” “I am Jack, I am Jack.” The suggestion here is that the “horror” is hereditary and will continue into the future.

 

The movie shows the inverse of what most would believe should occur in a moral universe, but which may reflect the world’s reality. As Christ, Jack is rejected, but as Jack the Ripper, he is embraced.

The next film is Manhattan.

The Last Seduction

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

 The Last Seduction (1994), along with Body Heat and Basic Instinct, break ground in the film noir genre by not punishing the femme fatale characters for using male sexual obsession for their own benefit. These are scary women, but there is an empowerment factor introduced in these films that leads to female characters in movies like The Piano and The Contender, and subsequent films and TV shows, that attack the sexual double standard.

 

The film begins with a jazz score, which can point to the rule-breaking, subversive nature of the main character. There is an overhead shot of a statue of a large bird mounted atop a New York City building as the camera looks down on the traffic below. Is the fowl a predatory animal ready to swoop down on its prey, like the main character? On the office desk of Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino, who would have received an Oscar nomination if the film hadn’t originally appeared on cable TV) is a display with coins in it stating they represent the “One Ounce Liberty Dollar.” This shot may suggest that Bridget values her independence which money can secure for her. She is a tough supervisor whipping her male subordinates with an emasculating attitude to sell the coin sets. The scene stresses a reversal of gender dominance.

 

Meanwhile, Bridget’s husband, Clay Gregory (Bill Pullman), a sleazy doctor, has a briefcase full of prescription drugs that he is selling to a dealer. Clay (something Bridget can mold for her own purposes?) thinks he is going to be shot when the pusher’s henchman pulls a gun. But Clay is paid his money, although he must store it on his person as he picks up the literal and figurative “dirty” money from the ground. 

 Bridget is beautiful and sexy in her short skirts. She mostly wears dark stockings perhaps to don the standard color of the villain. At home, Bridget impatiently waits for her husband’s return from the meeting. She apathetically watches a news story about the deaths of individuals, which emphasizes the tone of danger in the story as well as Bridget’s indifference to what happens to others. Clay arrives looking pregnant (another reverse gender image) with his shirt stuffed with cash. Bridget calls him an “idiot” for walking around like that. Clay lashes out and slaps her hard across the face. Bad move. That violence against a woman immediately puts us on Bridget’s side in this marriage. And, it is the act that sets Bridget off on her darker war against males. Clay immediately apologizes and blames it on the intensity of the meeting. He flashes the $700,000 he has acquired and she appears to be won over by the money, which he admits she masterminded, showing her as the real brains of the operation. She licks a packet of the cash, an image combining sexuality with greed. 

 He wants to celebrate by going out on the town, but she encourages him to take a shower first, since he smells, as he says, of “fear.” Unfortunately for him he is up against a fearless female. She empties out a condom box (another item linking her to sexual power), places it on the bed, and writes a note. She has a talent which allows her to write backwards, which implies that she can reverse the usual perception of women as seen by society. It also may suggest that what she shows on the surface is the opposite of what she is planning beneath the deceptive appearance she displays. Her note, which Clay knows must be viewed in a mirror to decode, says they can’t celebrate without prophylactics, so she went out to buy some. It is meant as a delaying tactic, but Clay catches on quickly and realizes she has run off with the money. He is undressed and sees her dashing off in the street. He yells in a threatening voice that she “better run.”

 

Bridget had no intention of sharing the cash with Clay. She just used him as a pawn to get what she wanted, while he is the one committing the crime and putting himself in danger. She grabs a cab to an underpass where she has a car waiting for her escape. Before she drives away, she pulls off her wedding ring, showing how the marriage means nothing to her, and indicates her freedom from being attached to a man. 

 She stops for gas at a small town called Beston (not really the ‘best” place to be) in New York State on her way to Chicago, which is still twelve hours away. Bridget seems impatient and annoyed by the tedious trip. She eyes a bar where Mike Swale (Peter Berg) looks like he is in a funk as he drinks with a couple of pals, Chris (Brien Varady) and Shep (Dean Norris). We learn that he didn’t like living in this dead-end town, went to Buffalo, says it “didn’t work out,” and is back. He will not elaborate, and we find out why later. But his attitude makes him a prime target for the exciting Bridget. An old flame, Stacy (Donna W. Scott) greets Mike as she heads to the counter. One of the men acts like an adolescent, making a lewd gesture. Mike warns that the women living there are all “anchors,” suggesting that they will tie men down to this loser place. His words indicate that he still wants to escape. One of his pals asks if Mike has lost his “dick” for not wanting to pursue the local women, and it turns out to be a relevant statement when we learn what really happened in Buffalo. Mike is wearing a wedding ring and he takes it off (which echoes Bridget’s earlier action). The act indicates he was married in Buffalo, and also wants freedom. He wants to leave Beston, but tells his friend he needs to grow a new set of “balls” to do so. Does this suggest he felt psychologically castrated by what happened to him in Buffalo? 

