Curtis Harrington was one of the few to successfully make the leap from experimental cinema into the mainstream; while I have watched quite a few of his latter efforts, this is the first among the former that I am checking out. Stylistically, it approaches the work of renowned (and contemporaneous) underground film-makers Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger. The premise of the 6-minute film is a very simple one: an elderly man appears from over the hills onto the porch of a cabin surrounded by boggy terrain; there, a woman sits knitting on a rocking-chair. He forcibly removes the wool from her hands and takes off with it
but, when it runs out, he is swallowed up by the slime (with the embroidery magically slinking back to its original position inside a jar)! The film, then, is possibly a metaphor for Man's futile attempt to cheat Death; incidentally, the non-professional actors making up this two-hander are none other than the director's parents!