SINTHIA THE DEVIL'S DOLL (1970)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Intellectually, I know that SINTHIA THE DEVIL'S DOLL looks like the bastard child of Ingmar Bergman and Kenneth Angar-- and only if said bastard was chained in a basement during its formative years. Still, I like it better than any of Ray Dennis Steckler's other movies, probably because I never thought he took any chances in his other endeavors. Steckler's films always just lurch from one incoherent incident to another, with barely any plot or character, and SINTHIA is no exception. But when Steckler produced this psycho-nudie for the grindhouse theaters, he did make the attempt to emulate the look of a hallucinatory arthouse-movie and even used the pseudonym "Sven Christian" to gull patrons into thinking he might be some sort of Swedish artiste. Yet the grindhouse distributors of the era didn't care about films as art, only how much female skin was on display. Maybe Steckler saw some art-movie that made him want to do better than his usual tripe. That he wasn't capable of producing even above-average sexploitation is a shame, but I still find SINTHIA an interesting failure.

Although Steckler had directed one previous psycho-film, 1964's THE THRILL KILLERS, and would direct at least two more following SINTHIA, the 1970 film doesn't involve the sort of physical perils typical of most psycho-killer movies. The title character doesn't even seem to be in danger of harming herself, except in the metaphysical sense of needing to atone for past crimes. We only know two things about Sinthia (portrayed by two-time actress Shula Roan), and Steckler tediously repeats those items over and over. One is that at age 12, Sinthia gets her first kiss from a boy and relates this fact to her mother. Then some time afterward, Sinthia becomes homicidally jealous of her father when he makes love to her mother. (She has one significant line, complaining about the father's attentions to her daughter). Sinthia stabs both parents to death with a knife (making her demurer than Lizzie Borden, I suppose). Then she burns down the house as well.

Though the law never doubts that Sinthia committed the crime, for some reason she's remanded to the custody of a never-seen aunt and uncle. Sinthia does have to continue seeing a psychiatrist, which apparently goes on for eight years. But viewers only see 20-year- old Sinthia being told by her unnamed analyst that he thinks she's cured. However, one last step is required before the doctor can release her from his supervision and can pronounce Sinthia capable of re-entering society, including her marrying an unspecified suitor. He subjects Sinthia to a hypnotic trance, telling her that the only way she can atone for her crime is to imagine killing her parents again, but with the alteration that she too dies in the fire she set. This bizarre excuse for therapy allows Steckler to make most of the narrative into an extended dream, the better to work in as many nude-scenes as possible.    

The first dream-sequence can be fairly termed Sinthia's guilt-complex, as she dreams herself in Hell, surrounded by semi-clad male and female devils who mock her for wanting her father sexually. This sequence ends with Lucifer ordering Sinthia to be whipped-- and then suddenly, with no transition, she's on a beach, where lives a couple: an artist, Lenny, and his wife Carol. The dead father's name is said early on to have been "Leonard," and the same actors who play Lenny and Carol played Sinthia's murdered parents. So, to be as generous as possible in following Steckler's rough logic, this sequence is Sinthia avoiding the psychiatrist's commandment to atone.

As the dream goes on, Sinthia relates to Lenny and Carol as if they were her revived father and mother-- though with some wacky differences, like having a brief lesbian hookup with Carol. Yet Carol, being part of Sinthia's dream, also acts as if she knows Sinthia, a stranger, plans to move in on Carol's husband. On top of that, Lenny takes Sinthia to a rinky-dink theater to see a play Carol's performing in. And it's here that Sinthia meets yet another fractious older couple, Mark and Liz. In fact, when the two of them stage a fight on stage, Sinthia intervenes to protect the "good father" from the "bad mother." It's possible-- though hard to be sure-- that Steckler intended to portray Sinthia deflecting from her original transgression by seeking out an older man who doesn't look like her late father. At any rate, Sinthia does shift her attentions, and dreams that she's marrying Mark in a church. Everyone in attendance seems okay with it-- until a naked woman, presumably Liz, intrudes and embraces Mark. Suddenly Sinthia's back in Lenny's arms for a few minutes. Finally, she wakes up, back in the psychiatrist's office. 

The shrink is waiting for her. Without even asking Sinthia questions, he seems to know that her first dream-fugue failed. So he repeats his earlier counsel: Sinthia must try to dream the circumstances of the double murder, but this time force herself to die in the fire she sets. Sinthia agrees to try. In moments she's back with her four middle-aged overseers, but now they sound like they're prompting Sinthia to do as the analyst suggested. Sinthia has a vision of her soul afire, and then she succeeds in returning to the death-scene in her home. Again she knifes the copulating parents, but she doesn't perish in the fire she sets. Lenny comes back to life to insist that she repents of her evil acts. At last Sinthia (conveniently nude at this point) concludes that "I must be pure once more," and Lenny tells her that she can only atone by loving her own soul-- whatever that means. 

\Steckler randomly tosses in a few more hallucinatory scenes, one of which repeats Sinthia confessing her "first kiss" to her mother. It's anyone's guess as to what this could have signified to Steckler. Then there's one more confrontation scene, with both Mark and Lenny claiming Sinthia while both Liz and Carol oppose them (albeit only with words). Then somehow this all moves Sinthia to re-dream the murder-scene, set the fire-- and force her dream-self to perish in the fire.

Sinthia wakes, the psychiatrist pronounces her cured, and out of the office she goes to meet her fiancee. Which of the two male actors from the dream portrays the fiancee? Take a wild guess.

As mentioned before, my wild guess as to this movie's genesis is that Steckler saw some artfilm that impressed him, so he tried, in his incompetent way, to emulate it. Maybe he'd read a little Freud, for it was Big Sigmund's belief that once a child became entrained upon the opposite-sex parent, in adulthood that offspring would always be looking for some sublimated version of the parent. So maybe sinful Sinthia overcomes her guilt, but only by accepting the sublimated version of her father-image into her adult sex-life. Still, it might be argued that the young psycho, rather than atoning for her terrible actions, gets a happy ending in exchange for killing her mother, since her Electra-complex is satisfied by a daddy-lookalike.