Bridget walks in and demands a Manhattan (a place she just left but her sense of city superiority to this hick town is symbolized by her order). The bartender is hostile to this entitled female and ignores her in an exaggerated way. She then voices disdain for the demure sexual role placed upon women by saying who does she have to “suck” to get a drink. But her words are also sexually alluring so she works both sides of the coin (which is what was objectively displayed on her desk earlier). Mike shows shock but smiles at Bridget’s language, which excites him, since she is like a shot of adrenalin to this sleepy town. His friend Shep calls her “city trash,” and asks what Clay sees in Bridget. His response is “maybe a new set of balls.” He wants to reassert his masculinity, and he sees Bridget as an opportunity to do that.

 To recapture his manhood Mike gets the bartender to give Bridget her drink, and he pays for it. Her initial response is to tell him to get lost. He then boasts to her that he’s “hung like a horse.” She comically calls him “Mr. Ed,” and she quickly assesses that this handsome guy is someone she can use for her own gratification. She becomes the sexual aggressor, unzipping his pants and feeling around inside, humorously saying she wants to examine the goods before buying. They go to his place after she interrogates him to make sure it meets her basic standards of livability. Bridget wastes no time on sentimentality or being romantic. She is tougher than most men pretend to be.

 

The next morning, after they had sex, Mike wakes up and discovers that Bridget is already dressed and is raiding his refrigerator. She acquired a place to stay and food, which makes her sound like a prostitute. But she wanted Mike for sex, so she is not being exploited. She dismisses him as she wants to make a private call. She rolls her eyes at how easily he responds to her commands, like a pet dog. She eats some pie, which has the note “Love, Grandma” on its covering, and then uses the plate to put out her cigarette, which shows her scorn for anything resembling emotional warmth. She contacts a no-nonsense lawyer, Frank Griffith (J. T. Walsh). (It is funny that she says she is in “Mayberry” and Andy “Griffith” played the role of the wholesome sheriff of Mayberry on TV). During the conversation, we find out that they previously were sexual partners, and, fitting her personality, Bridget puts down his sexual abilities. She asks about her monetary liability if she buys anything with the money she took, and he says Clay would be entitled to half of anything bought before a divorce. He advises to hold onto the cash and stay put since Chicago is where she has a friend and Clay will look for her there. Frank’s advice causes Bridget to address her agenda in Beston. She coldly leaves the mostly undressed Mike in the other room without a word. This scene mirrors how she left Clay without his clothes on, a sort of play on getting caught in a vulnerable position, with one’s pants down.

She drives into town and her hard, ill-mannered ways contrast sharply with the townspeople who all say “good morning” to her. She does not return their polite greetings and even eyes them suspiciously, as if sincerity does not exist in her mind. She finds a job managing the sales solicitation department of an outfit called Interstate Insurance Company, since she has experience in the field. She secures confidentiality by using the male perception of a woman being a victim by saying her husband beat her and doesn’t want her real name on any official records. Her boss, Bob Trotter (Herb Mitchell) buys her story and notices her trick of being able to sign her name backwards. He doesn't realize that the fake name she uses, Wendy Kroy, is New York spelled backwards (if you drop off the “dy” of the first name). Again, we have her inverting the truth. 

 Coincidentally, Mike also works at the same company and runs into her as she leaves Bob’s office. She finds this fact inconvenient and tells him that he should consider the sex they had as just a fantasy because she doesn’t want him to mess up her “image.” She continually pretends to be something she is not for her own purposes. Here, she most likely doesn’t want it known that she is sexually adventurous as a small town will not accept a woman with that trait which is usually associated with men. 

In her private office she again calls Frank and tells him she has a six-month work contract. He wants plausible deniability, and doesn’t want to know where she is so that Clay can’t get him to legally reveal anything. After he served Clay with divorce papers, per Bridget’s directions, Clay asked about Bridget’s whereabouts because he needs money to pay a loan shark. Frank advises her to send some cash to Clay so he will not be so desperate to hunt her down. She is reluctant, and Frank jokingly asks, “anyone check you for a heartbeat recently?” since she acts so uncaring. She agrees to call her husband, which she does. Clay reaches for the phone and his hand has been splinted, the results of an encounter with the loan shark. She calls him through the operator so he will not know where the call is coming from. When he answers, he fishes for the location from the operator, but the smart Bridget immediately disconnects the call as this literal battle between the sexes continues.

