title: Shutter (2008 film)

text: Ben Shaw and his new wife Jane leave New York for Tokyo, Japan, where Ben has a job as a photographer. While traveling, Jane hits a girl in the middle of the wilderness. Later they start to find mysterious lights in their photos. Ben begins to complain of severe shoulder pain, and his friends begin to comment he's looking bent and hunched over, though the doctor he goes to see can find no cause. Ben's assistant takes them to her ex-boyfriend, who says that the lights are spirits, manifestations of intense emotions. They then go to a psychic, Murasame; however, Ben refuses to translate what Murasame says, claiming he is a hack.


title: Shutter (2008 film)

text: Later on Jane decides to visit the office building in the photo. When she gets there, she goes to the floor where the light has gathered, and takes pictures in the empty office. She encounters the spirit, and learns that the girl's name was Megumi Tanaka and that Ben knew her. When she confronts Ben about it, he admits that he and Megumi were once involved in a relationship, but that after the death of her father, she became very obsessive and clingy, and eventually dumped her, with help from his two friends. Jane is upset with Ben and decides they need to find Megumi.


title: Shutter (2008 film)

text: They go to Megumi's home, only to find her decayed body; she had committed suicide with potassium cyanide. Meanwhile, Ben's friends, Adam and Bruno, are killed by Megumi. Adam's eye is torn out while shooting pictures and he dies from shock; Bruno commits suicide by jumping from his apartment. Finally, Ben is attacked by the ghost of Megumi, who attempts to choke him. After nearly throwing Jane through a nearby window, Megumi stops, leaving Ben alive.


title: Shutter (2008 film)

text: After Megumi's funeral, Ben and Jane return to New York, thinking it's all over. However, Jane finds some recent photos in an envelope which still show Megumi. She then finds more photos, taken by Ben, Adam, and Bruno forcing themselves on Megumi. Ben tries to explain he felt it was the only way to drive Megumi away, as nothing else was working. This explains why Ben didn't want to translate what the psychic said earlier in the film. Realizing that Megumi was trying to warn her and disgusted by Ben's past actions, Jane leaves him saying she will not spend the rest of her life with him.


title: Shutter (2008 film)

text: Angered, Ben begins photographing the apartment looking for Megumi. After throwing the camera across the room, it takes a picture of him, showing Megumi sitting astride on his shoulders. The movie pans back to the hospital where a nurse is weighing Ben, showing a weight of 275 pounds, the weight of two people. In an effort to rid himself of her, he electrocutes himself. He is rendered completely catatonic and sent to a mental institution. The last scene is a reflection of the glass from the door, showing Megumi still latched to his back.


title: Shutter (2008 film)

text: The film received generally negative reviews from critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 9% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 65 reviews. The site's consensus states, "Being a remake of a Thai horror film instead of Japanese doesn't prevent "Shutter" from being another lame Asian horror remake." Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 37 out of 100, based on 12 reviews.


title: Shutter (2008 film)

text: The film was released March 21, 2008 in the United States and Canada and grossed $10,447,559 in 2,753 theaters in its opening weekend, ranking #3 at the box office behind "Horton Hears a Who!"s second weekend and Tyler Perry's "Meet the Browns". As of June 26, 2008, it has grossed a total of $47,879,410 worldwide – $25,928,550 in the United States and Canada and $21,950,860 in other territories.


title: Shutter (2008 film)

text: The film's $8 million budget and its almost $48 million worldwide grossing has secured the film as an extremely lucrative success.


title: Shutter (2008 film)

text: "Shutter" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on July 15, 2008. The Unrated Edition runs 5 minutes longer and includes commentary, featurettes, deleted scenes, and an alternate ending.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, (, ; 20 December 1894 – 15 May 1978) was an Australian politician who was the 12th and longest-serving prime minister of Australia, holding office for over 18 years from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1949 to 1966. He played a central role in the creation of the Liberal Party of Australia, defining its policies and its broad outreach.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies studied law at the University of Melbourne and became one of Melbourne's leading lawyers. He was Deputy Premier of Victoria from 1932 to 1934, and then transferred to Federal Parliament, subsequently becoming Attorney-General of Australia and Minister for Industry in the government of Joseph Lyons. In April 1939, following Lyons's death, Menzies was elected leader of the United Australia Party (UAP) and sworn in as Prime Minister. He authorised Australia's entry into World War II in September 1939, and spent four months in England to participate in meetings of Churchill's war cabinet. On his return to Australia in August 1941, Menzies found that he had lost the support of his party and consequently resigned as Prime Minister. He subsequently helped to create the new Liberal Party, and was elected its inaugural leader in August 1945.


title: Robert Menzies

text: At the 1949 federal election, Menzies led the Liberal–Country coalition to victory and returned as prime minister. His appeal to the home and family, promoted via reassuring radio talks, matched the national zeitgeist as the economy grew and middle-class values prevailed; the Australian Labor Party's support had also been eroded by Cold War scares. After 1955, his government also received support from the Democratic Labour Party, a breakaway group from the Labor Party. Menzies won seven consecutive elections during his second term, eventually retiring as prime minister in January 1966. Despite the failures of his first administration, his government is remembered for its development of Australia's capital city of Canberra, its expanded post-war immigration scheme, emphasis on higher education, and national security policies, which saw Australia contribute troops to the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation, and the Vietnam War.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Robert Gordon Menzies was born on 20 December 1894 at his parents' home in Jeparit, Victoria. He was the fourth of five children born to Kate ("née" Sampson) and James Menzies; he had two elder brothers, an elder sister, and a younger brother. Menzies was the first Australian prime minister to have two Australian-born parents: his father was born in Ballarat and his mother in Creswick. His grandparents on both sides had been drawn to Australia by the Victorian gold rush. His maternal grandparents were born in Penzance, Cornwall. His paternal grandfather, also named Robert Menzies, was born in Renfrewshire, Scotland, and arrived in Melbourne in 1854. The following year he married Elizabeth Band, the daughter of a cobbler from Fife. Menzies was proud of his Scottish heritage, and preferred his surname to be pronounced in the traditional Scottish manner ( ) rather than as it is spelled ( ). This gave rise to his nickname "Ming", which was later expanded to "Ming the Merciless" after the comic strip character. His middle name was given in honour of Charles George Gordon.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The Menzies family had moved to Jeparit, a small Wimmera township, in the year before Robert's birth. At the 1891 census, the settlement had a population of just 55 people. His elder siblings had been born in Ballarat, where his father was a locomotive painter at the Phoenix Foundry. Seeking a new start, he moved the family to Jeparit to take over the general store, which "survived rather than prospered". During Menzies's childhood, three of his close relatives were elected to parliament. His uncle Hugh was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1902, followed by his father in 1911, while another uncle, Sydney Sampson, was elected to the federal Australian House of Representatives in 1906. Each of the three represented rural constituencies, and were defeated after a few terms. Menzies's maternal grandfather John Sampson was active in the trade union movement. He was the inaugural president of the Creswick Miners' Association, which he co-founded with future Australian Labor Party MP William Spence, and was later prominent in the Amalgamated Miners' Association.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Growing up, Menzies and his siblings "had the normal enjoyments and camaraderies of a small country town". He began his formal education in 1899 at the Jeparit State School, a single-teacher one-room school. When he was about eleven, he and his sister were sent to Ballarat to live with his paternal grandmother; his two older brothers were already living there. In 1906, Menzies began attending the Humffray Street State School in Bakery Hill. The following year, aged 13, he ranked first in the state-wide scholarship examinations. This feat financed the entirety of his secondary education, which had to be undertaken at private schools, as Victoria did not yet have a system of public secondary schools. In 1908 and 1909, Menzies attended Grenville College, a small private school in Ballarat Central. He and his family moved to Melbourne in 1910, where he enrolled in Wesley College. Menzies was "not very interested in and certainly incompetent at sport", but excelled academically. In his third and final year at Wesley he won a £40 exhibition for university study, one of 25 awarded by the state government.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In 1913, Menzies entered the Melbourne Law School. He won a variety of prizes, exhibitions, and scholarships during his time as a student, graduating as a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) in 1916 and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in 1918. He did, however, fail Latin in his first year. One of his prize-winning essays, "The Rule of Law During the War", was published as a brochure with an introduction by Harrison Moore, the law school dean. In 1916, Menzies was elected president of the Student Representatives' Council and editor of the "Melbourne University Magazine". He wrote both prose and poetry for the magazine, and also contributed a song about "little Billy Hughes" to an end-of-year revue. Menzies was also president of the Students' Christian Union, a founding member of the Historical Society, and a prominent member of the Law Students' Society. He had "a reputation as an "unusually bright and articulate member of the undergraduate community", and was known as a skilful debater. However, he had also begun to develop the traits of pomposity and arrogance that would cause difficulties later in his career. His fellow law student and future parliamentary colleague Percy Joske noted Menzies as a student "did not suffer fools gladly [...] the trouble was that his opponents frequently were not fools and that he tended to say things that were not only cutting and unkind but that were unjustified".


title: Robert Menzies

text: During World War I, Menzies served his compulsory militia service in the Melbourne University Rifles (a part-time militia unit) from 1915 to 1919. This unit was not efficient and Menzies noted in his diary that training in even basic skills such as rifle shooting was sub-standard. He was commissioned a second lieutenant on 6 January 1915. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not volunteer for overseas service, something that would later be used against him by political opponents; in 1939 he described it as "a stream of mud through which I have waded at every campaign in which I have participated". Menzies never publicly addressed the reasons for his decision not to enlist, stating only that they were "compelling" and related to his "intimate personal and family affairs". His two older brothers did serve overseas. In a 1972 interview, his brother Frank Menzies recalled that a "family conference" had determined that Robert should not enlist. They believed that having two of the family's three adult sons serving overseas was a sufficiently patriotic contribution to the war effort, and that the family's interests would be served best by Robert continuing his academic career. Another reason for keeping one of the elder sons home was the health of their father, James, who was physically unwell and emotionally unstable at the time. It has been noted that, as a student, Menzies supported the introduction of compulsory overseas conscription, which if implemented would have made him one of the first to be conscripted. Promoted to lieutenant, he resigned his commission with effect from 16 February 1921.


