The early 1970's marked a major transition period in horror films with graphic violence and gore becoming an integral part of the narrative in such films as Mario Bava's Ecologia de Delitto (1971, aka Bay of Blood), Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972) and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Yet, in complete contrast to this new trend, Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971) was a throwback to an earlier time in the horror genre; it was underrated at the time of its release and overlooked by many horror fans seeking more extreme offerings.

Recalling the atmospheric thrillers of Val Lewton and moody one-offs like Carnival of Souls (1962), Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a visually elegant and erratic exercise in gothic Americana, a rural ghost story set in contemporary times but with strong ties to the haunted past. As the movie opens, Jessica (Zohra Lampert), has just been released from a mental institution following a nervous breakdown, and is traveling with her husband Duncan (Barton Heyman) and their friend Woody (Kevin O'Connor) to a new home in the country. Leaving behind an urban life in New York City, the threesome have decided to make a go of it in the country and turn the farmland into a commercial orchard. Yet right from the beginning, Jessica is apprehensive. The townspeople are openly hostile to them and they have a surprise in store - a strange hippie girl named Emily (Mariclare Costello) has taken up residence in their new home which is rumored to be haunted. Accepted as a kindred spirit, Emily is invited to stay but the whispering voices in Jessica's head return and with them a sense of mounting terror.

The movie's dreamlike mood is sustained from the opening frame to the last with the heroine's voiceover confession delivered from a drifting canoe in the middle of a lake: "I sit here and I can't believe that it happened. And yet I have to believe it. Dreams or nightmares? Madness or sanity? I don't know which is which." The viewer doesn't know either since the movie, the directorial debut of John D. Hancock (Bang the Drum Slowly, 1973), is told from Jessica's point of view which accounts for the movie's seemingly illogical and haphazard narrative arc. One of the strengths of Let's Scare Jessica to Death is Zohra Lampert's nervous, emotionally fragile performance as the bedeviled heroine. Though better known as a stage and television actress, Lampert did manage to make strong impressions in the crime dramaPay or Die (1960) and Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961) but sadly, her opportunities in this medium were limited. Like Lampert, Mariclare Costello, who is creepy and compelling as the mysterious Emily (a character inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu's story "Camilla"), also made few film appearances and has spent most of her career working in television.

Shot on location in Chester, Essex and Old Saybrook, Connecticut, Let's Scare Jessica to Death is enhanced by the lush cinematography of Robert M. Baldwin which conveys a sense of menace amid the bucolic surroundings, particularly in the sequences set on the lake where something sinister lurks just beneath the water. Still, many reviewers faulted the film for an inconsistent tone and an absurd, overplayed climax which refused to bring closure to the story. Roger Greenspun of The New York Times wrote, "...the film's setting, along the Connecticut River below Hadlyme, are among the other pleasures of Let's Scare Jessica to Death, which brings a rather discerning sense of place and season to its woods and its waters and the stairs and corridors of its ramshackle house. But toward its genre it develops rather less feeling, and after an initial homage to the traditional coffin crossing the water (in fact, a bass-violin case in the back of the couple's hearse-station wagon being ferried over the river) and a momentary camera angle out of Dreyer's great Vampyr [1932], it tends to lose much sense of what kind of movie it is...You may not think it possible for a movie like this to say that at a certain point it ceases to make sense, but that is really what happens to Let's Scare Jessica to Death within a half hour of its beginning."

It is true some horror aficionados will side with Greenspun's criticisms but others may find the film a haunting mood piece which casts its strange spell without resorting, for the most part, to cheap shock tactics. At one point, there were even plans to remake Let's Scare Jessica to Death in 2001 with Robert Evans serving as the producer and Teddy Tenenbaum as the screenwriter (he worked on the TV series Stephen King's Dead Zone in 2003). Nothing came of it but Hollywood could do worse than remake this underrated, low-budget sleeper from 1971.

Producer: Charles B. Moss, Jr.
Director: John Hancock
Screenplay: John D. Hancock (as Ralph Rose), Lee Kalcheim (as Norman Jonas); Sheridan Le Fanu (story, uncredited)
Cinematography: Bob Baldwin
Music: Orville Stoeber
Film Editing: Murray Solomon
Cast: Zohra Lampert (Jessica), Barton Heyman (Duncan), Kevin O'Connor (Woody), Gretchen Corbett (The Girl), Alan Manson (Sam Dorker), Mariclare Costello (Emily).
C-89m.

by Jeff Stafford