Bridget returns to the same bar and maintains her sarcasm toward the bartender. She has the same attitude toward Mike. She looks irritated by his joining her by asking aren’t there any other bars in town for him to frequent. He shows he can be condescendingly witty like her by saying he couldn’t get any info on her from the other secretaries. When she gets pissed off about the secretary reference he interrupts her by showing he knows exactly her job position. She likes his edgy comment and they have sex outside the back door of the establishment. He, being more traditionally feminine, wanting more of a commitment, asks where he fits in with her plans. She plays the more masculine role again by calling him her “designated fuck,” and walks off, sexually satisfied. 

 

They continue having sex in his car and apartment, keeping her place off-limits, wanting separate autonomy. But he says that he doesn’t like being emotionally distanced. She is using him “like a sex object,” which she admits is accurate. Their encounters stress the reversal of the usual female/male positions (recalling again her writing backwards). When he pushes to find out what she is “afraid of” since she will not open up to him, she plays the tender female who has been hurt in the past and fears falling in love with him, making her vulnerable. Then she undercuts her words by flatly saying, “Will that do?” She says she likes her privacy which maintains her emotional sovereignty.

 

Mike isn’t enough of a diversion for her and she is bored in this small town, biding her time pending the divorce, and wants to return to New York. She calls Clay again, but she takes her lawyer’s advice and protects herself from Clay tracing her calls by quickly asking him to give her the phone number of the public phone outside. She is right to be suspicious because Clay has a private investigator, Harlan (Bill Nunn) tapping his phone. Harlan has an early version of a mobile phone and Clay gives her that number so Harlan can trace it. Clay jumps around to simulate being out of breath running to the outside line and opens the window to make it sound like he is in a public phone booth. When she calls he wanders away and she insightfully wonders why it’s quiet. She specifically says she is entitled to the cash because he hit her, but we know she was plotting to steal from him already. But her mentioning this act stresses her desire for revenge against the abusive ways of men, a tendency that she exploits for her own purposes. She says she needs to get back to New York and is willing to pay off the loan shark and Clay’s private detective, which he admits to hiring to suggest honesty. But Clay and Harlan didn’t deactivate the home phone line in the apartment and when it rings Bridget quickly realizes the scam and hangs up. After she phones Frank he assures her that the most Clay got was an area code, which is what Harlan acquired, showing she is in “cow country.” 

 

Bridget’s desire for privacy on her terms is stressed as Mike must apologize for accidentally walking in on her in the bathroom. Also, she tells him that a woman loses half her acceptability at a job if others know who she is sleeping with, another example of the need for her to put on an act of sexual respectability. When he touches her as they enter the workplace, in order to maintain autonomy, she smacks him and pretends to accuse him of sexual harassment in the atrium of the building, turning the female employees against Mike. Again, we have the appearance of the opposite of what is true displayed because Bridget must hide her real self to get what she wants given society’s preconceptions concerning women.

Meanwhile, Clay is giving prescriptions for drugs to sleazy visitors for cash. Harlan says he has nothing to go on to find Bridget. Clay is not a dummy, and when he happens to look at a New York poster hanging on his wall in a mirror, he sees the city’s name in reverse, which clues him into what name Bridget has used as an alias. He knows she is obsessed with leaving the farm orchards behind and returning to the Big Apple. He gives Harlan the backwards name of Wendy Kroy to investigate.

 

After five days Bridget approaches Mike at the bar, and he is still angry at her. She has moved to a townhouse and is actually willing to let him visit her there, a big move for her. He says he wants them to share stuff, and she actually starts to open up by suggesting what might happen when a person steals a large sum of money. He cuts her off, assuming she is just giving him an exaggerated story. She is the girl who cried wolf, told too many lies and now nobody believes the truth. He says being a claims adjuster, some clients share more “intimacies” about themselves in a few minutes than he has learned about her. He relates about one woman who wished she knew the sum of her husband’s insurance policy earlier because she would have killed him herself. Mike says you can learn a great deal about a credit report, and saw that the woman’s husband was a cheater because there were three credit cards he authorized for use by three different women. And, he had an apartment in his name only. The gathering of disreputable information piques Bridget’s larcenous and vengeful interests. 

