Let's Scare Jessica to Death

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Halloween 2018

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Under the Radar

In my search for Halloween-ish movies that float under the radar, this particular recommendation caught my interest. Aside from the disturbingly intriguing title, the concept sounded good to me. As far as I knew, going into it, we had Jessica (Zohra Lampert); a recently released mental patient who may or may not be losing touch with reality again. And what I got was... well, pretty much that, but in a much different way than I had assumed.

Jessica and her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman) move into a quiet farm house only to find a girl named Emily (Mariclare Costello) is squatting there. The couple end up inviting her to stay, and soon, Jessica starts seeing strange things - namely a girl's body floating around in the lake, know to have not been found after she apparently drowned. It really does end up being a bit of a Michigan J. Frog situation in that whenever Jessica wants to show and/or tell her husband and friends something, they kinda just brush it off and wonder if she's mentally healthy.

For the most part, I honestly found the film to be pretty dull and boring. It does carry a decent atmosphere, has some pretty genuinely creepy moments, and attempts to tackle the truly horrific matter of mental health issues, but does so in a sort of lame way. It's just another ghost movie at the end of the day, at least for me. I just think I've seen it done much better.

This may not be a bad movie for those seeking something that's not truly horrific, but eerie. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it just sort of dull. Not without its moments, but overall just dry and dull. I guess its meant to be something more psychological, but again, it's just been done better since, in my humble opinion.

When all said and done, I don't think I can take much away from this one, and I don't really recommend it for those seeking a good scary movie. This almost turns out to be something you could find on Sunday afternoon TV. I can't truly give it to the performances, the soundtrack, the overall execution, or much else. The only leeway I can give it is that it was 1971, and this is well-before a lot of the better horror out there anyway.

So, here I sit wanting to write something a little more genuine about the film, but I've honestly said all there is to say from my perspective. For myself, this was straight up watching paint dry for the most part. Small points for atmosphere and creepy imagery, but again, I have seen creepier. This is just a one-off 70's flick no one needs to revisit, or hardly even visit once. I'm just glad the dialogue wasn't insultingly bad.

2/5

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