To honor Samhain 2024, here is a spooky teaser from Cinema Symbolism 4 (coming along nicely).
In The House of the Devil (released on October 30th, 2009, this author’s 38th birthday), unsavory pizza turns up twice, foreshadowing and denoting the repugnant Ullmans (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov), who hire an awkward college student, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) to babysit a remote mansion during a lunar eclipse, wherein they plan to supernaturally impregnate her via a satanic rite. Their surname recalls The Shining’s Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson, 1917-2007), who likewise employed an eccentric Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) to babysit a remote hotel where fiendish ghosts roam its gloomy corridors. In the former film, Greta Gerwig plays Megan, who, while eating greasy pizza at a diner, arms and hands imitate Levi’s Goat of Mendes’ as above, so below occult kinesics since her initials are G.G. = 77, the gesture also seen on July 4th, 1921 photo during the closing moments of Kubrick’s fright flick. Greta was born on August 4th, 1983, a date with a Pythagorean reduced value of 42,[1] the Dark Mother obviously influenced her Ozian tour de force Barbie years later, released on July 21st, 2023 = 7, 777, 7. Easter egg: when Samantha orders a pizza, she is asked if she wants “extra anchovies,” a clever nod to the comedy Loverboy (1989), meaning the deliveryman would be providing a hell of a lot more than pizzas; in The House with the Devil, the guy bringing the pizza is a demonic assassin, keeping a Sauron-like eye on the babysitter.
[1] A/1 + u/3 + g/7 + u/3 + s/1 + t/2 = 17, 4 = 4, 1 + 9 + 8 + 3 = 21; 17 + 4 + 21 = 42.
Robert W. Sullivan IV 