I won't go away. I'm in your blood.

Well as bad a Last House on the Left was, the next movie I want to review (I promise Cerpts, I will give you my Diary of a Madman review, just not yet. I want to leave you in suspense for a little bit more.), Let's Scare Jessica to Death is another of those 70's low budget horror movies that didn't really do much at the box office originally but later became a staple of the late night scene. Today LSJTD (I love to use initials) is somewhat of a cult classic.



Jessica (Zohra Lampert) recently released from a mental institute after a nervous breakdown decides she needs a change of scenery from the big city. Her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman) and friend Woody (Kevin O'Connor) decide to move to an old farmhouse in Connecticut. Upon arriving at the house, which is effectively creepy although for no specific reason really, meet a hippy chick named Emily (Mariclaire Costello) who seems to be squatting at the farmhouse. Shortly thereafter Jessica's madness resumes and we are left to wonder for a time if it is all in Jessica's head or is something really going on.



The film has been compared to Rosemary's Baby as well as The Haunting in that they all follow the point of view from a female with a questionable sanity. There is no gore and not much violence, instead the story relies heavily on atmosphere to bring out the heebie jeebies here. And bring them out it does! I cannot tell you how much I fell in love with this movie from the very first few minutes. The first scene of a woman in a boat on a lake is both serene and ominously creepy. The narration by Jessica in the scene adds to the suspense and instantly put me on edge. At the end of the film you figure out the entire movie is a flashback and the last scene is the same as the first scene only now we have the complete story of the girl in the boat alone, out on the lake. The scene at the end of the movie is even more creepy as the camera pulls back to show the big picture. The ending is purposefully vague to give the viewer the ability to draw their own conclusions. Some say the ending subtracts from the movie but I disagree. The plot of the story is sometimes compared to the vampire novella, Camille from 1872.



For those of you who do not know who Barton Heyman was, he was an actor who made several appearances in films throughout the 60's, 70's, and 80's. His last role was as a prison guard in the movie Dead Man Walking starring Sean Penn. It is Heyman who utters the films title line as Penn is lead to the death chamber.



Unfortunately the style and feeling of LSJTD is no longer used, and boy could we use more movies like this one today. It is surprisingly so, one of the most eerie movies I have ever seen. The score of the film, done by Orville Stoeber, is so well done it had me looking around my living room and wanting to turn on a light. Zohra Lampert gives such a performance that you really believe she is on the brink of cracking and you feel sorrow for her because you can tell she really wants to be sane but circumstances just won't allow it. That's how well she puts across the eggshell sanity that she has. I instantly felt such horror and sadness for her as I watched her slip further into madness. Their friend Woody, drives a hearst, and is so very appropriate for Jessica to lie in as they travel. Later in the movie he develops an odd obsession for a tractor. Jessica is so fascinated by death that she has Woody stop at a cemetery so she can get a headstone etching. As she does the etching, she sees a blond girl in the distance who seems to be almost ghostly. The girl vanishes before she can get the others attention which is probably a good thing as the other two would not have believed her anyway.



In order to get to the farmhouse they have to board a ferry and cross a lake to get there. Known as "The Old Bishop Place" the area is desolate and the house is huge and foreboding. Jessica sees someone sitting in a chair on the porch but again doesn't say anything. Inside the house there is a woman at the top of the stairs. Duncan and Woody also see her and they catch her and she tells them she is a drifter and she thought the house was abandoned. Jessica, taking pity on the girl, decides to invite her to stay for dinner. Emily agrees and later, after dinner, she suggests the four of them have a seance to contact the spirits of the departed that may be in the house. During the seance Jessica hears the voices of the departed in her head and is saddened by them.



The next day, Jessica goes out for a swim with Duncan and Woody and she sees something in the water and hears a voice call to her "come to me". She screams and tries to swim away as Woody and Duncan come to her rescue they look but find nothing in the water, of course. Jessica begins to think Emily and Duncan are becoming too close but she also fears that her sanity is slipping away and it is becoming obvious to her husband. A trip to town that has creepy undertones and a visit to the local antique dealer later and we have an even bigger mystery brewing as Jessica notices every man in town has bandages.



Perhaps the Overlook Film Encyclopedia says it best when it calls Let's Scare Jessica To Death a "poetic and pervasive film" that "borrows from both the gothic and post Night of the Living Dead traditions to depict the death of the love generation as a group of dropouts find rural America less than accommodating". The film is subtle with it's scares. It doesn't jam anything into your face (except maybe a dead mouse disguised as a dead mole) and even the title is a little misleading as I thought it was going to be a big conspiracy to force the lead character, Jessica, back into a mental institute. Someone in their 20's may find this film boring, slow, or dated. However, that is what makes this movie so good for someone my age and it is also what makes me sad for todays horror genre.



