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Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
R1 - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jari Kovalainen (23rd August 2007). |
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The Film
 Jessica (Zohra Lampert - e.g. “The Exorcist III (1990)”) is about to start a new, fresh chapter in her life. After spending six months in a mental institution due to a severe nervous breakdown, she and her husband Duncan (Barton Heyman - e.g. “The Exorcist (1973)” and “Cruising (1980)”) have bought an old house in the countryside. Hectic town life will be soon history. Their old friend Woody (Kevin O'Connor) is along for the ride, ready to help with the repairing of the house. Jessica is still quite fragile and vulnerable, but in a good mood, optimistic. What then happens is like a quick slap in her face; she sees someone in the house, instantly doubting her own sanity. Was the girl another of her old hallucinations? Luckily, the mysterious girl turns out to be a drifter - Emily (Mariclare Costello - e.g. “Ordinary People (1980)”), who simply thought that the house is abandoned. She stays for dinner and is quickly connected to the rest of them with her interesting stories (she sometimes “hears the shadows come back to life”) and open mind. Especially Woody has his eye for Emily. It´s still obvious that Jessica is not yet fully recovered, since the old nightmares are constantly around the corner - waiting for the right moment to haunt her. They finally arrive when Jessica is swimming in the lake near by. She sees a girl in the depths of the water. Is this just Jessica´s nightmare - or reality? And will anyone believe her? The story has to track all the way down to the year 1880 to find out the ultimate truth… “Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)” is clearly a low budget effort, but mostly in a good way. It´s operating in the similar territory to the films like “Don't Look Now (1973)”, creating a psychological horror and pressure for the audience, not really using some cheap spooks and certainly not gore. The story is mainly a horror mystery that is slowly unraveling. Together with Jessica, the audience is wondering what´s going to happen next and whether she is dreaming it all. Everything flows pretty nicely and all the four main actors do their jobs effectively, especially Zohra Lampert. The characters don´t really “evolve” during the film, though, which makes some scenes a bit repetitive. Some “edge” would´ve been needed and the lack of really ”scary” scenes might put off some of the horror buffs. I also felt that some of the scenes involving the “grumpy town folks” were not very believable. While the exterior scenes look mostly fine, the visual look is often quite “blunt” (interior lighting, I mean). This tends to underline the “low budget” values of the film. Still, director (also “co-writer” as Ralph Rose) (John D. Hancock - e.g. “Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)”) has created an solid, small horror-film from the 1970s, with a serious tone and a few “I-didn´t-see-that-coming”-plot twists. While this was probably a minor disappointment for me (I had high hopes), I can easily recommend it to all horror-fans out there.
Video
The film is presented in Anamorphic 1.78.1 and it looks very nice. Colours and black levels are usually strong (some scenes don´t fare that well, being a bit faded) and everything is clean (minor film artifacts here and there). Some grain and softness is present. For the low budget film of this age, I would say that this is a very good effort. “Single layer” disc is coded “R1” and has 15 chapters. Running time is 88:51 minutes (NTSC).
Audio
English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is the only audio choice, along with optional English subtitles. There is some hiss and “ambient noise” on the track, but generally it´s relatively clean. The track is sounding a bit “low budget”, but I can´t really complain.
Extras
No extras.
Overall
Interesting, partly creepy PG-rated horror-story, giving a few surprises to its audience and good acting. DVD-presentation is as bare bones as it gets, but the film presentation is good. This DVD is available at Xploited Cinema.
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