title: Robert Menzies

text: After graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1916 with first-class honours in Law, Menzies was admitted to the Victorian Bar and to the High Court of Australia in 1918. Establishing his own practice in Melbourne, Menzies specialised chiefly in constitutional law which he had read with the leading Victorian jurist and future High Court judge, Sir Owen Dixon. In 1920, Menzies served as an advocate for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers which eventually took its appeal to the High Court of Australia. The case became a landmark authority for the positive reinterpretation of Commonwealth powers over those of the States. The High Court's verdict raised Menzies's profile as a skilled advocate, and eventually he was appointed a King's Counsel in 1929.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In 1928, Menzies entered state parliament as a member of the Victorian Legislative Council from East Yarra Province, representing the Nationalist Party of Australia. He stood for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, the sanctity of contracts and the jealous preservation of existing institutions. Suspicious of the Labor Party, Menzies stressed the superiority of free enterprise except for certain public utilities such as the railways. His candidacy was nearly defeated when a group of ex-servicemen attacked him in the press for not having enlisted, but he survived this crisis. Within weeks of his entry to parliament, he was made a minister without portfolio in a new minority Nationalist State government led by Premier William McPherson. The new government had formed when the previous Labor government lost the support of the cross-bench Country Progressives. The following year he shifted to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as the member for the Electoral district of Nunawading. In 1929, he founded the Young Nationalists as his party's youth wing and served as its first president. Holding the portfolios of Attorney-General and Minister for the Railways, Menzies served as Deputy Premier of Victoria from May 1932 until July 1934.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In August 1934, Menzies resigned from state parliament to contest the federal Division of Kooyong in the upcoming general election for the United Australia Party (UAP), which was the result of a merger during his tenure as a state parliamentarian of the Nationalists, Labor dissidents and the Australian Party.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The previous member, John Latham, had given up the seat in order to prepare for appointment as Chief Justice of Australia. Kooyong was a safely conservative seat based on Kew, and Menzies won easily. He was immediately appointed Attorney-General of Australia and Minister for Industry in the Lyons government. In 1937 he was appointed a Privy Counsellor. In late 1934 and early 1935 Menzies, then attorney-general, unsuccessfully prosecuted the government's highly controversial case for the attempted exclusion from Australia of Egon Kisch, a Czech Jewish communist. The initial prohibition on Kisch's entry to Australia, however, had not been imposed by Menzies but by the Country Party minister for the interior, Thomas Paterson.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies had extended discussions with British experts on Germany in 1935, but could not make up his mind whether Adolf Hitler was a "real German patriot" or a "mad swash-buckler". He expressed both views with an inclination to the former, says historian David Bird. In published essays in 1936, he called for a "live and let-live" attitude. He condemned Nazi antisemitism, in 1933 writing to the organisers of an anti-Nazi protest at the Melbourne Town Hall that "I hope that I may be associated with the protest of the meeting tonight against the barbaric and medieval persecution to which their fellow Jews in Europe are apparently being subjected". As late as July 1939, Menzies, by then Prime Minister, declared in a speech that "history will label Hitler as one of the great men of the century".


title: Robert Menzies

text: In August 1938, while Attorney-General, Menzies spent several weeks on an official visit to Nazi Germany. He was strongly committed to democracy for the British peoples, but he initially thought that the Germans should take care of their own affairs. He strongly supported the appeasement policies of the Chamberlain government in London, and sincerely believed that war could and should be avoided at all costs. after the visit to Germany in 1938, Menzies wrote that the "abandonment by the Germans of individual liberty ... has something rather magnificent about it". Menzies also praised the "really spiritual quality in the willingness of Germans to devote themselves to the service and well-being of the state".


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies supported British foreign policy, including appeasement, and was initially reticent about the prospect of going to war with Germany. However, by September 1939 the unfolding crisis in Europe changed his public stance that the diplomatic efforts by Chamberlain and other leaders to broker a peace agreement had failed, and that war was now an inevitability. In his Declaration of War broadcast on 3 September 1939, Menzies explained the dramatic turn of events over the past twelve months necessitating this change of course: In those past 12 months, what has happened? in cold-blooded breach of the solemn obligations implied in both the statements I have quoted, Hitler has annexed the whole of the Czechoslovak state. Has, without flickering an eyelid, made a pact with Russia, a country the denouncing and reviling of which has been his chief stock-in-trade ever since he became chancellor. And has now, under circumstances which I will describe to you, invaded with armed force and in defiance of civilised opinion, the independent nation of Poland. Your own comments on this dreadful history will need no reinforcement by me. All I need say is, that whatever the inflamed ambitions of the German Führer may be, he will undoubtedly learn, as other great enemies of freedom have learned before, that no empire, no dominion, can be soundly established upon a basis of broken promises or dishonoured agreements. Menzies went on to say that if Hitler's expansionist "policy were allowed to go unchecked there could be no security in Europe and there could be no just peace for the world". However, in a letter written by Menzies on 11 September 1939, he privately urged for peace negotiations and the continuation of appeasement with Hitler.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Meanwhile, on the domestic front, animosity developed between Sir Earle Page and Menzies which was aggravated when Page became Acting Prime Minister during Lyons's illness after October 1938. Menzies and Page attacked each other publicly. He later became deputy leader of the UAP. His supporters began promoting him as Lyons's natural successor; his critics accused Menzies of wanting to push Lyons out, a charge he denied.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In 1938, as part of the Dalfram dispute, he was ridiculed as "Pig Iron Bob", the result of an industrial conflict with the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia whose members had refused to load Australian pig iron being sold to an arms manufacturer in the Empire of Japan, for that country's war against China. In 1939, he resigned from the Cabinet in protest at postponement of the national insurance scheme and insufficient expenditure on defence.


title: Robert Menzies

text: With Lyons's sudden death on 7 April 1939, Page became caretaker prime minister until the UAP could elect a new leader. On 18 April 1939, Menzies was elected party leader over three other candidates. He was sworn in as prime minister eight days later.


title: Robert Menzies

text: A crisis arose almost immediately, however, when Page refused to serve under him. In an extraordinary personal attack in the House, Page accused Menzies of cowardice for not having enlisted in the War, and of treachery to Lyons. Menzies then formed a minority government. When Page was deposed as Country Party leader a few months later, Menzies took the Country Party back into his government in a full-fledged Coalition, with Page's successor, Archie Cameron, as number-two-man in the government. On 3 September 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany due to its invasion of Poland on 1 September, leading to the start of World War II. Menzies responded immediately by also declaring Australia to be at war in support of Britain, and delivered a radio broadcast to the nation on that same day, which began "Fellow Australians. It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war." A couple of days after the declaration, Menzies recalled parliament and asked for general support as the government faced the enormous responsibility of leading the nation in war time. Page and Curtin, as party leaders, pledged their support for all that needed to be done for the defence of the country.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Thus, Menzies at the age of 44 found himself a wartime leader of a small nation of 7 million people. He was especially worried about the military threat from Japan. Australia had very small forces, and depended on Britain for defence against the looming threat of the Japanese Empire, with its 100 million people, a very powerful Army and Navy and an aggressive foreign policy. He hoped that a policy of appeasement would head off a war with Japan, and repeatedly pressured London. Menzies did his best to rally the country, but the bitter memories of the disillusionment which followed World War I made his task difficult; this was compounded by his lack of a service record. Furthermore, as attorney-general and deputy prime minister, he had made an official visit to Germany in 1938, when the official policy of the Australian government, supported by the Opposition, was strong support for Neville Chamberlain's policy of Appeasement. Menzies, then also holding the responsibility for the Department of Munitions created a couple of months earlier, led the Coalition into the 1940 election and suffered an eight-seat swing, losing the slender majority he had inherited from Lyons. The result was a hung parliament, with the Coalition two seats short of a majority. Menzies managed to form a minority government with the support of two independent MPs, Arthur Coles and Alex Wilson. Labor, led by John Curtin, refused Menzies's offer to form a war coalition, and opposed using the Australian army for a European war, preferring to keep it at home to defend Australia. Labor agreed to participate in the Advisory War Council. Menzies sent the bulk of the army to help the British in the Middle East and Singapore, and told Winston Churchill the Royal Navy needed to strengthen its Far Eastern forces.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Just before the September 1940 election, on 13 August 1940, three members of Menzies's cabinet had been killed in an air crash—the Canberra air disaster—along with General Brudenell White, Chief of the General Staff; two other passengers and four crew. This event weakened Menzies's government.


title: Robert Menzies

text: From 24 January 1941, Menzies spent four months in Britain discussing war strategy with Churchill and other Empire leaders, while his position at home deteriorated. "En route" to the UK he took the opportunity to stop over to visit Australian troops serving in the North African Campaign. Professor David Day, an Australian historian, has posited that Menzies might have replaced Churchill as British prime minister, and that he had some support in the UK for this. Support came from Viscount Astor, Lord Beaverbrook and former WWI Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who were trenchant critics of Churchill's purportedly autocratic style, and favoured replacing him with Menzies, who had some public support for staying on in the War Cabinet for the duration, which was strongly backed by Sir Maurice Hankey, former WWI Colonel and member of both the WWI and WWII War Cabinets. Writer Gerard Henderson has rejected this theory, but history professors Judith Brett and Joan Beaumont support Day, as does Menzies's daughter, Heather Henderson, who claimed Lady Astor "even offered all her sapphires if he would stay on in England".