 

Bridget gets Mike to go to the company after hours to make a list of clients whose credit reports show credit card authorizations for women other than wives or daughters and who hold separate living places in their own names. She wants men who carry at least a quarter-of-a-million-dollar life insurance policies as incentives for the wives. She talks about selling murder to the female spouses of these cheating men, but just as a practical joke. She gets one woman on the phone and asks about the credit card of one of the women he was involved with by pretending that is who she is talking to, while knowing it is actually the wife. The spouse starts to cry, saying her husband has cheated before. Bridget says that someone she knew had her philandering husband killed and that there are people who handle this activity. The woman actually seems interested and that is when Bridget says she is just kidding. Mike says Bridget is sick if she thinks what she did is fun, but she says if he wants to get closer, he must share in her messing with people's minds. She offers sex at her place as a reward, so, she is also messing with Mike’s head. He makes the call. Her phone scheme fits in with the theme of the film of avenging the deeds of disreputable males. In a way, the wrong actions of men have created the monster that is Bridget. 

 

At Bridget’s place, she asks Mike about his ex-wife, a guess on her part that he was married and wanting to make up for lost time. In a switch, he doesn’t want to talk now, and Bridget reminds him about wanting to open up. He says his ex, Trish, was someone he married in Buffalo and it was a mistake. He said all he wanted, until recently, was to get out of this small, dull town. She presses him about what changed. He says it was her, coming from someplace “big” and choosing him, which means he is “bigger” than Beston. She has made him feel exceptional by having him win the sophisticated, sexy woman contest. He doesn’t realize he is just a tool to be used for Bridget’s purposes. He does understand that she continually makes him know that she is “bigger” than he is. So, she alternately builds him up and lets him down. But, like many people in denial about a lopsided relationship, Mike believes that she will see the light and will come to realize that he is her equal.

 

The receptionist at the office tells her a “black man” (Harlan) was looking for her. She rightly assumes that since she is in hiding, anybody seeking her is connected to her husband. She admits to Mike at his place that someone is after her, but doesn’t disclose the details, wanting to use Mike as a protective buffer. She tells him she wants to carry out a murder of a cheating, wife-beating husband, a man insured by another company to add distance to the crime. She says the man deserves it, justifying the act based on the man getting what he deserves. She probably actually believes that part. She manipulates him emotionally, saying if he loves her, she will do it with her, and wants him to go with her to New York after getting payment. Mike’s first reaction is that she is sick and needs psychiatric help, but he has been mesmerized by her which is why he doesn’t permanently leave her or alert the authorities.

 

After Mike walks out to get some space, Bridget shows a moment of vulnerability, saying to herself that she is “scared.” Her instincts are correct again. When she gets into her car, Harlan gets in, too. But she has brought some pepper spray to a gunfight, and Harlan’s pistol trumps her weapon. She tries to make a deal with him to split the money, but he isn’t buying her ploy. She says the money is in the bank (but we have seen she hid it in her house), and gives him a phone number to get the balance. He gets back into the car after the phony phone call at a booth, but he was smart enough to take her car keys to foil her plan to drive away. He realizes the cash is at her place and they start to drive there. She starts to ask him if it’s true about black men having large penises, and says she’ll show him her ass if he shows his genitalia. He dismisses her at first, but she flirtatiously persists. There is a shot of her looking at the dashboard which shows the car is equipped with only a driver's side airbag. We know Bridget is up to lethal no good. She wears him down and Harlan releases his seat belt to unzip his pants. She revs up the engine and speeds right into a pole. The airbag deploys, saving Bridget, but Harlan is propelled right through the windshield. She has again flipped the switch of gender power by using the male fixation on sex to her own benefit.

 

Bridget continues playing the prescribed female role of victim to control men at the hospital where she is treated after the impact with the airbag. (It is a Catholic hospital because there is a crucifix with Christ on the wall in her room. The decor is ironic, associating her with someone who suffered). The policeman questioning her agrees to keep her name confidential to protect her from her abusive husband. He asks why the victim’s penis was exposed, and she says that Harlan threatened to “impale” her with his large member. Here she is also working male racial stereotypes to her advantage with the police to reverse the reality of what really occurred.

 

Mike shows up at the hospital with flowers, feeling very sorry he left her unprotected. After all this time he still is under her sexual spell and doesn’t realize that others need to be protected from her. He rightly admits that he doesn’t “understand” her. She utilizes the present situation to say that killing a worthless woman abuser is justified, and morality is subjective because the President authorizes killing often. She says she can’t stay in Beston much longer, possibly referring to his earlier statement about it being too “small” for him and her. She gets up to depart and when he asks if she has been discharged, she fires back that he is always following rules, tying him to the confines of the small town from which he wants to escape.

