Here lie SPOILERS ... that can't detract from the creep. But they're here.
Like many of the reviewers (10 pages for this little bitty film ... should tell the readers something!), it was my original viewing, early seventies, that tattooed this cinematic puppy on my horror loving heart.
My take on the premise ... we have one fresh-from-the-rubber-room lady who probably shouldn't have her walking papers yet (and why oh why was she in there in the first place?) whose husband feels she should have the quiet and solitude of a New England, back-country-farm ambiance for a zero-stress re-entry into the real world ... uh ... wait a minute. He wants to grow apples, escape the "urban blight", so ... is it his concern for his wife's brain-state or his Old MacDonald yearnings that drives him to seek the simple life? (there's this tag-along "buddy"; but this was the 70s and they're making the trip in a black hearse with the grave-stone-rubbing Jessica riding in the back with an also-black coffin-ish case for her husband's cello - yeah, honest.) When they get to the farmhouse (serendipitously shrouded in fog when the film crew got there - see trivia) they find a fetching(?) redheaded and nomadic young lady has taken residence because she thought the place was abandoned (perfectly acceptable plot element in the 70s) who presents the first big dose of creep by summoning up an "expression" for the camera. She's Emily.
You know she isn't "right" from the start. You just don't know how she is "wrong".
For certain, everyone knows Jessica went over the edge back there somewhere. What no one knows is if she made it back or not. The person most confused about this is Jessica herself. We hear her thoughts brawling over this. We watch her friends worrying about it. We wonder with her, and them, what is real and what is Jessica's wacko past creeping into the present.
Is "The Girl" (the ever and always fetching Gretchen Corbett - sorry, she's always flipped my switches by simply showing up) real, Jessica's imagination or a phantasm? Who is Emily and what does she want? Why does she look so much like the lady in an ancient photograph (is photography old enough to have an "ancient")?.
Why is everyone in the tiny town wearing bandages around their necks or arms, or bearing ugly scars. Are all the town's secrets really circling and swarming around Jessica, closing in? Did you just hear the word "vampire" (no, don't confuse this usage with something like the mythology in a film like "Underworld" where the rules are clear)? The slowly creeping-creeps continue to swarm Jessica, a descent into her private and claustrophobic horrors (that we're fed only pieces of) until they literally pin her to her bed in a scene that is nasty-subtle and a short jaunt from the end of the film, which is also its beginning.
Zora Lampert is Jessica and it had to be her or someone very like her. She nailed the teetering on the razor thin division between the insane and the real-that-should-be-insane. Note her too-constant smile and also her decisions and acts that will make more sense to women than they do men.
Mariclare Costello imbues "Emily" with all the understated but so effective "creeps", somehow, with what screen time she has, and her eyes, and her timing, and the music ...
And Gretchen Corbett is ... well, Gretchen Corbett, mute, bandaged neck, modest night clothes, running around grave yards, weaving in and out of reality and imagination and looking very fetching while she does.
This minor gem will probably matter mostly to those who saw it during the 70s when it left it's indelible mark from that perspective . But I'm certain there are those who can find the ability to "see it honest". You know who you are.
My wife got this Paramount DVD release for me for father's day (excellent release but with not any, no, extras). She hadn't heard of it but wanted to see it. We watched it together. I told her it would probably seem corny to her and that it was buried in the 70s.
That was just about her sentiments. What I expected. What I didn't expect was for it to "creep" me again after all these years. I mean, I have "Cannibal Holocaust" in my collection, I have extremes of extreme, yet this little PG-13 film is one of my best "creepers". Thirty years later, it made me shudder again.
Wow.
Oh, yeah ... the ending. Back in the early seventies all my buddies and friends were much ado about the ending. That was back when endings were neat and tidy and ... well ... ended things.
So, what happened to Jessica? Yeah, it's somewhat open ended but I've always felt the following when the ending question came up ... please refer to film's title.
End of spoilers.
Like many of the reviewers (10 pages for this little bitty film ... should tell the readers something!), it was my original viewing, early seventies, that tattooed this cinematic puppy on my horror loving heart.
My take on the premise ... we have one fresh-from-the-rubber-room lady who probably shouldn't have her walking papers yet (and why oh why was she in there in the first place?) whose husband feels she should have the quiet and solitude of a New England, back-country-farm ambiance for a zero-stress re-entry into the real world ... uh ... wait a minute. He wants to grow apples, escape the "urban blight", so ... is it his concern for his wife's brain-state or his Old MacDonald yearnings that drives him to seek the simple life? (there's this tag-along "buddy"; but this was the 70s and they're making the trip in a black hearse with the grave-stone-rubbing Jessica riding in the back with an also-black coffin-ish case for her husband's cello - yeah, honest.) When they get to the farmhouse (serendipitously shrouded in fog when the film crew got there - see trivia) they find a fetching(?) redheaded and nomadic young lady has taken residence because she thought the place was abandoned (perfectly acceptable plot element in the 70s) who presents the first big dose of creep by summoning up an "expression" for the camera. She's Emily.
You know she isn't "right" from the start. You just don't know how she is "wrong".
For certain, everyone knows Jessica went over the edge back there somewhere. What no one knows is if she made it back or not. The person most confused about this is Jessica herself. We hear her thoughts brawling over this. We watch her friends worrying about it. We wonder with her, and them, what is real and what is Jessica's wacko past creeping into the present.
Is "The Girl" (the ever and always fetching Gretchen Corbett - sorry, she's always flipped my switches by simply showing up) real, Jessica's imagination or a phantasm? Who is Emily and what does she want? Why does she look so much like the lady in an ancient photograph (is photography old enough to have an "ancient")?.
Why is everyone in the tiny town wearing bandages around their necks or arms, or bearing ugly scars. Are all the town's secrets really circling and swarming around Jessica, closing in? Did you just hear the word "vampire" (no, don't confuse this usage with something like the mythology in a film like "Underworld" where the rules are clear)? The slowly creeping-creeps continue to swarm Jessica, a descent into her private and claustrophobic horrors (that we're fed only pieces of) until they literally pin her to her bed in a scene that is nasty-subtle and a short jaunt from the end of the film, which is also its beginning.
Zora Lampert is Jessica and it had to be her or someone very like her. She nailed the teetering on the razor thin division between the insane and the real-that-should-be-insane. Note her too-constant smile and also her decisions and acts that will make more sense to women than they do men.
Mariclare Costello imbues "Emily" with all the understated but so effective "creeps", somehow, with what screen time she has, and her eyes, and her timing, and the music ...
And Gretchen Corbett is ... well, Gretchen Corbett, mute, bandaged neck, modest night clothes, running around grave yards, weaving in and out of reality and imagination and looking very fetching while she does.
This minor gem will probably matter mostly to those who saw it during the 70s when it left it's indelible mark from that perspective . But I'm certain there are those who can find the ability to "see it honest". You know who you are.
My wife got this Paramount DVD release for me for father's day (excellent release but with not any, no, extras). She hadn't heard of it but wanted to see it. We watched it together. I told her it would probably seem corny to her and that it was buried in the 70s.
That was just about her sentiments. What I expected. What I didn't expect was for it to "creep" me again after all these years. I mean, I have "Cannibal Holocaust" in my collection, I have extremes of extreme, yet this little PG-13 film is one of my best "creepers". Thirty years later, it made me shudder again.
Wow.
Oh, yeah ... the ending. Back in the early seventies all my buddies and friends were much ado about the ending. That was back when endings were neat and tidy and ... well ... ended things.
So, what happened to Jessica? Yeah, it's somewhat open ended but I've always felt the following when the ending question came up ... please refer to film's title.
End of spoilers.