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies came home to a hero's welcome. However, his support in Parliament was less certain. Not only did some Coalition MPs doubt his popularity in the electorate, but they also believed that a national unity government was the only long-term solution. Matters came to a head in August, when the cabinet voted to have Menzies return to London to speak for Australia's interests in the War Cabinet. However, since Labor and the Coalition were level (both sides had 36 MPs), Menzies needed the support of the Labor Party in order to travel to Britain. Amid rumours that Menzies's real intention was to launch a political career in Britain, Labor insisted that the crisis was too dire for Menzies to leave the country.


title: Robert Menzies

text: With Labor unwilling to support him travelling to London and his position within his own party room weakening, Menzies called an emergency cabinet meeting. He announced his intention to resign and advise the Governor-General, Lord Gowrie to commission Curtin as Prime Minister. The Cabinet instead urged Menzies to make another overture to Labor for a national unity government, but Labor turned the offer down. With his position now untenable, Menzies resigned the prime ministership on 27 August 1941.


title: Robert Menzies

text: A joint UAP-Country Party conference chose Country Party leader Arthur Fadden as Coalition leader—and hence Prime Minister—even though the Country Party was the junior partner in the Coalition. Menzies was bitter about this treatment from his colleagues, and nearly left politics, but was persuaded to become Minister for Defence Co-ordination in Fadden's cabinet. The Fadden Government lasted only 40 days before being defeated on a confidence motion. On 9 October 1941, Menzies resigned as leader of the UAP after failing to convince his colleagues that he should become Leader of the Opposition in preference to Fadden. He was replaced as UAP leader by former prime minister Billy Hughes, who was 79 years old at the time.


title: Robert Menzies

text: During his time in the political wilderness Menzies built up a large popular base of support by his frequent appeals, often by radio, to ordinary non-elite working citizens whom he called 'the Forgotten People'—especially those who were not suburban and rich or members of organised labour. From November 1941, he began a series of weekly radio broadcasts reaching audiences across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. A selection of these talks was edited into a book bearing the title of his most famous address, "The Forgotten People", delivered on 22 May 1942. In this landmark address, Menzies appealed to his support base:


title: Robert Menzies

text: I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found either in great luxury hotels and the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of the organised masses. It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised, and who, whatever their individual religious conviction or dogma, see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race. The home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies himself described "The Forgotten People" collection as 'a summarised political philosophy'. Representing the blueprint of his liberal philosophy, "The Forgotten People" encompassed a wide range of topics including Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, the control of the war, the role of women in war and peace, the future of capitalism, the nature of democracy and especially the role of the middle class, 'the forgotten people' of the title and their importance to Australia's future as a democracy. The addresses frequently emphasised the values which Menzies regarded as critical to shaping Australia's wartime and postwar policies. These were essentially the principles of liberalism: individual freedom, personal and community responsibility, the rule of law, parliamentary government, economic prosperity and progress based on private enterprise and reward for effort.


title: Robert Menzies

text: After losing the UAP leadership, Menzies moved to the backbench. Besides his overall sense of duty, the war would have made it nearly impossible for him to return to his legal practice in any event. Labor won a crushing victory at the 1943 election, taking 49 of 74 seats and 58.2 percent of the two-party-preferred vote as well as a Senate majority. The Coalition, which had sunk into near-paralysis in opposition, was knocked down to only 19 seats. Hughes resigned as UAP leader, and Menzies was elected as his successor on the second ballot, defeating three other candidates. The UAP also voted to end the joint opposition arrangement with the Country Party, allowing Menzies to replace Fadden as opposition leader.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Soon after his return, Menzies concluded that the UAP was at the end of its useful life. Menzies called a conference of anti-Labor parties with meetings in Canberra on 13 October 1944 and again in Albury (NSW) in December 1944. At the Canberra conference, the fourteen parties, with the UAP as the nucleus, decided to merge as one new non-Labor party—the Liberal Party of Australia. The organisational structure and constitutional framework of the new party was formulated at the Albury Conference. Officially launched at the Sydney Town Hall on 31 August 1945, the Menzies-led Liberal Party of Australia inherited the UAP's role as senior partner in the Coalition. Curtin died in office in 1945 and was succeeded by Ben Chifley.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The reconfigured Coalition faced its first national test in the 1946 election. It won 26 of 74 seats on 45.9 percent of the two-party vote, and remained in minority in the Senate. Despite winning a seven-seat swing, the Coalition failed to make a serious dent in Labor's large majority.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Over the next few years, however, the anti-communist atmosphere of the early Cold War began to erode Labor's support. In 1947, Chifley announced that he intended to nationalise Australia's private banks, arousing intense middle-class opposition which Menzies successfully exploited. In addition to campaigning against Chifley's bank nationalization proposal, Menzies successfully led the 'No' case for a referendum by the Chifley government in 1948 to extend commonwealth wartime powers to control rents and prices. In the election campaign of 1949, Menzies and his party were resolved to stamp out the communist movement and to fight in the interests of free enterprise against what they termed as Labor's 'socialistic measures'. If Menzies won office, he pledged to counter inflation, extend child endowment and end petrol rationing. With the lower house enlarged from 74 to 121 seats, the Menzies Liberal/Country Coalition won the 1949 election with 74 House seats and 51.0 percent of the two-party vote but remained in minority in the Senate. Whatever else Menzies's victory represented, his anti-communism and advocacy for free enterprise had captured a new and formidable support base in postwar Australian society.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The spectre of communism and the threat it was deemed to pose to national security became the dominant preoccupation of the new government in its first phase. Menzies introduced legislation in 1950 to ban the Communist Party, hoping that the Senate would reject it and give him a trigger for a double dissolution election, but Labor let the bill pass. It was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the High Court. But when the Senate rejected his banking bill, he called a double dissolution election. At that election, the Coalition suffered a five-seat swing, winning 69 of 121 seats and 50.7 percent of the two-party vote. However, it won six seats in the Senate, giving it control of both chambers. Later in 1951 Menzies decided to hold a referendum on the question of changing the Constitution to permit the parliament to make laws in respect of Communists and Communism where he said this was necessary for the security of the Commonwealth. If passed, this would have given a government the power to introduce a bill proposing to ban the Communist Party. Chifley died a few months after the 1951 election. The new Labor leader, H. V. Evatt, campaigned against the referendum on civil liberties grounds, and it was narrowly defeated. Menzies sent Australian troops to the Korean War. Economic conditions deteriorated in the early 1950s and Labor was confident of winning the 1954 election. Shortly before the election, Menzies announced that a Soviet diplomat in Australia Vladimir Petrov, had defected, and that there was evidence of a Soviet spy ring in Australia, including members of Evatt's staff. Evatt felt compelled to state on the floor of Parliament that he'd personally written to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who assured him there were no Soviet spy rings in Australia, bringing the House into silence momentarily before both sides of Parliament laughed at Evatt's naivety.


title: Robert Menzies

text: This Cold War scare was claimed by some to enable the Menzies government to win the election. The Menzies government won 64 of 121 seats and 49.3 percent of the two-party vote. Evatt accused Menzies of arranging Petrov's defection. The aftermath of the 1954 election caused a split in the Labor Party, with several anti-Communist members from Victoria defecting to form the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist). The new party directed its preferences to the Liberals, with the Menzies government re-elected with an increased majority at the 1955 election. Menzies was re-elected almost as easily at the 1958 election, again with the help of preferences from what had become the Democratic Labor Party.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The Menzies era saw immense regional changes, with post-war reconstruction and the withdrawal of European Powers and the British Empire from the Far East (including independence for India and Indonesia). In response to these geopolitical developments, the Menzies government maintained strong ties with Australia's traditional allies such as Britain and the United States while also reorienting Australia's foreign policy focus towards the Asia Pacific.


