STIGMA (1980)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Prior to watching STIGMA, I didn't have that much investment in the films of Jose Ramon Larraz, despite his current "cult" status. Of his 26 cinematic efforts, I had seen five, and the only one that stuck in my memory was his most famous work, 1974's VAMPYRES, which certainly garnered its popularity from its ample display of equally ample feminine charms. From some very slight biographical references, it sounds like he was a man frustrated with having got stuck doing lots of sexy-horror films, both in England and his native Spain. As STIGMA appeared about six years after his relative success with VAMPYRES, possibly this 1980 film, which Larraz both wrote and directed, was an attempt to upgrade his image with something more in the Hitchcock-Argento vein.

The main character is Sebastian (he, like everyone else in the movie, has no last name), and the "stigma" he bears relates, in part, to his possession of psychic powers, like a number of other horror-film menaces of the seventies. But Sebastian (Christian Borromeo) doesn't conform to either of the major two templates. He's not a pure innocent turned into a monster by society, like Carrie, nor is he a malignant murderer like the eponymous star of 1978's successful PATRICK. Furthermore, whatever psychic powers Sebastian holds are secondary to his journey to self-knowledge, even though the journey ends in destruction.

The first half-hour of STIGMA also suggests some indebtedness to PSYCHO in presenting a character with a mother-complex, but here too, Larraz does not stick to the Hitchcock template as closely as many imitators. Sebastian is of high school age and lives in a mansion with his older brother Joe and his unnamed mother, whom I'll simply refer to as Mother. The film starts with Joe getting the news that his unnamed father has died in an unspecified accident. Later Joe will tell his mother that when he went to tell his brother Sebastian of the news, Sebastian already knew. Mother claims that Sebastian was born with a caul, which in folklore grants precognitive powers.

Mother doesn't seem terribly broken up by her husband's death, for not long after the funeral she's being squired around by an older man, creating the strong impression that she may've been messing around before becoming a widow. In standard Freudian paradigms, the sexually aware male child begins desiring his mother and resenting his father, and Sebastian seems to conform to the paradigm, for he rants to Mother that he knows her husband died with a prostitute. Yet Sebastian doesn't entirely conform to the Norman Bates model, since he never demands to become "the man of the house," possibly because of his older brother's presence. But he is fixated on Mother's sexuality, sniffing her undergarments and listening to a recording he made of his mom's sexual congress with her lover. Following his rant, Sebastian displays what the script calls his "stigma," spontaneous bleeding-- though the blood comes from Sebastian's lip, not from the areas favored by religious Christian stigmatics. (Parenthetically, Sebastian's the name of a famous Christian saint who died after being impaled by numerous arrows.)

Yet at least one girl at Sebastian's school, Marta, likes Sebastian enough to accept his invitation to climb to the top of a lonely tower. Curiously, though Sebastian later says he fears heights, Marta is the one who tries to descend before reaching the top. Sebastian accosts and kisses her. She escapes, running down the stairs, but she falls to her death. Sebastian's lip bleeds, indicating that he may have caused her fall.

Yet Sebastian is not a "bad seed," as Joe later calls him. He consults a priest for advice, but gets no useful info. Then he and Joe are invited to dine at the apartment of Joe's girlfriend Angie (Alexandra Bastedo), which Angie shares with Olga, an older woman.

Parenthesis again: there's a slight succession that Angie and Olga may have had a lesbian interlude even though Angie's now hooked up with Joe. The sole evidence of such an interlude is that in the apartment Sebastian sees two photographs-- one of Olga alone, the other of both Olga and Angie-- and an erotic illustration whose two characters look somewhat like Olga and Angie. There are no direct allusions to lesbianism, but all of the scenes between the two women could be read as having either a lesbian or bisexual tonality-- more the latter since when Olga first meets Sebastian, she flirts with him a little. (Contemplating a foursome?)

