Lolita and the Hellfire Club

I have long suspected that Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, was blowing the whistle on some kind of Hellfire Club going on among the prominent and wealthy.

Revelations since about Jeffrey Epstein and P Diddy and Hillary Clinton’s Russia hoax seem to confirm this. There really has been some sort of immoral cabal at the top running much of the society. And this explains many things, like large corporations seeming to act against their own self-interest, politicians going against the popular will and fearing free speech, and, not least, Trump Derangement Syndrome.

But for how long has this been going on? Is it new, or are we only hearing about it now?

 Kubrick’s far earlier film, Lolita, 1962, might also have been a blow on the whistle. It deals with ephebophilia, which seems the dominant obsession of the Epstein cult. That is, having sex with young, but post-pubescent, women. An obvious attraction for the rich and powerful: all societies and cultures see youth and innocence as highly desirable in women. So it is reasonable to foresee this as an ideal commodity for a corrupt blackmail cult.

Kubrick filmed Lolita as his first independent production, after breaking a multi-film contract with Kirk Douglas. The two had a bitter falling out.

In the opening scene of Lolita, James Mason asks Peter Sellers, “Are you Quilty?” And Sellers responds, “I am Spartacus. Why, have you come to free the slaves, or something?”

The film is relatively sympathetic towards Mason as Humbert for his obsession with underage Lolita. It is a natural enough desire. But Quilty is the real villain. As the movie’s plot unfolds, he kidnaps the underage Lolita and takes her to a “dude ranch” full of his “weird friends.”

It sounds so much like the Epstein arrangement.

Spartacus, in Kubrick’s previous film, was played by Kirk Douglas. By saying “I am Spartacus,” Quilty/Sellers is identifying himself with Douglas. And implying Douglas in some sense kept slaves, as Quilty does. Perhaps young female slaves, as Quilty does.

In 2021, soon following his death, Douglas was accused by the family of Natalie Wood of having brutally raped her when she was a child star of sixteen. She and her family had kept silence all these years due to fear of his power and influence.

There are suspicions around another starlet, Jean Spangler. Not underage; but she disappeared. Her purse was found, with signs of a struggle, containing an unfinished note that read “Kirk: Can’t wait any longer, Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away,” She was three months pregnant. Like the pianist in Eyes Wide Shut, there has been no sign of her since.

Whatever his experiences with Douglas, as soon as he was able to get out of that contract, Kubrick decamped to England for the rest of his life, a very strange move in terms of career. Although Lolita was set in the US, Kubrick awkwardly filmed it in England, using what American or Canadian actors resident in the UK to get the accents right. As he did for all the rest of his films. Surely a striking eccentricity. As if there was something in Hollywood he feared or needed to escape.

Kubrick’s wife has said he had wanted to make Eyes Wide Shut for years, but felt he was not ready to yet. Not ready? What held him up? It was not an expensive story to film in terms of special effects, like some of the other films he made before it. It did not require great historical research, like some of the other films he made before it. And as soon as he did make it, he suddenly died. A heart attack in his sleep, age 70, six days after the film’s final cut.

Did they get to him?

Did he let go and die knowing he had finally said what needed to be said?

Did he die of the stress of possible reactions from powerful quarters?

I hope one day we know.