title: Robert Menzies

text: With his first Minister for External Affairs, Percy Spender, the Menzies government signed the ANZUS treaty in San Francisco on 1 September 1951. Menzies later told parliament that this security pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States was 'based on the utmost good will, the utmost good faith and unqualified friendship' saying 'each of us will stand by it'. At the same time as strengthening the alliance with the United States, Menzies and Spender were committed to Australia being on 'good neighbour terms' with the countries of South and South East Asia. To help forge closer ties in the region, the Menzies government initiated the Colombo Plan that would see almost 40 000 students from the region come to study in Australia over the four subsequent decades. Recognising the economic potential of a burgeoning postwar Japan, Menzies, together with Trade Minister Jack McEwan and his new minister for External Affairs, Richard Casey, negotiated the Commerce Agreement with Japan in 1957. This trade agreement was followed by bilateral agreements with Malaya in 1958 and Indonesia in 1959.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Throughout his second period in office, Menzies practised classical liberal economics with an emphasis on private enterprise and self-sufficiency in contrast to Labor's 'socialist objective'. Accordingly, the economic policy emphasis of the Menzies Government moved towards tax incentives to release productive capacity, boosting export markets, research and undertaking public works to provide power, water and communications.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In 1951, the top marginal tax rate for incomes above £10,000 (equivalent to $425,000 today) was 75 per cent under Menzies; from 1955 until the mid-1980s, the top marginal tax rate was 67 per cent.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In 1949, Parliament legislated to ensure that all Aboriginal ex-servicemen should have the right to vote. In 1961 a Parliamentary Committee was established to investigate and report to the Parliament on Aboriginal voting rights and in 1962, Menzies's "Commonwealth Electoral Act" provided that all Indigenous Australians should have the right to enrol and vote at federal elections.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In 1960, the Menzies Government introduced a new pharmaceutical benefits scheme, which expanded the range of prescribed medicines subsidised by the government. Other social welfare measures of the government included the extension of the Commonwealth Child Endowment scheme, the pensioner medical and free medicines service, the Aged Persons' Homes Assistance scheme, free provision of life-saving drugs; the provision of supplementary pensions to dependent pensioners paying rent; increased rates of pension, unemployment and sickness benefits, and rehabilitation allowances; and a substantial system of tax incentives and rewards. In 1961, the "Matrimonial Causes Act" introduced a uniform divorce law across Australia, provided funding for marriage counselling services and made allowances for a specified period of separation as sufficient grounds for a divorce.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In response to the decision by the Catholic Diocese of Goulburn in July 1962 to close its schools in protest at the lack of government assistance, the Menzies Government announced a new package of state aid for independent and Catholic schools. Menzies promised five million pounds annually for the provision of buildings and equipment facilities for science teaching in secondary schools. Also promised were 10 000 scholarships to help students stay at school for the last two years with a further 2 500 scholarships for technical schools. Despite the historically firm Catholic support base of the Labor Party, the Opposition under Calwell opposed state aid before eventually supporting it with the ascension of Gough Whitlam as Labor leader.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In 1965, the Menzies Government took the decision to end open discrimination against married women in the public service, by allowing them to become permanent public servants, and allowing female officers who were already permanent public servants to retain that status after marriage.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The Menzies government maintained and indeed expanded the Chifley Labor government's postwar immigration scheme established by Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell in 1947. Beginning in 1949, Immigration Minister Harold Holt decided to allow 800 non-European war refugees to remain in Australia, and Japanese war brides to be admitted to Australia. In 1950, External Affairs Minister Percy Spender instigated the Colombo Plan, under which students from Asian countries were admitted to study at Australian universities, then in 1957, non-Europeans with 15 years' residence in Australia were allowed to become citizens. In a watershed legal reform, a 1958 revision of the Migration Act introduced a simpler system for entry and abolished the "dictation test" which had permitted the exclusion of migrants on the basis of their ability to take down a dictation offered in any European language. Immigration Minister, Sir Alexander Downer, announced that 'distinguished and highly qualified Asians' might immigrate. Restrictions continued to be relaxed through the 1960s in the lead up to the Holt Government's watershed "Migration Act, 1966".


title: Robert Menzies

text: This was despite when in a discussion with radio 2UE's Stewart Lamb in 1955 he was a defender of the White Australia policy. (Menzies) "I don't want to see reproduced in Australia the kind of problem they have in South Africa or in America or increasingly in Great Britain. I think it's been a very good policy and it's been of great value to us and most of the criticism of it that I've ever heard doesn't come from these oriental countries it comes from wandering Australians.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The Menzies government extended Federal involvement in higher education and introduced the Commonwealth scholarship scheme in 1951, to cover fees and pay a generous means-tested allowance for promising students from lower socioeconomic groups. In 1956, a committee headed by Sir Keith Murray was established to inquire into the financial plight of Australia's universities, and Menzies's pumped funds into the sector under conditions which preserved the autonomy of universities. In its support for higher education, the Menzies government tripled Federal government funding and provided emergency grants, significant increases in academic salaries, extra funding for buildings, and the establishment of a permanent committee, from 1961, to oversee and make recommendations concerning higher education.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The Menzies government developed the city of Canberra as the national capital. In 1957, the Menzies government established the National Capital Development Commission as independent statutory authority charged with overseeing the planning and development of Canberra. During Menzies' time in office, the great bulk of the federal public service moved from the state capitals to Canberra.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies turned 71 in December 1965 and began telling others of his intention to retire in the new year. He informed cabinet of his decision on 19 January 1966 and resigned as leader of the Liberal Party the following day; Harold Holt was elected unopposed as his successor. Holt's swearing-in was delayed by the death of Defence Minister Shane Paltridge on 21 January. Menzies and Holt were pall-bearers at Paltridge's state funeral in Perth on 25 January, before returning to Canberra where Menzies formally concluded his term on 26 January.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies's farewell press conference was the first political press conference telecast live in Australia. He resigned from Parliament on 17 February, ending 32 years in Parliament (most of them spent as either a cabinet minister or opposition frontbencher), a combined 25 years as leader of the non-Labor Coalition, and 38 years as an elected official. To date, Menzies is the last Australian prime minister to leave office on his or her own terms. He was succeeded as Liberal Party leader and prime minister by his former treasurer, Harold Holt. He left office at the age of 71 years, 1 month and 6 days, making him the oldest person ever to be prime minister. Although the coalition remained in power for almost another seven years (until the 1972 Federal election), it did so under four different prime ministers, largely due to his successor's death, only 22 months after taking office.


title: Robert Menzies

text: On his retirement he became the thirteenth chancellor of the University of Melbourne and remained the head of the university from March 1967 until March 1972. Much earlier, in 1942, he had received the first honorary degree of Doctor of Laws of Melbourne University. His responsibility for the revival and growth of university life in Australia was widely acknowledged by the award of honorary degrees in the Universities of Queensland, Adelaide, Tasmania, New South Wales, and the Australian National University and by thirteen universities in Canada, the United States and Britain, including Oxford and Cambridge. Many learned institutions, including the Royal College of Surgeons (Hon. FRCS) and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (Hon. FRACP), elected him to Honorary Fellowships, and the Australian Academy of Science, for which he supported its establishment in 1954, made him a fellow (FAAS) in 1958.


title: Robert Menzies

text: On 7 October 1965, Menzies was installed as the ceremonial office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle as appointed by the Queen, which included an official residence at Walmer Castle during his annual visits to Britain. At the end of 1966 Menzies took up a scholar-in-residence position at the University of Virginia. He presented a series of lectures, published the following year as "Central Power in the Australian Commonwealth". He later published two volumes of memoirs. In March 1967 he was elected Chancellor of Melbourne University, serving a five-year term.


title: Robert Menzies

text: In 1971, Menzies suffered a severe stroke and was permanently paralysed on one side of his body for the remainder of his life. He suffered a second stroke in 1972. His official biographer, Lady McNicoll wrote after his death in "The Australian" that Menzies was "splendid and sharp right up until the end" also that "each morning he underwent physiotherapy and being helped to face the day." In March 1977, Menzies accepted his knighthood of the Order of Australia (AK) from Queen Elizabeth in a wheelchair in the Long Room of the Melbourne Cricket Ground during the Centenary Test.


title: Robert Menzies

text: On 27 September 1920, Menzies married Pattie Leckie at Kew Presbyterian Church in Melbourne. Pattie Leckie was the eldest daughter of John Leckie, a Deakinite Commonwealth Liberal who was elected the member for the Electoral district of Benambra in the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1913. Soon after their marriage, the Menzies bought the house in Howard Street, Kew, which would become their family home for 25 years. They had three surviving children: Kenneth (1922–1993), Robert Jr (known by his middle name, Ian; 1923–1974) and a daughter, Margery (known by her middle name, Heather; born 1928). Another child died at birth.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Kenneth was born in Hawthorn on 14 January 1922. He married Marjorie Cook on 16 September 1949, and had six children; Alec, Lindsay, Robert III, Diana, Donald, and Geoffrey. He died in Kooyong on 8 September 1993. Ian and Heather were both born in Kew, on 12 October 1923 and 3 August 1928, respectively. Ian was afflicted with an undisclosed illness for most of his life. He never married, nor had children, and died in 1974 in East Melbourne at the age of 50. Heather married Peter Henderson, a diplomat and public servant (working at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia at the time of their marriage, and serving as the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs from 1979 to 1984), on 1 May 1955. A daughter, Roberta, named after Menzies, was born in 1956.


title: Robert Menzies

text: According to Mungo MacCallum, Menzies as prime minister engaged in an affair with Betty Fairfax, the first wife of Sir Warwick Oswald Fairfax. That claim was subsequently disputed by Gerard Henderson and Menzies's own family.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies died from a heart attack while reading in his study at his Haverbrack Avenue home in Malvern, Melbourne on 15 May 1978. Tributes from across the world were sent to the Menzies family. Notably among those were from HM Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia: "I was distressed to hear of the death of Sir Robert Menzies. He was a distinguished Australian whose contribution to his country and the Commonwealth will long be remembered", and from Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister of Australia: "All Australians will mourn his passing. Sir Robert leaves an enduring mark on Australian history."


