unfortunate accidents. Gerard comes to the realization that, for him, the Virgin Mary's appearances in his visions were warnings of Christine's danger. As a consequence, when Christine arrives at the hospital, Gerard attacks her, and is incapacitated with a sedative by the Mary from Gerard's visions, who appears to him as a nurse. As Gerard is hospitalized, Christine meets another young, attractive man in the hospital lobby, with whom she leaves. Cast Themes Catholicism Paul Verhoeven has said of the film: He told The Seattle Times, "You never know if you're dealing with a super-reality or not." Reve endures many experiences which may be hallucinations, such as a famous scene in which he believes a woman is pointing a gun at him, then turns to show it is merely a key to a door, and another in which, on a train, he studies a picture on the wall so intently that he is apparently drawn into it. Mike Pinsky of the website DVD Verdict points out repeated motifs, including the red, blood, as well as the religious images of the Virgin Mary, and the Cross, including: images of a spider climbing over a crucified figure of Jesus pursuing a fly; Reve's character tipping his glass to a statue of the Virgin Mary; a woman peeling an apple, and holding the peel in the shape of a halo over her son's head; and a sign that reads "Donate Your Blood to the Red Cross". Homosexuality American filmmaker Paul Bartel, expressing admiration for the film, described The Fourth Man as "the first gay, Catholic horror film." Film scholar Charles Derry notes in his book Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film from the 1950s to the 21st Century (2009), that "what makes The Fourth Man especially interesting—despite its misogyny (typical for horror) that turns women into symbols, updating the archetypes of the whore and virgin into the super-archetypes of the she-devil and Virgin Mary—is that the homosexuality of the protagonist is presented as a positive moral alternative to the heterosexuality of the femme fatale." Release The Fourth Man premiered in the Netherlands on 24 March 1983. The film was a box office hit in the Netherlands, gaining 274,699 admissions, but lower than the millions of visitors his previous films had. The film was more successful in the United States, where it received widespread critical acclaim and was the