By BILL REICK
“The three types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…” – Stephen King
“Terror,” as the master of literary horror defines it, is the word best suited to describe 1971’s LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH, a beautifully understated film elevated by believable performances and gloomy atmosphere. It’s grounded in a very real way, so that when things start escalating, it’s all the more jarring – and all the more difficult to explain away. It’s from a bygone era of classy horror movies; Even with its low budget, the film never stoops to cheap tricks to scare its viewers. Instead, we’re presented with a study of psychological fragility, a film that works as horror but also communicates a universal anxiety. Its depiction of paranoia is relatable, and that’s the scariest part of all.
Jessica (Zohra Lampert) has just been released from a mental institution, but she’s better now. She keeps insisting she’s well in what becomes the film’s central, heartbreaking coda. You want to believe she’s well. You want to believe that this is a new Jessica, that we’re meeting her at her best, having recovered from whatever has plagued her life in the past. The entire movie, it turns out, is about whether or not this is true. She certainly seems okay. The filmmakers are brilliant in the way they introduce this protagonist. We don’t know what a healthy Jessica looks and acts like. Is this Jessica at her best? Or is she a shadow of who she used to be? The audience simply does not know, and so, we instinctively trust her as she is. This is who we’re spending time with, so she’s the character we begin relating to. And to see the events through Jessica’s eyes is a truly harrowing experience.
Stephen King may have deftly defined the terror that best describes this movie, but our protagonist is very solidly rooted in the work of another giant of literary horror. Shirley Jackson, with her skill for inviting us into the mind of unreliable narrators, is LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH’s clearest forebear. In particular, Jessica seems like she’s walked right out of the twisted, broken architecture of Jackson’s Hill House. She shares a lot with The Haunting of Hill House‘s protagonist, Eleanor Vance. But while Eleanor has a whole group of believers around her, characters open to the idea that Hill House is haunted, Jessica is alone. She has no Theodora to confide in. And while Hill House reflects to Eleanor the truths about herself she fears the most, Jessica is offered no respite at all, wherever she is in the world. She can’t leave this haunting. And we aren’t even sure if it’s all just in her mind.
Jessica is released from a mental institution into the custody of her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman). Duncan, a renowned classical musician, has left his prestigious position to bring Jessica to a newly purchased farmhouse in upstate New York. Together, the couple, along with their friend, Woody (Kevin O’Connor), arrive in a town out of time, with their young, hippie sensibilities standing in stark contrast with (and derided by) the town’s elderly citizens. The trio rolls into town in a hearse. When they get to the house, the friends discover a mysterious drifter (Mariclare Costello), who’s been living there rent-free. The drifter’s name is Emily, and she wins them over, and Jessica invites her to stay. And Emily is the source of Jessica’s turmoil.
It’s around this time that we start hearing the voices in Jessica’s head. By bearing witness to these voices, are we the audience confirming that they’re real? Or are we all going a little mad? Because these voices are there. That’s another of this movie’s strengths. Whether these are auditory hallucinations or evidence of some paranormality, we believe them. We’re right there sharing this with Jessica.
And that’s why it’s so painful to watch Jessica unravel. We’re participants in her paranoia, so when she’s not believed, it hurts us too. Because we’re learning the truth about Emily, we’re privy to her being more than she seems.
The theme of not being believed when you’re so clearly in danger is explored in many horror movies, and for good reason. It is one of the most singularly terrifying experiences we share. The way Jessica is dismissed by the people in her life is terrifying. It’s mounting the whole time. What begins as a gloomy and somber tale climaxes with absolute terror. Instead of grossing us out or scaring us with monsters, LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH frightens us by showing us our frailties.