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies was accorded a state funeral, held in Scots' Church, Melbourne on 19 May, at which Prince Charles represented Elizabeth II. Other dignitaries to attend included current and former Prime Ministers of Australia Malcolm Fraser, John McEwen, John Gorton and William McMahon (The two surviving Labor Prime Ministers Frank Forde and Gough Whitlam did not attend the funeral), as well as the Governor General of Australia, Sir Zelman Cowan. Former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson also attended.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The service was and is to this day one of the largest state funerals ever held in Australia, with over 100,000 people lining the streets of Melbourne from Scots' Church to Springvale Crematorium, where a private service was held for the Menzies family and a 19-gun salute was fired at the end of the ceremony. In July 1978, a memorial service was held for Menzies in the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey. Sir Robert and Dame Pattie Menzies's ashes are interred in the 'Prime Ministers Garden' within the grounds of Melbourne General Cemetery.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Some of Menzies's detractors also commemorated his passing in 1978, with a screenprinted poster, "Pig Iron Bob / Dead at last", designed by Chips Mackinolty from the Earthworks Poster Collective.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies was the son of a Presbyterian-turned-Methodist lay preacher and imbibed his father's Protestant faith and values. During his studies at the University of Melbourne, Menzies served as president of the Students' Christian Union. Proud of his Scottish Presbyterian heritage with a living faith steeped in the Bible, Menzies nonetheless preached religious freedom and non-sectarianism as the norm for Australia. Indeed, his cooperation with Australian Catholics on the contentious state aid issue was recognised when he was invited as guest of honour to the annual Cardinal's Dinner in Sydney 1964, presided over by Cardinal Norman Gilroy.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Menzies was by far the longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia, in office for a combined total of 18 years, five months and 12 days. His second period of 16 years, one month and seven days is by far the longest unbroken tenure in that office. During his second period he dominated Australian politics as no one else has ever done. He managed to live down the failures of his first period in office and to rebuild the conservative side of politics from the nadir it hit at the 1943 election. However, it can also be noted that while retaining government on each occasion, Menzies lost the two-party-preferred vote at three separate elections – in 1940, 1954 and 1961.


title: Robert Menzies

text: He was the only Australian prime minister to recommend the appointment of four governors-general (Viscount Slim, and Lords Dunrossil, De L'Isle, and Casey). Only two other prime ministers have ever chosen more than one governor-general.


title: Robert Menzies

text: The Menzies era saw Australia become an increasingly affluent society, with average weekly earnings in 1965 50% higher in real terms than in 1945. The increased prosperity enjoyed by most Australians during this period was accompanied by a general increase in leisure time, with the five-day workweek becoming the norm by the mid-Sixties, together with three weeks of paid annual leave.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Several books have been filled with anecdotes about Menzies. While he was speaking in Williamstown, Victoria, in 1954, a heckler shouted, "I wouldn't vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel"to which Menzies coolly replied "If I were the Archangel Gabriel, I'm afraid you wouldn't be in my constituency."


title: Robert Menzies

text: Jo Gullett, who first knew him as a family friend of his father, Henry Gullett, wartime Minister for External Affairs, and who later served under Menzies as a Liberal Party member of parliament himself in Canberra in the 1950s, offered this assessment.


title: Robert Menzies

text: Planning for an official biography of Menzies began soon after his death, but it was long delayed by Dame Pattie Menzies's protection of her husband's reputation and her refusal to co-operate with the appointed biographer. In 1991, the Menzies family appointed A. W. Martin to write a biography, which appeared in two volumes, in 1993 and 1999. In 2019, Troy Bramston, a journalist for "The Australian" and a political historian, wrote the first biography of Menzies since Martin's two volumes, titled "Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics". Bramston had access to previously unavailable Menzies family papers, conducted new interviews with Menzies' contemporaries and it was endorsed by Menzies' daughter, Heather Henderson. It was described as having "the most attractive combination of research and readability" of all the Menzies biographies. The National Museum of Australia in Canberra holds a significant collection of memorabilia relating to Robert Menzies, including a range of medals and civil awards received by Sir Robert such as his Jubilee and Coronation medals, Order of Australia, Companion of Honour and US Legion of Merit. There are also a number of special presentation items including a walking stick, cigar boxes, silver gravy boats from the Kooyong electorate and a silver inkstand presented by Queen Elizabeth II. Robert Menzies's personal library of almost 4,000 books is held at the University of Melbourne Library.


title: Barabbas

text: Barabbas (; ) was, according to the New Testament, a prisoner who was chosen over Jesus by the crowd in Jerusalem to be pardoned and released by Roman governor Pontius Pilate at the Passover feast.


title: Barabbas

text: According to all four canonical gospels there was a prevailing Passover custom in Jerusalem that allowed Pilate, the "" or governor of Judea, to commute (reduce) one prisoner's death sentence by popular acclaim. In one such instance, the "crowd" ("ochlos"), "the Jews" and "the multitude" in some sources, are offered the choice to have either Barabbas or Jesus released from Roman custody. According to the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew,Mark, and Luke, and the account in John, the crowd chooses Barabbas to be released and Jesus of Nazareth to be crucified. Pilate reluctantly yields to the insistence of the crowd. One passage, found in the Gospel of Matthew, has the crowd saying (of Jesus), "Let his blood be upon us and upon our children."


title: Barabbas

text: Matthew refers to Barabbas only as a "notorious prisoner". Mark and Luke further refer to Barabbas as one involved in a στάσις ("stasis", a riot), probably "one of the numerous insurrections against the Roman power" who had committed murder. Robert Eisenman states that John 18:40 refers to Barabbas as a λῃστής ("lēstēs", "bandit"), "the word Josephus always employs when talking about Revolutionaries".


title: Barabbas

text: Three gospels state that there was a custom that at Passover the Roman governor would release a prisoner of the crowd's choice; , , and . Later copies of Luke contain a corresponding verse (), although this is not present in the earliest manuscripts, and may be a later gloss to bring Luke into conformity.


title: Barabbas

text: The custom of releasing prisoners in Jerusalem at Passover is known to theologians as the "Paschal Pardon", but this custom (whether at Passover or any other time) is not recorded in any historical document other than the gospels, leading some scholars to question its historicity and make further claims that such a custom was a mere narrative invention of the Bible's writers.


title: Barabbas

text: There exist several versions of this figure's name in gospel manuscripts, most commonly simply without a first name. However the variations (, , ) found in different manuscripts of the Matthew 27:16–17 give this figure the first name "Jesus", making his full name "Jesus Barabbas" or "Jesus Bar-rabban", and giving him the same first, given name as Jesus. The Codex Koridethi seems to emphasise Bar-rabban as composed of two elements in line with a patronymic Aramaic name. These versions, featuring the first name "Jesus" are considered original by a number of modern scholars. The Church Father Origen seems to refer to this passage of Matthew in claiming that it must be a corruption, as no sinful man ever bore the name "Jesus" and argues for its exclusion from the text. He however does not account for the high priest from 2 Maccabees 4:13, whose name seems to transliterate the same Aramaic name into Greek, as well as other bearers of the name Jesus mentioned by Josephus. It is possible that scribes when copying the passage, driven by a reasoning similar to that of Origen, removed this first name "Jesus" from the text to avoid dishonor to the name of the Jesus whom they considered the Messiah.


title: Barabbas

text: The name appears in some Greek gospel manuscripts. It appears to derive ultimately from ," a patronymic Aramaic name. However, "ʾAbbā" has been found as a personal name in a 1st-century burial at Giv'at ha-Mivtar. Additionally it appears fairly often as a personal name in the Gemara section of the Talmud, a Jewish text dating from AD 200–400.


title: Barabbas

text: According to Max Dimont, the story of Barabbas as related in the gospels lacks credibility from both the Roman and Jewish standpoint. The story, on its face, presents the Roman authority, Pontius Pilate, backed by overwhelming military might, being cowed by a small crowd of unarmed civilians into releasing a prisoner condemned to death for insurrection against the Roman Empire. Further, Dimont argues against the believability of the Barabbas story by noting that the alleged custom of , "the privilege of Passover", where a criminal is set free, is only found in the Gospels. Raymond E. Brown argued that the Gospels' narratives about Barabbas cannot be considered historical, but that it is probable that a prisoner referred to as Barabbas ("bar abba", "son of the father") was indeed freed around the period Jesus was crucified and this gave birth to the story.


title: Barabbas

text: On the other hand, Craig A. Evans and N. T. Wright argue in favor of the historicity of the Passover pardon narrative, quoting evidence of such pardons from Livy's "Books from the Foundation of the City", Josephus's "Antiquities of the Jews", Papyrus Florence, Pliny the Younger's "Epistles" and the Misnah.


title: Barabbas

text: The similarities of the name in some manuscripts and the name of Jesus have led some modern scholars to argue that the counter-intuitive similarity of the two men's names is evidence of its historicity. They doubt a Christian writer would invent a similar name for a criminal, practically equating Christ with a criminal, if he were fictionalizing the story for a polemical or theological purpose.


title: Barabbas

text: A minority of scholars, including Benjamin Urrutia, Stevan Davies, Hyam Maccoby and Horace Abram Rigg, have contended that Barabbas and Jesus were the same person.


title: Barabbas

text: The story of Barabbas has played a role in historical antisemitism because it has historically been used to lay the blame for the crucifixion of Jesus on the Jews, and thereby to justify antisemitism – an interpretation known as "Jewish deicide". Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2011 book "", dismisses this reading, since the Greek word ""ochlos"" in Mark means "crowd", rather than "Jewish people" but most scholars consider that the population of Judea at the time was mostly of Jewish origin.


