Let's Scare Jessica to Death
1971
| Paramount Pictures | Release Date: August 27, 1971 |
Starring:
Alan Manson, Barton Heyman, Gretchen Corbett, Kevin O'Connor, Mariclare Costello, Zohra Lampert
Summary:
A recently institutionalized woman has bizarre experiences after moving into a supposedly haunted country farmhouse and fears she may be losing her sanity once again.
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Regular horror ingredients are all mixed up into something truly terrifying. [17 Dec 2006, p.8]
The result is a ’70s vampire flick that has distinctly gothic imagery—the immortal temptress leering out from a century-old portrait, creeping up on the unwary in the form of a waterlogged corpse, surrounded by her leering thralls—even as it uses psychological horror techniques and roots its terror in the gaslighting of a vulnerable woman.
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If for nothing else, Jessica is worth seeing for the presence of Zohra Lampert, and intelligent actress whose talent has somehow never been sufficiently appreciated. [14 Oct 1971, p.75]
This was the feature debut of director John Hancock (who would go on to BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY and WEEDS), and he does a fairly effective job of pulling good shocks out of this somewhat familiar material. The script doesn't help his cause: it's badly underdeveloped and contains some confusing inconsistencies.
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Great auntie to waking nightmare movies about distaff insanity as diverse as Images, 3 Women, A Woman Under the Influence, and Mulholland Drive, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death spends 90 minutes tapping lightly but incessantly on its heroine’s fragile sanity, as though it were some sort of Fabergé S&M model egg.
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