Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) - dir. John D. Hancock
Jessica has come with her husband Duncan, an upright bass player for the New York Philharmonic, and their hippie friend Woody to an apple farm upstate. Jessica, we learn, has recently left a mental health facility where she was for some unspecified reason, and they have left the city hopeful that the quiet of the country will help. But the locals seem pretty hostile when they arrive in Woody’s hearse with peace slogans painted on it. And there’s a young drifter, Emily, that they find squatting in the farmhouse.
Despite some rather clunky voice over narration from Jessica, the film maintains an air of mystery and unease. The question of Jessica’s sanity comes up frequently, so we are left in the hands of an unreliable narrator. The goings on in the house, and the town, are somewhat sketchy, and there’s a lot left for the viewer to puzzle out for themselves, or not. It definitely has more in common with, say, 1963’s The Haunting or 1962’s Carnival of Souls than Night of the Living Dead or Rosemary’s Baby.
This was a showing from the Blu-ray of the new 4K restoration. So the film looks great, but has not lost any of the grainy, lived in quality of films of that era. Zorha Lampert as Jessica looks like every mom I saw at every school function back in the 70’s. Indeed, most of the cast, even the obviously beautiful Mariclaire Costello as Emily, have de-glammed as much as possible. The people on screen look… ordinary. This contrasts with the escalating odd behavior, giving us a real sense of having overturned an ordinary log to see the rot and decay beneath the surface.
3.5 out of 5 rude old men who wouldn’t piss on a hippie if he was on fire.