The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley is a 2019 American documentary film, directed and produced by Alex Gibney. The film revolves around Elizabeth Holmes and her former company Theranos. It is considered a companion piece to the book, "".


title: The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

text: "Out for Blood" had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2019. It was produced by HBO Documentary Films and Jigsaw Productions with a television premiere on March 18, 2019 on HBO as well as its streaming platforms.


text: "Out for Blood" chronicles the rise and fall of Theranos, interspersed with footage of Holmes and her COO Sunny Balwani making grandiose proclamations about Theranos and the value it was providing. It also includes visual flashbacks to the era of Thomas Edison, the titular Inventor who famously failed repeatedly before finally succeeding; Theranos's miniature blood testing labs were called "Edisons". Notably, Gibney chronicles how Holmes and Balwani were seemingly more interested in marketing, promotion, naming, and managing the media than in the actual mechanics of their technology working, in negative feedback from medical experts, or in investigating and responding to the allegations in John Carreyrou's article detailing practices at the company. Gibney also shows how Holmes and Balwani seemed to believe that any criticism must be a plot from their blood-testing competitors Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp to the point of hiring personal bodyguards and leading chants against Quest at employee morale events. Footage is also shown of the parade of wealthy and powerful figures Theranos lured onto their side, whether as investors, consultants, or members of the Board of Directors, such as David Boies, George P. Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Bill Frist, and James Mattis.


text: The documentary was announced to the public in May 2018. Alex Gibney would direct the film, with Gibney, Erin Edeiken and Jessie Deeter, serving as producers on the film, while HBO Documentary Films and Jigsaw Productions would produce the film and HBO distributing. Holmes declined to participate in the film, and so the documentary used footage of her shot by Errol Morris and other filmed appearances.


text: The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2019. It was released on March 18, 2019, by HBO.


text: The documentary received mostly positive reviews. On review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critics' consensus reads: "Alex Gibney's "The Inventor" declines to outright condemn the actions by Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, but instead provides a comprehensive overview of the scandal that allows viewers to mull over its implications towards the broader Silicon Valley."


text: Ed Power of "The Daily Telegraph" gave the film a score of 4/5 stars, saying that it "was a devastating warning of where these unchecked messianic tendencies lead and the lives they can destroy along the way." Brian Lowry of CNN described the film as "part thriller, part tale of corporate whistleblowers and perhaps foremost, a warning of how an apparent fraudster spouting tech jargon can bedazzle people who really should know better". Eric Deggans of NPR wrote: "[Gibney] shows how Holmes and her supporters pushed the limits of Silicon Valley's culture of risk-taking and overpromising until they created a house of cards that collapsed under close scrutiny."


text: Some criticisms have been brought up regarding certain elements in the film. Emily Yoshida of "Vulture" criticized the documentary's focus: ""The Inventor" ultimately can’t decide if it’s about the specific, contained absurdities of the Theranos scam, or the phenomenology of scams like Theranos." Tasha Robinson of "The Verge" praised Gibney's ability to make complex ideas accessible but also criticized that the film "feels a little empty." Conversely, Rachel Syme of "The New Yorker" praised the film's look at the "vexingly sphinxlike" Holmes.


text: The film was also criticized for presenting naturopath Stephanie Seitz as a physician and as a "spokesperson for the medical community".


text: Gibney won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay at the 72nd Writers Guild of America Awards for his screenplay, earning Gibney a record fourth award in this category.


title: Re-Animator

text: Re-Animator (also known as H. P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator) is a 1985 American comedy horror film loosely based on the 1922 H. P. Lovecraft serial novelette "Herbert West–Reanimator". Directed by Stuart Gordon and produced by Brian Yuzna, the film stars Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, a medical student who has invented a reagent which can re-animate deceased bodies. He and his classmate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) begin to test the serum on dead human bodies, and conflict with Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), who is infatuated with Cain's fiancée (Barbara Crampton) and wants to claim the invention as his own.


title: Re-Animator

text: Originally devised by Gordon as a theatrical stage production and later a half-hour television pilot, the television script was revised to become a feature film. Filmed in Hollywood, the film originally was released without a rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, and was later edited to obtain an R rating. It garnered its largest audience through the unrated cut's release on home video.


title: Re-Animator

text: "Re-Animator" is the first film collaboration between Gordon and Combs, the second being "From Beyond", released in 1986. It is the first film in the "Re-Animator" film series, followed by "Bride of Re-Animator" in 1990 and "Beyond Re-Animator" in 2003. Released to mostly positive reviews, "Re-Animator" has since been considered a cult film.


title: Re-Animator

text: At the University of Zurich Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber, back to life. There are horrific side-effects, however; as West explains, the dosage was too large. When accused of killing Gruber, West counters: "I gave him life!"


title: Re-Animator

text: West arrives at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts in order to further his studies as a medical student. He rents a room from fellow medical student Dan Cain and converts the house's basement into his own personal laboratory. West demonstrates his reanimating reagent to Dan by reanimating Dan's dead cat Rufus. The cat behaves viciously that night forcing Dan to kill it again before West reanimates what is left of it. Dan's fiancée Megan Halsey, daughter of the medical school's dean, walks in on this experiment and is horrified.


title: Re-Animator

text: Dan tries to tell the dean about West's success in reanimating the dead cat, but the dean does not believe him. When Dan insists, the dean implies that Dan and West have gone mad. Barred from the school, West and Dan sneak into the morgue to test the reagent on a human subject in an attempt to prove that the reagent works, and thereby salvage their medical careers. The corpse they inject comes back to life, but in a frenetic and violent zombie-like state. Dr. Halsey stumbles upon the scene and is killed by the reanimated corpse, which West then kills with a bone-saw. Excited at the prospect of working with a freshly dead specimen, West injects Dr. Halsey's body with his reanimating reagent. Dr. Halsey returns to life, also in a zombie-like state. Megan chances upon the scene, and is hysterical. Dan collapses in shock.


title: Re-Animator

text: Dr. Halsey's colleague Dr. Carl Hill, a professor and researcher at the hospital, takes charge of Dr. Halsey, whom he puts in a padded observation cell adjacent to his office. He carries out a surgical operation on him, lobotomizing him. During the course of this operation, he discovers that Dr. Halsey is not sick, but dead and reanimated.


title: Re-Animator

text: Dr. Hill goes to West's basement lab and attempts to blackmail him into surrendering his reagent and notes, hoping to take credit for West's discovery. West offers to demonstrate the reagent and puts a few drops of it onto a microscope slide with dead cat tissue. As Dr. Hill peers through the microscope at this slide, West clobbers him from behind with a shovel, and then decapitates him with it. West then reanimates Dr. Hill's head and body separately. While West is questioning Dr. Hill's head and taking notes, Dr. Hill's body sneaks up behind him and knocks him unconscious. The body carries the head back to Dr. Hill's office, with West's reagent and notes.


title: Re-Animator

text: In his re-animated state, Dr. Hill acquires the ability to control other re-animated corpses telepathically, after conducting brain surgery on them. He then directs Dr. Halsey to snatch Megan away from Dan. While being carried to the morgue by her reanimated father, Megan faints. When she arrives, Dr. Hill strips her naked and straps her unconscious body to a table. She regains consciousness as Hill's body and bloody, severed head begin to sexually assault her.


title: Re-Animator

text: Hill's body starts to place his head between Megan's legs, but is interrupted by the arrival of West and Dan. West distracts Dr. Hill while Dan frees Megan. Dr. Hill reveals that he has reanimated and lobotomized several corpses from the morgue, rendering them susceptible to mind control as Halsey is. However, Megan's voice reawakens a protectiveness in her father, who fights off the other corpses as Dan and Megan escape. In the ensuing chaos, West injects Dr. Hill's body with a lethal overdose of the reagent. Dr. Hill's body mutates rapidly and attacks West, who screams out to Dan to save his work before being pulled away by Dr. Hill's monstrous entrails.


title: Re-Animator

text: Dan retrieves the satchel containing West's reagent and notes. As Dan and Megan flee the morgue, one of the reanimated corpses attacks and strangles Megan. Dan takes her to the hospital emergency room and tries to revive her, but she is dead. In despair, he injects her with West's reagent. After the scene fades to black, Megan, apparently revived, can be heard screaming.


title: Re-Animator

text: The idea to make "Re-Animator" came from a discussion Stuart Gordon had with friends one night about vampire films. He felt that there were too many Dracula films and expressed a desire to see a Frankenstein film. Someone asked if he had read "Herbert West–Reanimator" by H. P. Lovecraft. Gordon had read most of the author's works, but not that story, which was long out of print. He went to the Chicago Public Library and read their copy.


title: Re-Animator

text: Originally, Gordon was going to adapt Lovecraft's story for the stage, but eventually decided along with writers Dennis Paoli and William Norris to make it as a half-hour television pilot. The story was set around the turn of the century, and they soon realized that it would be too expensive to recreate. They updated it to the present day in Chicago with the intention of using actors from the Organic Theater company. They were told that the half hour format was not saleable and so they made it an hour, writing 13 episodes. Special effects technician Bob Greenberg, who had worked on John Carpenter's "Dark Star", repeatedly told Gordon that the only market for horror was in feature films, and introduced him to producer Brian Yuzna. Gordon showed Yuzna the script for the pilot and the 12 additional episodes. The producer liked what he read and convinced Gordon to shoot the film in Hollywood, because of all the special effects involved. Yuzna made a distribution deal with Charles Band's Empire Pictures in return for post-production services. However, after viewing the initial dailies Empire became involved in the actual production, making a number of suggestions, including the recruitment of Mac Ahlberg as cinematographer.


title: Re-Animator

text: According to Paoli, the first draft of the script contained no humor whatsoever, and the film's comedic elements only came out over further revisions and during the actual production.


title: Re-Animator

text: Yuzna described the film as having the "sort of shock sensibility of an "Evil Dead" with the production values of, hopefully, "The Howling"." Gordon cited "The Revenge of Frankenstein" as a major inspiration for the film. John Naulin worked on the film's gruesome makeup effects, using what he described as "disgusting shots brought out from the Cook County morgue of all kinds of different lividities and different corpses." The morgue set was based on the aforementioned Cook County morgue, which was newly built and featured cutting edge technology; Gordon opted for this look since he felt old morgues had been overdone in horror films. Naulin and Gordon also used a book of forensic pathology in order to present how a corpse looks once the blood settles in the body, creating a variety of odd skin tones. Naulin said that "Re-Animator" was the bloodiest film he had ever worked on: in the past, he had never used more than a couple of gallons (7.6liters) of blood on a film, but on "Re-Animator" he used twelve times as much.


title: Re-Animator

text: Jeffrey Combs was cast as Herbert West. Combs had never read any H. P. Lovecraft before his casting and was taken aback by the script; he later said he only took the role because he needed the work and assumed the film would never reach a large audience.


