Hollywood didn't have to look far to find images of entrapment and despair; its own system was a ministry of fear which films like The Big Knife and Sunset Boulevard interpreted as a form of Hollywood gothic, replete with gargoyles like Norma Desmond and, in The Big Knife, Rod Steiger's overstuffed studio head Stanley Hoff and Jack Palance's Charlie Castle. An actor who has long since abandoned art in favor of affluence and angst, Charlie tries to retreat behind the Castle walls but the megalomaniacal Hoff pulls a murderous skeleton out of the closet to lure him back onto the set. Playwright Clifford Odets obviously had his own axe to grind in lines like "You came in here and threw this mess of naked pigeons in my face!" Robert Aldrich's extremely stylized visual interpretation further externalizes the absurdity of Charlie's inner world, turning the living room he shares with wife Ida Lupino into a ranch-style hell.