LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971)
Zohra Lampert, Mariclare Costello, Kevin O'Connor, Barton Heyman, Gretchen Corbett, Alan Manson
Directed by John Hancock
Released August 27, 1971 (Happy 40th Anniversary)
Beginning in a voiceover to a long flashback, Jessica has just been released from a 6-month stint in an asylum after a nervous breakdown. She and her husband, Duncan (a Symphony cellist), along with family friend, Woody, bail on New York's crazy rat-race-pace to help in her post-recovery. Taking off in Woody's hearse, the trio take up residence in a stuffy, ramshackle, old Connecticut farmhouse where they plan on starting an apple-growing business. (Could it get any more bohemian?) They meet carefree hippie Emily (who at times looks like a cross between Holly Hunter and Reba McEntire), a Manson-Family-looking squatter who was staying there while it was unoccupied. Woody has an instant woody for her [and that riff on his name is indeed appropriate as his character is pretty wooden as well]. Emily quickly becomes their guest and from her extended stay, she just as quickly makes an impression on both men (as she has on all the elderly men in town, who have bandages covering scars) and manages to convince everyone to take part in a séance. Speaking of the town, the elderly locals are suspicious, unfriendly and downright rude as they don't take kindly to the newcomers. From the get-go they aren't right and their coldness could be taken as a small commentary on the close of the 1960's and 'post-free-love' society, but isn't delved into deeper. Seeing as Jessica is fascinated by death and has a penchant for tracing cemetery headstones, she spots a mysterious blonde girl staring at her from a distance. This unknown female (who may or may not be trying to reach out to her) will fuel her paranoia to come but in the meanwhile, she grows uneasy with Duncan's attractiveness to Emily. Needing money, the trio look for items around the house to sell and in the attic, Jessica tries on some Victorian clothing and finds an old picture frame of the family who used to live there, the Bishops.

An antique store owner named Sam (also a New York native escaping the urban sprawl/hustle n' bustle of the big city) tells her that the woman in the photo, Abigail Bishop, drowned in the lake in 1880 just before her marriage was to take place. Her body was never found and supposedly she continues to roam the nearby area. Jessica is mesmerized by the story and having swam in the lake, is convinced that something grabbed her leg in the water but both men dismiss her fears. Could the legend be true? While Emily (who always seems to be sporting a forced smile and incidentally looks exactly like Abigail) continues to entertain with her stories and guitar playing, Jessica follows the blonde girl to a cliff where Sam's bloody body is found below near a stream. When Jessica brings Duncan back to the site, the body is gone but hubby and wife see blondie atop the cliff. After a chase, they attempt to question her but blondie doesn't speak a word. Then Jessica's pet mole (actually played by a mouse) which she found in their apple orchard also turns up dead, all carved up in a glass jar. Duncan, worried about his wife's mental health, suggests returning to New York to continue her treatment but he is spurned. When the Bishop portrait is found back in the attic, Jessica feels the upending of tranquility and trust, and herself alienated from the household, now believes she's hearing Abigail's ghostly voice in her head and that nefarious figures are coming for her. With Emily having seduced Duncan and made sexual overtures towards her, Jessica's own unbalanced psychosexual state, and jealousy teeters over the edge. Is Jessica relapsing and sliding into insanity? After agreeing to go swimming with Emily, is she really seeing the returning dead, vampires, spirits, and other supernatural possessed beings?

Or are these haunted manifestations all a product of a still mad and fractured mind? Can she keep all the voices in her head at bay? As she frets internally about appearing crazy, she externally pretends to keep herself in check, but will the emotional see-saw from the difficulty of deciphering between the unreal prove too much? With a low-key and dream-ish slowburn start, many early reviews criticized the movie for a narrative that was heavy on misdirection, and for unsettling disorientation -- particularly the climax with Emily biting Woody, Duncan's absence, Sam's reappearance, hubby and wife back home in their bedroom, Duncan's cut neck, knife-carrying Emily with her male mob of geriatric groupies, the discovery of mute blondie (gotta love the diy casket), the discovery of Woody, trying to board a ferry, and the film's final act after paddling in a rowboat into the middle of the lake... This end sequence of doom was a whirlwind of events that ponders whether or not a conspiracy took place, but the shifting mood of the picture as a whole is on Jessica's struggling interplay between somber and sinister. What initially looks peaceful and appealing, switches into a foreboding atmosphere that builds its apprehension amidst the foggy/hazy New Englandy cinematography of calm, country landscape and rural subtle scenery. Overall, LETS SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (try to a imagine a Woodstock generation gap in a CARNIVAL OF SOULS setting) is a subdued, eerie horror offering that plays far more on whispered warnings and slipping fragility than the heavy sensationalism of what would become guttural fare in scary 70's films. Even with its conclusion and unanswered questions, through all the creep factor, we are never sure of what is real or unreliable.

This month marks the 80th anniversay of the publication debut of SWANK magazine (1941). SWANK started as a men’s lifestyle and pin-up magazine in the style of Esquire. A 2nd more literary series appeared in 1945, and the 3rd (cheesecake moving into eventual hardcore) began in 1955. The mid 1950's relaunch was by Martin Goodman, the founder of Marvel Comics, who oversaw the running of spicy adventure stories and suspense fiction by the likes of Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Norman Mailer and Arthur C. Clarke. Humorist Bruce Jay Friedman -– father of Josh Alan Friedman, bard of 1970s Times Square -– was an editor by decade's end.


AUGUST 1941 ON THE WORLD STAGE Charles Lindbergh spoke tonight in Oklahoma City saying neither America nor Germany could successfully attack the other across the Atlantic Ocean unless international collapse preceded invasion. His speech was similar to one he gave earlier this month in Cleveland where he declared it would be disastrous for America and Europe to take part in "the present war" with the issue being ever greater than that of war & peace. His conclusion suggested whether the United States would still have a representative government, if its people would still be free, and if the fundamental right of the nation to decide its policies would exist. In his address tonight prepared for an America First Committee rally, the famous aviator said, "It seems clear to me that the quickest way for Germany to lose a war would be to attack America, and the quickest way for America to lose a war would be to attack Germany." Lindbergh's speech along with that of Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-Mont) was delivered at Sandlot Park, usually the site of semi-pro baseball games. The park was obtained by the AFC after the city council denied use to Lindbergh of the municipal auditorium. He did not refer to the council's action, instead confining them to his topic "Air Power" where he referred to the comparability of air & sea power, commenting that "Aviation has developed as much in a generation as shipping developed over a period of centuries. Germany has used aviation to change the entire technique of warfare, both on land and on the sea. England is using aviation to strike back at a continent she is unable to invade." Lindbergh then bluntly accused the coalitionists who favor entering the war alongside Britian of surreptitiously plotting to create "incidents & situations that would plunge the United States into war under the guise of defending America." He said, "The American interventionists are using aviation to support their claim that the Atlantic Ocean has dwindled to the size of the English Channel. The administration is using aviation to justify the occupation of Iceland, to prepare for the way for an occupation of Africa, and to add to the general hysteria of war. If the British Navy with its bases strung out from Alexandria in Egypt to the Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands off Scotland -- if the Navy with Gibraltar and Malta to assist it cannot remain within bombing range of the European coast, then how can any navy or combination of navies cross the ocean, and without a single base in this hemisphere, land an expeditionary force on American shores..." In summing up, Lindbergh made an unsettling comment when he alarmingly stated, "we should consider the possibility that England may turn against this country before the war ends, as she has turned against Poland, France and Finland."