Repulsion (1965, UK)

In director Roman Polanski's horror-psychological thriller (his first English language film) about a woman's mad descent into schizophrenia - the first of his so-called "Apartment Trilogy", also with Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976) - and similar to David Lynch's later Eraserhead (1977), and with elements from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960, UK) - its tagline was: "This is not a dream. THIS IS REALITY!":

• the opening image during the title credits was a closeup of an eyeball, and the slow pull-back from the female's dead-eyed stare (paralleled at film's end with a zoom-in), followed by the symbolic cracking of an aging female's facial mask in an upper-class beauty salon looking like a corpse (Note: also, there were other cracking images throughout the film, including the image of the cracking of the sidewalk pavement - and of course, the protagonist's mentally-deranged schizophrenic mind)

Beauty Salon Facial Mask

Cracking Sidewalk

• the main protagonist was shy, detached, and sexually-repressed 18 year-old London manicurist Carol (Catherine Deneuve) from Belgium, living in a claustrophobic apartment in Kensington with her older sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), and working in an all-female salon/spa
• Carol was very dependent upon her sister, but was continually uneasy about Helen's affair with married boyfriend Michael (Ian Hendry), including his intrusive toothbrush and razor left in a glass on the bathroom shelf
• Carol felt extreme discomfort and frustration while listening to Helen and Michael's loud orgasmic love-making through the wall next to her bedroom; the next night, she also experienced the same unpleasurable sounds of them having sex
• one of Carol's distressed co-worker friends Bridget (Helen Fraser) in the beauty salon commented about how she had contempt for "bloody men. Promise you the earth and then... Oh, I could cut my throat....I thought this one was different....Oh, he was a pig!...I'll tell you the sordid details later"
• Carol's insanity intensified when Helen and Michael left for a fortnight vacation to Italy, accompanied by troubling daydreams and the disquieting sounds of a ticking alarm clock and dripping kitchen faucet, and other nerve-wracking aural effects (the doorbell and ringing telephone, keys plunking musical scales on a piano, etc. )
• there was an equally-startling hallucinatory image of a crack appearing in the wall (she mused: "We must get this crack mended")
• Carol experienced disturbing, fanciful, hallucinatory imaginings of suspicious footsteps in her apartment, and the appearance of a hairy, brutish man breaking through her bedroom door, grabbing her hair, holding her down, and raping her from behind in her bed
• there were numerous shots of decomposition, including plates of rotting food with buzzing flies (an uncooked and skinned rabbit rapidly deteriorating), and three sprouting potatoes on the window sill
• Carol projected her fears of sex by brutally murdering demanding would-be Brit suitor Colin (John Fraser) after he burst into her apartment; when he first asked: "What's the matter? I'm sorry. I just, I had to see you, that's all. Honestly, it's been so, so miserable without you. I phoned and phoned! The ringing tone nearly drove me mad. Is it uh, is it something I've done?", she responded only catatonically; when he turned to close the apartment door, she beat the threatening male multiple times on the head with a heavy candlestick holder and then immersed his body in a bathtub already full of water
• in one of the film's famed sequences, a set of grasping phantom hands reached out to grope at her, and then numerous disembodied hands broke through both sides of her hallway, reminiscent of Jean Cocteau's La Belle et La Bete (1946)

Increased Hallucinatory Craziness
Carol Naked on Floor
	Grasping Hands Protruding From Wall

• during a second murder sequence, Carol's middle-aged, creepy, sweaty, and lusty landlord (Patrick Wymark) entered to collect the rent, complained about the "pigstye" condition of the apartment, and then proposed a sexual bargain: ("I could be a very good friend to you, you know. You look after me and you can forget about the rent. Come on. Just a little kiss between friends, huh, come on"); when he attempted to sexually assault her, she slashed out in a retaliatory way with Michael's straight-edged razor; she first cut him across the back of his neck, then hacked away when he fell to the floor

Carol's Slashing Murder of Landlord

• Carol was viewed obsessively ironing with an unplugged iron
• upon the return of Helen and Michael, they discovered a catatonic Carol in the apartment - lifelessly lying under her bed on the floor amidst the carnage; surrounded by inquisitive neighbors, - after being warned not "to touch her," he gave her a strange glance as he held her in his arms
• the ambiguous ending -- it was highlighted by a slow panning camera motion, and then a thematic slow zoom (a reversal of the opening zoom out) into the partially-obscured, sinister, old family photograph with a view of the same young, mad-looking Carol staring angrily away; the zoom ended with an extreme close-up of her eye; in an earlier image of the full photograph, she appeared to be glaring at her father (abusive?) seated to her left

The Enigmatic Yet Revealing Family Photograph
Family Photograph	Zooming In	Close-Up of Aloof Carol