title: Re-Animator

text: Principal photography began on November 28, 1984, with a six-week shooting schedule, though Gordon has boasted that they finished shooting the film in just four weeks. The biggest makeup challenge in the film was the headless Dr. Hill zombie. Tony Doublin designed the mechanical effects and was faced with the problem of proportion once the 9–10 inches of the head were removed from the body. Each scene forced him to use a different technique. For example, one technique involved building an upper torso that actor David Gale could bend over and stick his head through so that it appeared to be the one that the walking corpse was carrying around.


title: Re-Animator

text: The score for the film was composed by Richard Band, and has been noted for its similarities to Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film "Psycho". The score took about three and a half weeks to complete, and was recorded in Italy with the Rome Philharmonic. In regards to the influence of Herrmann's "Psycho" score, Band has noted that the similarities were intentional, and that he "used that as a base and modified the theme but kept that Herrmannesque feeling."


title: Re-Animator

text: The film soundtrack was released by Waxwork Records on vinyl and includes liner notes by composer Richard Band and director Stuart Gordon, with album artwork by Gary Pullin.


title: Re-Animator

text: "Re-Animator" was released on October 18, 1985, in 129 theaters, and grossed $543,728 during its opening weekend. It went on to make $2,023,414 in North America, above its estimated $900,000 budget. However, it experienced its greatest commercial success when released on home video. The film was re-released with a premiere on May 21, 2010, as part of Creation Entertainment's Weekends of Horror.


title: Re-Animator

text: The film was originally released on VHS, LaserDisc and Betamax by Vestron Video, and was later released on DVD by Elite Entertainment on April 30, 2002 in two versions: a standard DVD edition, and a "Millennium Edition" featuring a remastered picture and two commentary tracks, one by writer/director Stuart Gordon and the other by the entire main cast except for David Gale, who died in 1991.


title: Re-Animator

text: When "Re-Animator" was originally released in theaters, the filmmakers did not submit it for rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), for fear that it would receive an X rating. However, this presented advertising restrictions, since many media outlets had policies against promoting unrated films. In early 1986, the filmmakers submitted a re-edited version of "Re-Animator" to the MPAA, which received an R rating. In the USA, the vast majority of home media releases of the film used the unrated version.


title: Re-Animator

text: The R-rated version runs 93 minutes and has much of the gore edited out and replaced with various scenes which had been deleted for pacing purposes, including a subplot involving Dr. Hill hypnotizing several of the characters to make them more suggestible to his will (in this version, Dean Halsey is hypnotized early on to turn him against West, and then later is hypnotized again after he has been re-animated; in the theatrical film, the re-animated Halsey's submission is merely a result of the lobotomy). In addition, a short scene was added showing Herbert West injecting himself with small amounts of the reagent to stay awake and energized; this may have affected his thinking over the course of the film.


title: Re-Animator

text: The unrated version is often labeled as a "director's cut", which strictly speaking is false; director Stuart Gordon was not allowed to determine the final cut on any version of the film. However, Gordon has expressed his preference for the unrated version over the R-rated version.


title: Re-Animator

text: A 2013 German Blu-ray release of "Re-Animator" also included a new "Integral cut," wherein the extra material from the R-rated version was incorporated into the unrated version, expanding the film from 86 minutes to just under 105 minutes. This extended cut has also been included with other non-US releases.


title: Re-Animator

text: The film was well received by critics, earning mostly positive reviews. Pauline Kael enjoyed the film's "indigenous American junkiness" and called it "pop Buñuel; the jokes hit you in a subterranean comic zone that the surrealists' pranks sometimes reached, but without the surrealists' self-consciousness (and art-consciousness)." Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "I walked out somewhat surprised and reinvigorated (if not re-animated) by a movie that had the audience emitting taxi whistles and wild goat cries." In her review for "The New York Times", Janet Maslin wrote, ""Re-Animator" has a fast pace and a good deal of grisly vitality. It even has a sense of humor, albeit one that would be lost on 99.9 percent of any ordinary moviegoing crowd".


title: Re-Animator

text: Paul Attanasio, in his review for "The Washington Post", praised Jeffrey Combs' performance: "Beady-eyed, his face hard, almost lacquered, Combs makes West into a brittle, slightly fey psychotic in the Anthony Perkins mold. West is a figure of fun, but Combs doesn't spoof him." In his review for the "Los Angeles Times", Kevin Thomas wrote, "The big noise is Combs, a small, compact man of terrific intensity and concentration." David Edelstein, writing for "Village Voice", placed the film in his year-end Top Ten Movies list.


title: Re-Animator

text: In their book "Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft", Andrew Migliore and John Strysik write: ""Re-Animator" took First Prize at the Paris Festival of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, a Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and even spawned a short-lived series of comic books. Even though it was a hit with audiences, the film generated a huge amount of controversy among Lovecraft readers. Fans thought the film a desecration of Lovecraft; their literary hero would never write such obvious exploitation! But the final criticism of the film might have been a bit more muted if these fans had actually read the 'West' stories, which are pure exploitation. Lovecraft himself acknowledged as much, and female love interest and black sex humor aside, "Re-Animator" really is one of the more faithful and effective adaptations." Bruce C. Hallenbeck, in his book "Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914-2008", said the film was one of the few to successfully combine genuine scares with genuine laughs, and praised Combs's performance as retaining the theatricality of classic horror stars. He remarked that ""Re-Animator" broke down the barriers between 'splatter movies' and comedy-horror films. Its buckets of gore mixed with barrels of laughs, and it opened up a whole new realm where nothing was sacred and nothing was taboo."


title: Re-Animator

text: Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 62 reviews and gave the film an approval rating of 94%, with an average rating of 7.81/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Perfectly mixing humor and horror, the only thing more effective than "Re-Animator"s gory scares are its dry, deadpan jokes." Metacritic gave the film a rating of 73 out of 100 based on reviews from 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". "Entertainment Weekly" ranked the film #32 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films," and #14 on their "The Cult 25: The Essential Left-Field Movie Hits Since '83" list.


title: Re-Animator

text: "Re-Animator" was followed by two sequels: "Bride of Re-Animator" in 1990 and "Beyond Re-Animator" in 2003. "Re-Animator" director Stuart Gordon directed another film based on an H. P. Lovecraft story, "From Beyond" (1986); though it featured a story unrelated to "Re-Animator", it also starred both Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton.


title: Re-Animator

text: In the book "Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft", producer-director Brian Yuzna mentions an idea that he had for a fourth "Re-Animator". This version would have been titled "Island of Re-Animator", and would have been strongly influenced by the H. G. Wells novel "The Island of Doctor Moreau".


title: Re-Animator

text: In the 1999 film "American Beauty", Kevin Spacey and Wes Bentley's characters Lester Burnham and Ricky Fitts make mention of the film: while both are high on marijuana, Lester asks Ricky, "Did you ever see that movie where the body is walking around carrying its own head and then the head goes down on that babe?" They both laugh and Ricky replies, ""Re-Animator.""


title: Re-Animator

text: The character of Herbert West starred in a number of comic book adaptations by different companies, such as Adventure Comics ("Re-Animator in Full Color" and "Re-Animator: Dawn of the Re-Animator"), Zenescope Entertainment ("The Chronicles of Dr. Herbert West"), and Dynamite Entertainment ("Re-Animator"). West also appeared in Devil's Due Publishing's "Hack/Slash" series as a side character, and in three crossover comics by Dynamite Entertainment: "Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator", "Army of Darkness/Re-Animator", in which Ash Williams of the "Evil Dead" series confronts West of the "Re-Animator" series. and "Vampirella vs. Re-Animator".