The opening finds Jessica wondering to herself on the boat; "I sit here and I can't believe it happened. And yet I have to believe it. Dreams or nightmares, madness or sanity. I don't know which is which." And neither do we as the movie closes we still don't know if what we see happen really ever actually happened. That is the beauty and the triumph that is Let's Scare Jessica To Death.

Tradition

We're over here now, as I help to celebrate the month of October with not one but two movie reviews. First up is a 1970's movie that I had never viewed titled Last House on the Left. The first movie Wes Craven wrote and directed for the big screen. The audience was told in order to keep from fainting you need to keep telling yourself "it's only a movie". These were probably the same people who labeled the 1963 Vincent Price movie Diary of a Madman as "the most terrifying movie ever made". But I digress, LHOTL was produced by Scott S. Cunningham. Wes Craven would go on to make horror movie history with his Nightmare on Elm Street movies while Cunningham began the Friday the 13Th franchise.



LHOTL is an odd movie. From the very beginning something doesn't feel right. Usually this is a good thing for a horror movie but in this case it's not. What I mean is, as the movies female lead Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassell) takes a shower on her 17Th birthday and gets dressed to go out to a concert by a group called Bloodlust there is nudity right away, I usually don't complain about nudity but she's supposed to be 17. That seems a little gratuitous lecherous to me. As she comes down stairs to leave she is confronted by her father Dr. John (Richard Towers) and he makes sure to mention that she is not wearing a bra and that can see her nipples through her shirt. It's just an odd way to start a movie for me.



On the way to the city, Mari and her friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) hear a radio report about a recent prison break, involving violent criminals by the names of Krug Stillo (David Hess who also does the music for the film, more on that later), his son Junior (Marc Sheffler; who's agent plays Dr. John), Sadie (Jeramie Rain) and Fred "Weasel" Podowski (Fred J. Lincoln who did mostly porno movies but treated us to his main stream craft here, lucky us). Upon arrival in the city, Mari and Phyllis walk around looking someone who might sell them some marijuana, a known horror movie no-no. Eventually, they run into Junior, who leads them back to an apartment, where they are immediately entrapped by the criminals. Fun and frivolity of the sick and twisted variety shortly ensues as back home, Mari's parents begin decorating for a surprise birthday party.



After a fun filled night the girls are locked inside the trunk of the criminals car as they attmpt to leave the country. Their car breaks down right in front of Mari's driveway, as luck would have it, but is ignored by the two sheriff deputies that are investigating the kidnapping of Mari. The criminals take Mari and Phyllis deep into the woods and continue the torture and other vile acts which include Phyllis being forced to urinate in her pants and Mari and Phyllis are then made to have sex with one another. Meanwhile, the bungling cops have realized the error of their ways and are going back for the criminals car. Unfortunately for them their own squad car runs out of gas and the two are forced to try and hitch a ride from a group of hippies who gives them the finger and yells at them that they hate cops. Next up is a chicken farmer and the two keystone wannabees luck doesn't seem to get any better.



I won't give you any more detail of the films, ah hem, plot only to say you will have to go see for yourself if you have not seen this. Believe it or not LHOTL is actually based on Ingmar Bergman's classic film The Virgin Spring which won an Oscar in 1960 for best foreign language film. How did that come all the way to this?

This film, along with the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is credited with being the two films that brought realism into horror films. Originally titled Night of Vengeance, the original script called for even more violence and brutality than actually made it into the film. What the hell is wrong with Wes Craven? The movie is actually well filmed and it does look more like a documentary of sorts than a produced movie, but the music, well, that's a whole different subject.



The film's soundtrack was written-and partially sung-by David Hess, who also played the main antagonist Krug. It is notable for being contrasted with the events on screen. For example, as the gang drives the two girls out into the countryside, an upbeat, almost comical tune plays and, after a rape scene, a soothing ballad plays.



Most of the acting is as horrible as the torture the girls go through. LHOTL was a huge hit at drive in movie theaters in the 70's and has a cult following around the globe to this day. It has only recently been made available in it's "uncut" form (17 seconds is still missing from the version available in the UK) in many countries. A remake of the movie is currently in the works. While watching it I was actually saying something like the tag line said I would only I was adding one word to the line "it's only a movie" and that word was "bad". I can only muster up one fang out of four for this one. I will be back with my second movie later.