The Debutante

"A reluctant society girl sends a hyena to the Ball in her stead."
Starring: Peggy Metzger as The Debutante,
Wendy Williams as The Hyena,
Marcia Bernstein as The Mother.
Based on the short story by Leonora Carrington.
Written / Directed / Edited by Ric Warren
With Tony Merritt, Louise Williams, Linda Morin,
Jennifer Lockwood, Hank Walker, Sharon Elba, Meeka Day.
Special FX make-up by Karin Shriver, Jennifer Lockwood.
Cinematography by Veva Edelson
Sound by Gene Biggins / Dante Di Genova
Filmed in Eureka, Arcata, Trinidad, Ca.
1991 / 2021
"Leonora Carrington (April 6 1917 – May 25 2011) was an English artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City, and was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the Women's Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s.
'The Debutante', written in 1937, was a precursor of the bizarre black humour artist Leonora Carrington was to display throughout her life. It starts like this, “The beast I knew best was a young hyena…”, a tale in which a girl meets a hyena at the zoo and convinces the hyena to take her place at a dreaded ball. The hyena agrees, kills and eats the maid – bar her face (which was neatly nibbled around but left intact as a disguise). The pair almost pulls off the stunt, but at the end of the evening the hyena can’t resist eating the maid’s face too, exposing the crime. The hyena in ‘The Debutante’ joins both male and female into a whole, metaphoric of the worlds of the night and the dream."