Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

John D. Hancock

Writers:

John D. Hancock (writer)
Lee Kalcheim (writer)

Release Date:

6 August 1971 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Mystery

Tagline:

Something is after Jessica. Something very cold, very wet... and very dead...

Plot:

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.

Plot Keywords:

Mental Hospital | Farmhouse | Wedding | Vampire | Harpy

Cast

Zohra Lampert	...	Jessica
Barton Heyman	...	Duncan
Kevin O'Connor	...	Woody
Gretchen Corbett	...	The Girl
Alan Manson	...	Sam Dorker
Mariclare Costello	...	Emily

Also Known As:

The Secret Beneath the Lake (Canada: English title) (promotional title)
What Killed Sam Dorker? (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for terror/violence and some sensuality.

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:M | Finland:(Banned) (1972) | Sweden:15 | USA:GP (original rating) | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

34 North Main Street, Essex, Connecticut, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

The feature film debut for director John D. Hancock.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Duncan hands Jessica the "mole" in the cemetery scene, you can clearly see that it's a mouse and not a mole.

Quotes:

Woody: [Jessica and Duncan are trying to communicate with the Girl in white, who is mute, when Woody shows up] What's that?
Jessica: She led me to the body.
Woody: What's the matter with her?
Jessica: She knows who killed that man!
Woody: What man?
Duncan: [exasperated] I don't know.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Prime Cut (1972)

Let's Watch Jessica again

I vaguely remembered this flick from when I was a young girl watching late night UHF TV and getting the monster theater signal out of Scranton/Wilkes Barre. It's original release predated me. What struck me was that everybody seemed to want to scare the Goya lady to death! All I knew of Zohra Lampert at that time was that she was the woman on TV who always said, "Goya, Oh boy-a!" To suddenly discover that the undead wanted to do her harm was very unsettling. I had some long nights filled with bad dreams after seeing this for the first time when I was only about 12 years old.

Fast forward many years later and I find a copy of LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH on a badly panned and scanned VHS print and rediscover those unsettling feelings all over again. Sure, it's not as slick and state of the art as I might have remembered it to be, but the performances are all pretty good and the story about Jessica and her husband moving into an old house and finding a transient vampire is pretty original. Certainly it's not a story that I've seen copied ever since and it simply celebrates the originality that inspired the horror genre in the early 1970s.

When, oh, when will this be released on DVD?