Skip to main content

Roman Polanski's Mystery Apparition

I recently watched Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant.” This is a 1976 horror film that is more about character development and legerdemain than modern shock-horror. If you like classic movies, such as Salem’s Lot, The Hounds of Basquerville, or the works of HP Lovecraft, then you would enjoy this film.

Should you ever rent “The Tenant,” quickly track forward to time index 41:12. In this scene, the main character is moving furniture around in his haunted apartment. Pay attention to the left hand side of the screen when he places an item next to the mirror. You will see a woman’s body, with black matted hair and a gash in her shoulder. The mystery apparition is facing the character yet he doesn’t notice her. In subsequent footage of that scene, she no longer appears.

The woman who haunts the apartment does not have black hair and is never really shown in the film. This mystery apparition appears to be out of context. I wonder if Roman Polanski meant this apparition as a prop to “shock” the audience, or if there is some other explanation for its appearance.

You decide. Rent this film on DVD, and see for yourself. I like to think there is more of a supernatural explanation for the mystery apparition.

Popular posts from this blog

Host Species Barrier to Influenza Virus Infections

The title of this entry was taken from a paper written by Thijs Kuiken, Edward C. Holmes, John McCauley, Guus F. Rimmelzwaan, Catherine S. Williams, and Bryan T. Grenfell. This paper appeared in SCIENCE Volume 312, pp 394 – 397. If you have the gumption to really know how viral infections cross the species barrier, then this is the paper for you. It’s written as a “perspective” rather than as a technical publication, which means there isn’t a bunch of jargon in it. You can also contact the authors of the paper at t.kuiken@erasmusmc.nl . A particularly interesting quote taken from the paper: “It is well established that, as the proportion of susceptibles in the population, s , drops (as individuals become infected, then recover), the number of secondary cases per infection, R , also drops: R = s * R0 . If R is less than 1, as is currently the case for H5N1 virus in humans, an infection will not cause a major epidemic.” (pg. 312) The value, R0 , “is the number of secondary cases produced...
Read more

UNTITLED

I like people who can talk straight and take it standing. There's not enough straight talkers in the world, and certainly not enough in the USA. It seems as though our opinions are illegal if they are not in-line with the normative line of acceptance. That truly seems Orwellian to me. That said, though, this blog is more about race and ignorance than about the Thought Police. There does not exist a more sensitive and inflammatory topic than race . You should read the Wikipedia entry on race as it pertains to humans. It may enlighten you somewhat. The USA has two presidential candidates in its 2008 Presidential race. One of them is sort of a pinkish-white color, and the other is something of a brown color. The pinkish-white one has an American heritage with clear ancestry back to Northern Europeans. The brownish colored one has an Indonesian heritage with some suspected ancestry back to Africa, although he also has European ancestry. Call them whatever race you want. Where I have ...
Read more

The Spinning Brain

Intuition is a phenomenon of the biological brain that doesn't have any physical explanation. Many people experience intuition with varying degrees of success. There are a variety of theories regarding intuition [1] and some people regard intuition with much caution [2] . Yet, I am happily in the camp that has learned to respect my intuition as it has proven time and time again to be correct. Recently, though, I'd been thinking about intuition and soothsaying . There are many cases of people who claim to see the future, whatever that might be. Maybe there is something to be said about this mystical phenomenon. Maybe there is a real physical process at work that we just haven't thought of yet. To this end, I am proposing a theory about human intuition. This theory, though requires some background in quantum mechanics . Specifically, quantum entanglement . I'm not the only person who has theorized about quantum entanglement and its role in biological congnition and th...
Read more