Unlike Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’, which ends with the horrific scenes of a ‘god-monster’, violence and primitive sacrifice, ‘The Fugitive Stag’ opens with an apocalypse, the horror of a bloody decapitation  and the death of an all too real, (yet mythical)   ‘Edvard Munch’s-Madonna-cum-Medusa-like’ figure … Medb – an ex-Irish Abbess.

Unlike Dante’s ‘Inferno’, to gaze at this Medusa (or to have her look at you) is to be transformed. Guy’s horrific encounter with monstrosity and dazzling beauty does not paralyze him. On the contrary, the horror, in alienating him from all that was ‘familiar’ in his life, becomes an act of grace which leads to his eventual redemption.