Let's Scare Jessica to Death

topic posted Fri, November 9, 2007 - 9:27 AM by  Fioletta
Man...have I found the right Tribe! Loooove the baaaad movies...

I saw this when I was a kid and thought it was pretty creepy. My 12 year old son is way into horror now, but I'm trying to steer him away from excessive gore. Saw this on Netflix and rented it for him. We watched it last night and laughed our asses off. Besides the blatant stupidity of the premise--Jessica has just been released from a mental institution, so let's drive her in a refurbished hearse to an abandoned farmhouse with a bad history in some weird-ass isolated town (that apparently they knew nothing about) which has neither mental health facilities nor law enforcement as best I can tell, where the focal point of the town is a grave yard, filled with hostile, sliced and bandaged old people and one skinny mute girl running around in a nightgown... and when we find there is a mysterious squatter inside said creepy house (the only character who is even remotely attractive, I might add...you could be ugly and still work in the 70s)--instead of shooting/arresting her ass--let's invite her to stay!!

So many wonderful bad moments, mostly from Jessica herself: Zohra Lampert (don't feel bad that you don't know who she is), an Olive Oyl awkward, gapped-toothed, slightly crosseyed, comically ugly woman who shrieks like a chicken, is priceless. Craptastic acting, pink blood and as illogical as any vampire/zombies/or-is-she-just-insane kind of movie is. If they had the Razzies back then, she would've swept the awards. I won't go into any detail here because I'm hoping some of you guys will watch it so you can laugh at it with me.

Oh, and here's the best part...it's still sorta creepy. No matter how laughable it is--oh, and it is--there were still a couple of times I jumped.

One of my favorites...check it out!
posted by:
Fioletta
Virginia
  • Re: Let's Scare Jessica to Death

    Mon, November 12, 2007 - 10:45 AM
    Oooh, thanks for the reminder.

    This is one I had forgotten from my mental collection of--really creepy but also very good 1970s made for tv movies featuring creepy old New England farmhouses and innocent women/couples/kids who move into them. Crowhaven Farm and Harvest Home are a couple of others.

    I loved those. An unexpected side effect was that they gave me some kind of permanent phobia about New England.
    • Re: Let's Scare Jessica to Death

      Mon, January 21, 2008 - 11:45 AM
      Ooh, Harvest Home...craptacular!

      Book was actually sorta good, though...in a thriller-genre-misogynistic kind of way.
      • Re: Let's Scare Jessica to Death

        Mon, January 21, 2008 - 11:55 AM
        Hee. Craptacular and misogynistic indeed. I still have an old paperback copy of Harvest Home somewhere around the house.

        Don't forget Crowhaven Farm!. Hope Lange gets smooshed by the reincarnation of evil, witch-crushing puritans!

        And what was that one where Karen Black or somebody gets dragged across the cellar by scuttling creepy things?
        • Re: Let's Scare Jessica to Death

          Fri, February 29, 2008 - 6:26 AM
          Anyone see American Gothic? I just remember it being really weird and creepy. Any time an adult female is dressed like a little girl (fluffy dresses, pigtails, hair bows, gingham, bloomers, etc) it's just wrong.
  • Re: Let's Scare Jessica to Death

    Fri, March 14, 2008 - 9:25 AM
    I *just* watched LSJtD again after not having seen it since i was a kid. Found it thumbing through my on screen guide and my jaw dropped. In my 8yo mind it was one of the scariest things I'd ever seen (along with Night of the Living Dead) and firmly embedded zombies as the creepiest things ever in my psyche. Rewatching it 35 years later was fascinating. I think this flick singlehandedly gave me my fear of water I cant see through. Everything Fio said about it was absolutely true. It's really bad, and yet it still creeped me the fuck out. It's funny how the 8yo in me still needed to turn the lights on in the living room afterwards. Great stuff! But then I LOVE 70's horror. It was just shameless and hadnt fallen into shticky formula yet.
    • Re: Let's Scare Jessica to Death

      Fri, March 14, 2008 - 9:46 AM
      Try another cheese/schlock but genuinely creepy classic Die, Die My Darling! Tallulah Bankhead in her last role makes an astonishing slurry diva/repressed religious fanatic, and the girl she's terrorizing pretty much deserves it. You can watch it right online via netflix.
      • Re: Let's Scare Jessica to Death

        Tue, March 18, 2008 - 1:54 PM
        a drinking game that you will live to regret is taking a drink every time someone in die, die my darling! says "Mrs. Trefoyle."
        • Re: Let's Scare Jessica to Death

          Tue, March 18, 2008 - 4:14 PM
          Hee!!!

          That bugged the crap out of me the first time I saw that movie, when I was a kid. As in, who was this freakish woman, and why was the younger, equally freakish in her own way woman saying "Mrs Trefoyle" quite so often, and pronouncing it in quite that mincing faux-accented way?

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