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Benedetta Carlini (20 January 1590 – 7 August 1661) was a Catholic mystic and lesbian nun who lived in counter-reformation Italy. As abbess of the Convent of the Mother of God, at Pescia, she had a relationship with one of her nuns, Sister Bartolomea. These came to the attention of the counter-reformation papacy, determined to subordinate potentially troublesome mystics if they showed any signs of independent or heretical spirituality. Although they paid three to four visits to the nunnery, it was not until they interrogated Sister Bartolomea that they found that Benedetta and Bartolemea had engaged in sexual relations. Bartolomea gave testimony that Benedetta engaged in frottage with her while possessed by the spirit of a male demon known as Splenditello. Benedetta was stripped of her rank and imprisoned.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Benedetta Carlini was born on 20 January 1590 (St. Sebastian night), in the remote mountain village of , located in the Apennines, northwest of Florence. Her father was Giuliano, a rich and devout man who owned his house and several other properties in Vellano and a small farm nearby. Her mother was Midea Carlini (born Midea d'Antonio Pieri), a sister of the parish priest. Benedetta was an only child in her middle-class Italian family; Giuliano provided in his will that after his own and his wife's death, his house should be turned into an oratory dedicated to the Mother of God.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Midea's labour was very difficult, painful and dangerous both for her and her daughter, both of whom survived. Giuliano had decided to name the girl Benedetta—meaning "blessed"—and dedicate her to God's service. Soon after her birth, her family retired to her father's farm in the mountains, where she was nursed by her mother and not a wet nurse.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Benedetta's father educated her himself, an unusual choice in Renaissance Italian society, in which most girls took lessons from their mothers and were not very literate. Her education and upbringing were religious. At the age of five, she knew the litany of the saints and other prayers by heart. Under her father's tutelage, Benedetta would take the rosary and recite the litany several times a day. At the age of six, Benedetta learned to read and knew some Latin.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Her mother instructed Benedetta to recite five Pater Nosters and eight Ave Marias every day, seemingly directing Benedetta toward female guides—the Virgin Mary, a statue of whom had been acquired especially for Benedetta, and St. Catherine of Siena, whose mystical marriage with Christ was celebrated as a feast day at their home.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: One day a black dog tried to drag Benedetta away, but her screams frightened it; by the time her mother came, the dog had disappeared. Benedetta and her parents interpreted this incident as the work of a devil disguised as an animal.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: In spring 1599, Giuliano decided to fulfill the vow made at the birth of his daughter and bring Benedetta to a group of religious women in Pescia.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: In 1599, Benedetta joined a group of unmarried women who wanted to lead an ascetic life; the group did not live in a regularly enclosed convent, and were not recognised religious sisters. The group lived in a retreat in a private house, where women led a communal life engaged in prayer, spiritual exercises and the production of raw silk. This community had been formed nine years earlier (in 1590) by Piera Pagni, the widow of a prominent Pesciatine. One of her kinsmen, Antonio Pagni, founded an independent religious congregation for men in 1588. He had obtained a degree in canon law at the University of Pisa; he was joined by Father Paolo Ricordati and several other priests and laymen. Because of their reputation for saintliness, local people soon began to call them Theatine fathers. However, they called themselves Fathers of the Holy Annunciation, and they were not members of the Theatine Order of Clerics Regular founded in 1524 by St. Cajetan Thiene. Fathers of the Holy Annunciation agreed to back a female community founded by Piera Pagni and provide spiritual direction to the women in it. Paolo Ricordati was their father confessor. Thus, local people began to call Piera Pagni, and her subordinates "Theatines", although the Theatine Order of Clerics Regular was a male religious order.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: In 1599, there were three official monasteries in Pescia: San Michele (founded in the 12th century), Santa Chiara (founded in the 1490s) and the recently formed Santa Maria Nuova. However, due to the rapid growth of Pescia, the Valdinievole province and the religious revival, there was not enough space for all who wished to become nuns or monks. Many girls were refused entrance to these institutions and had no place to go. Convents required novices to pay an expensive subscription. "Brides of Christ", like brides of laymen, were accepted only with dowries. Dowries of wellborn Prescia brides amounted to 1500 scudi, and a place in a prestigious female convent like Santa Chiara cost around 400 scudi, when a skilled worker earned not more than 55 or 60 scudi a year. A semi-monastic community founded by Piera Pagni required only about 160 scudi, which Benedetta's parents were able to pay.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: In the last half of the 16th century, many religious communities like this appeared, offering an alternative to many women who could not or did not want to join already established convents. Some of the most devout and successful female religious orders, the Ursulines among others, started from such modest origins. Women with strong religious vocations often preferred such groups to well-established convents. These convents were often considered to be corrupt because many nuns had not joined them by choice; they had been sent there by relatives or had been driven there by a hopeless situation. The life of discarded daughters of aristocratic families in the convents was, in many ways, also indistinguishable from the life of the upper classes on the outside.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: A community that Benedetta joined had adopted the Rule of Saint Augustine. Originally a letter that Augustine of Hippo addressed to a group of nuns led by his sister, who were experiencing difficulties in the governance of their convent, the Rule does not regulate in detail all aspects of monastic life. It provides a set of spiritual counsels within which more specific rules could be accommodated by individual communities. It touched on such topics as the need to lead a communal life with no private property, the observance of prayers, the mortification of the flesh through fasts, the need for modest dress, and so on. This was accepted by many female convents and quasi-monastic communities. For the members of these groups, the Fathers of the Holy Annunciation created a hierarchy of authority. "They have among themselves a female superior under whom they govern themselves, a teacher of the novices, and other customary offices as if they were full-fledged nuns".


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: As soon as her father left her in a community house, nine-year-old Benedetta kneeled in front of the statue of the Madonna and said, "My most sweet Mother, I have left my carnal mother for you, I beg you to take me as your daughter." Not long after this, Benedetta prayed there again, and the statue fell over. As a young novice, she was frightened, but thought this was a miracle, showing that the Mother of God wanted to kiss her. Whereas before Benedetta had accepted miracles as being in the nature of things, now she was astounded and awed by this action of the Virgin, which testified to the mighty power of God.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Benedetta's first years in this Catholic retreat were unremarkable. Twenty years later, other community members remembered that she was always very obedient and exemplary in all her actions, took communion twice a week and never did anything worthy of rebuke. If anything supernatural was happening to her during that time, only Benedetta herself knew about it.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: In 1610, the community of Benedetta acquired a farm in the commune of Fucecchio for 1750 scudi and became quite economically successful and self-sufficient. The group's annual revenues came to 300 scudi, of which half came from the silk work done by its members and the rest from their dowries and from this farm and others. Thus, the following year, they received permission from Rome to organize a general chapter and accept new girls. After that, the community started constructing a new convent building, which was completed in October 1613. In April 1618, the nuns asked the secular authorities for permission to enlarge the convent enough to accommodate up to 30 sisters; though they had just 18 sisters, they were confident of the future growth of their numbers. The project they proposed would cost 4,000 scudi, part of which was for dismantling a section of the city wall to make way for the building. Despite the difficulties, the construction was approved and began soon after.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: In 1614, just before the Pescia Theatines received permission to build their convent, Benedetta, now a young woman of 23, reported to her mother superior and father confessor about her supernatural visions. The first had occurred one morning while she was praying. Suddenly, she felt herself to be in a beautiful garden with many fruits and flowers. In the centre was a fountain with scented water, and next to it was an angel, holding a signboard with gold letters: "Whosoever wants to take water from this fountain, let him purge his cup or not come nearer." Because she did not understand the meaning of this inscription, she asked the angel. He explained, "If you want to know God, lift all earthly desires from your heart." On hearing these words, Benedetta felt a strong urge to take leave of the world, but, instead, the vision ceased, and with great inner wrenching, she returned to the normal world of the senses. Afterwards, she felt great happiness and a stronger desire than ever to be good. In the next visions, she saw a man dressed in great splendour who saved her from wild lions, scorpions and boars and said he was Jesus and the animals were demons. Another time, a young boy appeared and told her to climb the Mount of Perfection, which was very difficult and, the boy said, would be impossible without a true guide, her father confessor.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Some of Benedetta's visions had occurred in the presence of witnesses, who had observed that during prayer she had gone into a trance-like state in which she gesticulated and made incomprehensible sounds. During these episodes, her altered state of consciousness had made it impossible for her companions to receive answers to their questions about what was happening to her.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Particularly visual forms of mental prayer were widespread spiritual practice in pre-modern Europe. Visualization of people, places and events in the life of the Holy Family was recommended in prayers manuals by Luis de Granada, St. Charles Borromeo and others, which Benedetta occasionally read.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Benedetta's own reactions to her visions were mixed. At the time, there was less concern as to whether a "vision" was a product of imagination or mental illness; more concerning were whether these messages were diabolical or divine in origin. Her father confessor, Paolo Ricordati, initially told her to disbelieve anything she saw as not to give the devil grounds on which to work his tricks, to try to repress the onset of visions and to "pray to God that He send her travails instead of ecstasies and revelations, since it seemed to her that this would be safer against the deceits of the devil." Benedetta did as he said. She could keep herself from having visions, but she had great difficulty in receiving some sort of travail. Only in 1615, her prayers were answered, and she began to experience such intense pains over her entire body that she was paralyzed by them. The physicians could neither diagnose it nor determine what to do. None of the remedies eased Benedetta's pain. She thought that this mysterious illness was the sign of divine favour that Paolo Ricordati had asked for. She expected recognition of others for being the recipient of extraordinary grace and was to be sadly disappointed. Nothing had changed, and for two years, Benedetta suffered in the quiet obscurity of a monastic communal life of prayer, fasts, and manual work.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: In 1617, her visions resumed. But instead of encounters with Jesus and angels, Benedetta now was pursued at night by handsome young men who wanted to kill her and who beat her all over with iron chains, swords, sticks, and other weapons. She also experienced excruciating physical pain. The men in her visions urged her to come with them and leave the Theatines, telling her by persevering in her monastic life she would only make herself ill without being certain of the salvation of her soul. One of them even asked Benedetta to be his bride, and when she refused, he tried to take her with brute force. The attacks took place several times a week and lasted for six to eight hours. One night, instead of enduring the visions, Benedetta called other nuns for help. After that, her superiors assigned her a young companion, Bartolomea Crivelli, to help her in her battles with the devil. Bartolomea was to share Benedetta's cell and to keep an eye on her at all times. If at this point the confessor and the mother superior had any further concerns about the validity of Benedetta's claims, they did not voice them. Instead, the convent was now seen as being graced by the presence of a mystic whose body was the battleground between supernatural forces. The confessor and mother superior became extremely solicitous of her welfare and, because of her weakened condition, excused her from participation in many of the daily routines of the community.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: In 1618, construction of a new monastery building was coming to a close. The resettlement to the new convent building was a solemn procession. Benedetta walked in an ecstatic trance, seeing the angels of Pescia paying homage to her and scattering flowers along her path as if she were the image of St. Dorothy, the patron saint of Pescia, which was being paraded in its annual procession through town. Once they arrived at the gates of the convent, the Madonna greeted her and gave her companion two guardian angels. No one other than Benedetta could see the flowers and angels, but many citizens saw her in that unusual state.


title: Benedetta Carlini

text: Three months after the resettlement, on the second Friday of Lent, Benedetta received the stigmata. By her own words, these appeared between two and three at night when she was in bed. She saw a crucifix and bright rays from wounds of Christ to her head, hands, feet and side of the chest. These rays caused tremendous pain, but then Benedetta felt such contentment in her heart that she had never experienced before. Bartolomea Crivelli was near, and she was the first to see the signs on Benedetta's body. Also, she saw that Benedetta arranged herself in the form of the Cross and became as red as a glowing ember and heard that Benedetta said, "My Lord, there are others who are better than me, I don't deserve this since I am a sinner." Then Benedetta asked Bartolomea to lift her by the arm because she could not do it by herself. And Bartolomea saw red marks like small rosettes on Benedetta's hands, feet, and side, and also a deep red band around her head, but it was bloodless.