 

She calls Clay knowing that since he is aware of where she is she must buy some time to prevent further intimidation. She is right again because Clay has Harlan’s replacement, a local cop, Bert (Mike Lisenco), who he has promised some of the recovered money, sitting outside her house. He also threatens to expose her culpability in the drug deal if she tries to inform the police of his involvement. He says he is “interviewing sociopaths” who will delight in doing horrible things to her if she does not cooperate. She says she wants a week to wrap things up where she is before returning the money to him. She agrees to send him $15,000 so he can pay his loan shark some cash. He asks why she double-crossed him, and she says because he struck her. He rightly says that is just an excuse, but she says now she gets to hit him back, and adds after hanging up “hard.” We know she wants the money and her revenge.

 

She lies to Mike, telling him she is going to New York for the weekend to keep him away. Playing the typical unthreatening female role of housekeeper to disarm her opponent, she heats up store-bought cookies to make it look as if she baked them, and walks to the stakeout man’s car wearing an apron. However, she was also banging nails into a strip of wood. Quite a contrast in cooking stuff up. She has the wood attached to the straps at the back of the apron, like a scorpion concealing the stinger, pretends to drop a cookie, and places the puncture-enhanced object under the car’s rear tire. She later calls a cab and instructs the driver to take her to Buffalo. When Bert tries to tail her, the nails do their job.

 

In Buffalo, Bridget, a sort of evil genius when it comes to human psychology, suspects that there is something she can use concerning Mike’s marriage. She bribes an official to find out where Trish, Mike’s ex, lives. She visits Trish (the one-named Serena), but we do not see the meeting to heighten the reveal later in the story. But, Bridget’s smile shows that the information she has received is satisfying. Meanwhile, Mike, at the local Beston bar, finds out from his friend Chris that Bridget asked him about the one secret Mike had that he wouldn’t want her to know. Chris assumed it was about Buffalo, but he says he didn’t say anything. Chris, showing the primitive male desire to boast to other men about sexual conquests, tells Mike that Bridget offered to give him oral sex for the information. Mike, displaying primal jealousy, hits Chris, and gets him to admit he was the one who made a pass at Bridget. 

 

Mike leaves extremely upset about learning of Bridget’s questions about his past. He gets drunk and calls her, thinking she is in New York, just to leave a message. (Even Bridget’s phone machine message is scary, with her voice darkly comic, saying, “Don’t be afraid. It’s only a machine”). He says he loves her, and Bridget, listening, rolls her eyes again at what she most likely considers pitiable sentimentality. But he now sounds as if he would do anything if only she loved him, too, which seems to interest her. She starts to draw on a pad of paper next to her phone. She somehow knows exactly how Mike will act. He drives over there intoxicated, and bangs into trash cans, mirroring his reckless state. He enters the place and heads to the answering machine to erase his humiliating message. He sees that Bridget has drawn a heart with their two names inside it. He takes the sheet of paper, believing that she has loving feelings for him. Bridget is actually hiding under the bed, which both physically and psychologically indicates her concealing what she is really up to.

 

Bridget continues to stage her plan. When Mike thinks she has returned from New York he goes to Bridget’s place and finds a planted round-trip ticket which falsely indicates she went to Miami, which is where the cheating man lives who she suggested they kill for money. After letting him pressure her she admits that she killed the man and then shows money in a suitcase (the cash she took from Clay) that she pretends was paid by the widow to commit the murder. He is shocked and she tells him that his provincial ideas of morality show that there is no love that he feels is worth killing for. She is again hitting at his fear of feeling “small.” She kicks him out and then, alone, laughs at her convincing performance.

 

At work Mike goes to Bridget’s office saying he is trying to accept what is happening. She says she has money now and nothing is stopping her from returning to New York. She has driven him to a desperate mental place and he bites on her bait, asking what he would have to do to be able to be with her. She says they must have a “partnership of equals,” which means he must kill a man for which the wife will pay a large amount of money. She says that will be the end of it, they will be equals, and they can live off the money in New York together. She seals the deal with a kiss and sits in his lap, a man’s most vulnerable sexual spot. But, he says that he doesn’t want to be with her that much to be like her, and leaves. 