During dinner conversation, Olga claims to be a psychic, and makes the odd remark that the apartment shared by the two women was built over a cemetery, a "necropolis" as the translation calls it. Joe expresses skepticism over psychic matters, and by coincidence, Olga mentions the phenomenon of stigmatic bleeding. Joe does not deny that the phenomenon takes place but attributes it to "faith." After the brothers leave, Olga makes minatory predictions about Sebastian.

At home Sebastian has an experience that suggests his being haunted, though he never mentions these experiences to anyone. After his lips bleeds-- possibly due to having encountered his brother's gorgeous girlfriend-- he has a vision of himself, hanged by the neck. He doesn't see that he's being watched by a female specter, whose name will later be revealed as "Julia."

Some time later, the second haunting occurs. Sebastian's at home, preparing to take a shower. But a trickle of blood comes out of the shower-head, and the nude form of Julia rises from the tub. In addition, a clothed female specter hangs upside-down outside the bathroom window. Sebastian can't get out at first, though presumably he does somehow. Though his lip does not bleed, the mise-en-scene imply that at the same time this happens, Angie and Joe are having sex.

Later still, Joe takes upon himself the role of head of the house, telling Sebastian that if his grades don't improve, Joe will sentence his brother to boarding school. That night, in what seems to be Sebastian's strongest act of telekinesis, Joe's driving his car when the brakes fail and he perishes. Mother is very broken up by Joe's death, and her boyfriend suggests they go away. She refuses, citing the need to care for the helpless Sebastian, who, curiously, she says is "more mine" than, one assumes, his father's. Later, while she sleeps, Sebastian intrudes upon her bedroom. Yet he doesn't evince sexual intentions, and his attitude seems to imply that he needs forgiveness.

He gets a "real mother" in Angie. Though she'd been hanging out with Sebastian in a friendly way despite Olga's warnings, now she completely believes that Sebastian caused Joe's death. Yet she seems less stricken by Joe's passing than offended that Sebastian wasn't honest with her about his problems. Later she'll signal that her erotic feelings as well as her maternal nature have shifted to favor Sebastian. But for now, she persuades Sebastian to let Olga perform a past-life regression on the young man-- though again, the script never mentions if he's come clean about his ghostly experiences. 

Sure enough, through hypnosis Sebastian experiences a previous life, where he becomes another young, wealthy swain, name of Miguel.  Miguel suffered from a tyrannical father and an aggressive sister, Julia, who seduced him but then deserted him to make a substantial, normal marriage. It appears at this point that Sebastian's stigma arose not from an "imitatio Christi," as with religious votaries, but from an "imitatio Miguel."

Sebastian never precisely confronts whatever ghosts are dogging his tracks, but he does seek out the house where Miguel lived and died. Yet this merely leads Sebastian to have more flashbacks. These experiences relate the rest of Miguel's story, of his slaughter of his entire family and his self-immolation by hanging. Just to leave one detail unreported, the flashback also discloses why the stigma centers on Sebastian's lip.

Back in real time, these revelations subsume whatever decency Sebastian possesses, and he succumbs to the demons in his soul. This descent into evil has fatal consequences for Angie, and possibly for Sebastian's mother, since he's last seen as having returned to his mansion. But the audience doesn't know exactly what happens after the movie ends, for Sebastian's last seen lying on a bed at his house, looking like a corpse-- appropriate, since he's become a resident of his own private "necropolis."

One last Freudian note: a lot of stories have been accused of using a brother's lust for a sister as a deferral of the primary "mother-love." But in the case of the Larraz film, it seems to be the other way around. If Sebastian's entire being is indeed just a reflection of his ancestor, then it's Miguel's sibling transgression that was primary. (Nothing at all is said about Miguel's mother, though the stepmother Miguel kills may be the second female specter Sebastian sees in the bathroom). Sebastian's real mother presents an ambiguous figure, but Angie, his prospective sister-in-law, ends up combining both maternal warmth and forbidden sexual heat.