Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

dir. John D. Hancock cast Zorha Lampert, Barton Heyman, Kevin O'Conner, Mariclare Costello

This is my favorite sleeper. Despite a low budget, no major horror stars and a director not known for horror films, this manages to be a fantastically effective and frightening film. Unlike many low-budget horror films of its era, it does not rely on gore or nudity to make it watchable.

Jessica (Lampert) is a young woman just out of a stint in a mental home. She and her husband, Duncan, and a friend, Woody, are moving to an abandoned farm that Duncan owns on an island off the coast of Connecticut. Sneered at by the hostile townspeople (who seem to consist entirely of elderly men), they arrive at the farm to find a rootless young woman, Emily, living in the farmhouse. The kindhearted Jessica convinces her husband to allow Emily to stay. At first, everything seems to go well, but it's not long before strange things start to happen. Jessica sees a strange woman in white running through the woods. She also seems to see a corpse, but when she leads her husband to the spot, it is gone. Emily begins to act strangely toward Jessica and seductively toward Duncan, indicating she may not be as innocent as she seems. When Jessica finds a photograph apparently showing a young woman who drowned at the farm on the eve of her wedding in the late 19th Century, the picture seems to bear a strong resemblance to Emily. Is it all in Jessica's head? Duncan seems to think so and reacts with frustration rather than sympathy when Jessica tries to share her concerns.

One of the film's biggest strengths is in its portrayal of Jessica. She is far from the usual brooding psycho, but rather is portrayed as a cheerful and friendly, in some ways even childlike, woman who just happens to have a fragile grip on sanity, and knows it. Throughout the movie, we hear her interior monologue as she tries to convince herself that everything is normal and to avoid the temptation to confess her fears to her husband. As the strange happenings pile up, and become stranger, we feel great sympathy for Jessica and anger at Duncan for his lack of understanding. It's a masterful performance by Lampert.

The other key performance in the film is by Mariclare Costello as Emily. Starting out as a homeless waif at the mercy of the "legitimate" occupants, she gradually asserts more and more control of the situation. Her transformation is played marvelously by Costello, as we gradually realize there is something very different about Emily. Costello's physical appearance doesn't hurt her portrayal, either. Beautiful actresses are a dime a dozen, but Costello's red-blonde hair and piercing blue eyes give her an otherworldly look that fits the role perfectly. The scene of her "rebirth" as she rises from a lagoon is one of my favorite scenes in any horror film.

It's probably no spoiler to say that the end of the film provides no definitive answers for all the strangeness that has gone before. I usually dislike and feel cheated by ambiguous endings, but this film seems to require one. It's tremendous fun to think back over the film and try to build one's own explanation and answer the unanswered question for oneself. There are several possible explanations, though, strangely, the one suggested by the title seems the least likely. This is a truly original horror movie that doesn't easily fit into any sub-genre. Various sources have referred to it as a zombie movie, a vampire movie, and a ghost story. Whatever sub-genre it may fit into, it's definitely worth checking out for fans of horror films of this era.

Note: If, like me, you're a fan of the 1970's TV series, The Rockford Files, you may recognize the mysterious woman in white. Gretchen Corbett had a recurring role on the detective series as Beth Davenport, Jim Rockford's attorney.