 

However, Bridget has another ace up her sleeve (an apt cliche here since it is something hidden to con someone). She writes a letter pretending (what else) to be Trish, saying she is moving to Beston and will be working at Interstate, assuring him nobody has to know their secret. The letter states she just wants to be near him. Bridget is tightening the noose around Mike, making him desperate to find a means of escape. As Bridget expected, Mike shows up saying he will do what she wants as long as he never has to return to Beston and revisit his past.

 

To stop the observing Bert from following her, Bridget once more uses sexual preconceptions as a weapon. She calls the police and says that a man in a car tried to expose himself to her little girl. A police car pulls up and detains Bert as Mike picks up Bridget and they drive off. She has written him a “cheat sheet” to memorize so he knows what to do involving the killing of their victim. As he recites the instructions that Bridget wrote we watch his dramatized actions. Mike thinks he’s going after a guy named Cahill who is in his apartment where he meets with one of his extramarital girlfriends. Mike has a gun and a knife and he’s supposed to tell the man he’s just there to rob the place. He is to get the man to handcuff his arms and legs and then Mike is supposed to gag him. After that he is to knock him out and stab him to death (no noise).  There is one extra act he must do which is to turn out the lights. She says it’s a psychological act that denotes completing an “unpleasant chore.” Of course one should realize by now that she has sent him to kill Clay.

Mike is supposed to make sure the victim doesn’t make a sound. Why? Because Clay might say things that would lead Mike to realize it’s a set up. Indeed, Clay is able to say he just writes prescriptions and has nothing worth stealing. But Mike knows Cahill isn’t a doctor. Still, Mike is about to stab Clay but then throws the knife down and says out loud, “I’m sorry Wendy, I just can’t do it!” Clay’s eyes widen and he yells behind his gag, with realization, the name “Wendy.” He hops over to their wedding picture. Mike removes the gag and Clay fills him in about the stolen money and how she sent him to kill Clay. He realizes she seduced Mike, probably by the way he sounded disappointed he let her down. Mike says the mailbox has “Cahill” on it. Clay concludes that she is close by so she was able to relabel the mailbox. Everything is a deception. Clay is very smart and can see the chess moves Bridget is making. He says that she will call the cops and frame Mike for the murder. But, he realizes that she would have to check that Mike did the deed. So, Clay says there must be a signal. Mike realizes it is the turning out of the lights that would let her know Mike killed Clay. 

Outside, Bridget, calmly smoking a cigarette (she smokes often, showing her cool by using the film noir prop), sees the lights go off. After entering the dark apartment the framed marriage photo slides to her feet. Mike, holding the gun, turns on the lights and she says she wouldn’t have turned Mike in. Clay calls it “bullshit,” and comments that the suitcase she brought in would support her charade that the two reconciled and the jealous Mike came to kill Clay. But, he is still in handcuffs. Despite what Mike has learned, he doesn’t want to wholly believe that Bridget doesn’t care for him and so he didn’t free Clay, who is in the way of Mike being with Bridget. She always is prepared for contingencies and uses the fact that Clay is bound to empty a can of Mace down his throat, killing him. Mike says she isn’t human, but she says she did it for “us” (substitute “me” for “us”). 

 

Bridget has a backup plan as she probably thought Mike would not go through with the killing. She tells him that it will look like he killed her husband and then raped her. She starts to undress. As he is ready to call the police she uses her secret weapon, Trish. We get a flashback that dramatizes what probably happened with her and Mike in Buffalo. It turns out Mike married a transsexual who was still anatomically a male, and Bridget uses slurs and degrading language to stoke Mike’s shame and anger. Bridget knows he will want to retaliate by proving his manhood. He is irrational now after what has happened and wants to get back at Bridget. He hits her and then rapes her as he says he will play her sick game. Bent over the sofa, she calls the cops. The 911 operator hears her crying out that she is being raped and that her rapist killed her husband. 

Mike is in jail and meets with the Public Defender (Jack Shearer) who tells him that the keys he had to enter the apartment were duplicates which the prosecution will say he made. He says they need just one piece of hard evidence. Mike says there may be one thing. There is a cut to Bridget, enjoying her wealth by being chauffeured in a limo. She comes out of her old apartment building and burns that one bit of evidence, the mailbox label that reads “Cahill.” She then drives away after successfully completing her last seduction.

 

Yes, Bridget is an amoral creature. But one can’t help but admire her intelligence. She uses the accepted stereotypical role of the powerless woman to satisfy her own desires and avenge herself, although unlawfully and selfishly, against male dominance. 

The next film is The Ruling Class.