Let's Scare Jessica to Death

1971 "Something is after Jessica. Something very cold, very wet...and very dead."
6.4| 1h29m| PG| en
Details

Newly released from a mental ward, Jessica hopes to return to life the way it was before her nervous breakdown. But when Jessica moves to a country house with her husband and a close friend, she finds a mysterious girl living in there. Jessica's terror and paranoia resurface as evil forces surround her.

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Reviews

Ensofter Overrated and overhyped
LouHomey From my favorite movies..
Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful
Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.
qmtv Female actors - good. Male actors - sucked. Plot, Screenplay - sucked. Cinematography - OK. Music - sucked.Plot, woman has mental problems, ghost in house/lake, vampire/zombies. Boring, slow pace, a few scares. Very slow and not convincing. Some atmospheric scenes. Very little character development, and unlikable characters. Nothing in the movie tells us where/how the ghost or vampire came to be, or what her relation to the town folk. All we get is bits and pieces, like the audience is supposed to fill in the pieces with insufficient information. The plot screenplay sucks. If the screenplay sucks, the movie sucks. Sorry.Instead of watching this, I would recommend Footprints on the Moon (Prime Impulse), Night of the Living Dead, or Messiah of Evil.
TheRedDeath30 Yes, that pun was too easy.We all have our own tastes. It's what makes sites like this fun and keeps the debates raging. It's what allows us to feel superior to others when we like a movie that we're sure is too smart for most people, or when we hate a movie that the "sheep" will flock to love. Often, with these sort of "cult classic" films, they get the moniker for a very good reason. A minority will treasure the movie and consider it to be a 10-star classic, while most are not going to understand the appeal. I have plenty of my own cult classic loves. This just isn't one of them.I consider myself to be a horror junkie. I love horror dating back to silent classics and up through this year's releases. I love major studio and indie, domestic and foreign. I say this not to feel that my opinion is any more valid than anyone else's but to say that I think my ratings and reviews prove that I'm not narrow minded to one time era or style of horror. I would say, though, that there are few horror movies from the first half of the 70s that really stand out. Romero changed the game, in 69, with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, introducing an amazing mixture of gut-churning gore and intelligent social messages in horror. It was revolutionary, but it also left horror struggling to figure itself out for a few years. There isn't a straight "style" to horror of this era. Most that I have seen fall into this genre, like LET'S SCARE, of looking low budget, feeling amateurish and trying very hard to inject artistic and social style, while playing for subtle creepiness. It's not an easy mixture to get right.This film is about a hip young woman who leaves the big city with her musician husband and their hippie pal, setting out for the country to get her mind correct after a breakdown. We get a little bit of DELIVERANCE style scare as the townies don't take kindly to new flower children, driving around in their hearse. They settle into an old farmhouse, on an orchard, that happens to be inhabited by a squatter. The bulk of the picture spends its' time trying to spin a web of chilling frights where we're meant to question whether the events are real or in our heroine's mind. She starts unraveling as events get more terrifying around her until the final nefarious plot is revealed (or was it?).The problem with the movie is that it's not half as clever as it thinks it is and spends far too much time boring the audience to death. I'm all for psychological horror. Some of my favorite horror films of all time would fall into that realm, but I need something more than a woman who talks to herself. That's basically the movie in a nutshell. Our heroine talking to herself. The two men in the house spend most of their time trying to get into the pants of our squatter, who is only marginally attractive and a little bit creepy. Shallow criticism, for sure, but if the whole plot is that I'm supposed to believe these men are falling over themselves to do her bidding, I'm not buying.There is no atmosphere built and the movie is begging for it. Use the orchard. Use the creepy attic. Use some fog and the lake that surrounds their island home. Use some dreamlike cinematography. There are so many missed opportunities in this movie, that I just can't recommend it for most people. I see all these 10 star reviews and just can't understand it, at all, but to each his own. I rarely give movies a rating this low. I find that most movies fall into an medium of mediocrity that gets them an average rating, but I was so bored by this one and just waiting for it to end.
gavin6942 A recently institutionalized woman (Zohra Lampert) has bizarre experiences after moving into a supposedly haunted country farmhouse and fears she may be losing her sanity once again.In 2006, the Chicago Film Critics Association pronounced "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" the 87th scariest film ever made. In the 2010s, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films. "Jessica" placed at number 86 on their top 100 list. And in 2016, Rue Morgue magazine gave the film a cover story with in-depth coverage from Kim Newman and an extensive interview with director John Hancock.This being said, I figure it was high time I saw it for myself. And it really is a great film. Some aspects really suggest a late 60s or early 70s aesthetic (the impromptu jam session in particular) but this does not hurt the aging of the film in any way. In fact, it sort of helps put it in an older time, as there is something about the setting that suggests an era even earlier then the time of filming.The scares are achieved by a slower building of tension and an atmosphere of dread. We don't have a lot of blood and guts (though there is some), and the scares aren't generally cheap "jump" or "bus" scares.Does a good version exist? The one I saw was good, but a bit rough. Warner Archive does not seem to put in much effort to clean up their films.
Johan Louwet Slow burners can really be good but a formula for success they are not at least not for me. I think Zohra Lampert did a good job playing Jessica, a young woman recently released from a mental hospital trying to pick up her life again with her husband Duncan and friend of the family Woody. they move into a house on the countryside where they meet up with Emily, who had broken into the house. But Jessica feels sorry for this young girl who seemingly has no place else to go, so Emily can stay as long as she desires. So the townspeople are quite weird, Emily gets manipulative over the newbies and Jessica hears voices in her head. She also sees things that others don't but still she tries her best that nothing is wrong. If not for her good screenplay I would have rated this movie even lower. The other characters including Emily are just not interesting nor is the storyline any exciting and pretty predictable at that. The finale is really disappointing. Not a fan of vampires but this must be one of the lamest vampire movies I have seen.