#Mariclare Costello

[creepynostalgy]

Mariclare Costello and Zohra Lampert in Let's Scare Jessica To Death (1971)

[schlock-luster-video]

On July 26, 1972, Let's Scare Jessica to Death debuted in Japan.

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension 1984

[sloshed-cinema]

Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

Sometimes, that small-town charm is an outright lie. Recently returned from a stay in a mental institution, Jessica and her husband Duncan move from the hustle and bustle of New York City to a small community in Connecticut. But everyone from the ferry boat captain to the old dudes hanging out on the main drag are frostily intimidating. Are these traditional, conservative folks reacting regressively to a bunch of alternative types rolling through in a hearse with ‘LOVE’ and a peace symbol painted on the side? Or is something more sinister at work? The farmhouse Jessica and Duncan bought has a sordid past, with death and a possible vampire on the premises. And the young woman discovered slumming it on the property bears a striking resemblance to that old family portrait… The film takes an interesting tack in rooting the experiences firmly with Jessica, which adds an air of uncertainty to everything that happens. Some experiences are shared with others—the discovery of a blonde, mute woman, for one—but as things start to get out of control, the questions only mount. Leering intruders, suspicious wounds on necks and forearms, and the increasingly sinister countenance of Emily all make for an overwhelming glimpse at a rehoming gone very wrong, or perhaps into the mind of a troubled woman.

If the film remains agnostic to Jessica’s sanity, the score certainly doesn’t. Setting aside the folky strains of an opening jam session between Emily and Duncan, this opts for a psychotronic synth breakdown any time Jessica is in peril. It’s harsh and abrasive, striking at the ear with its distorted energy.

Setting this in rural Connecticut during the autumn lends a striking atmosphere to this film, even before the horrific occurrences begin. This is a landscape of winding country roads and ruddy gold leaves, a time when a dip in the lake is still a pleasing prospect. But as Jessica’s collection of gravestone rubbings can attest, this is an area that has seen its fair share of history and therefore death. She reads from the parting sentiments of those who came and went before, be they poetic musings about the fleeting nature of existence or an attestation about the accomplishments of a former slave. But unlike Jessica’s current guest, those dead people stayed where they were, and ceased to bother the living.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'believe'.

Voiceover inner monologue begins.

A noise sting accompanies a scare.

BIG DRINK

Someone vanishes.

Creepy townie antics.

[cadmium-free]

Day 9 of 26 with @neopetsdotcom

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (2010)

Lauren’s Review

Based on name alone I expected sometbing much more campy. I was fully unprepared for a film that really cuts to the bone in showcasing both the horror of being unable to trust your own mind, and the betrayal of having the people you love not trust your own mind either. How being mentally ill can strip you of your agency, your humanity, in their eyes.

I like that this movie casts you in the same role as both the people in Jessica’s life, and Jessica herself. Is what she experiences real? Can Jessica trust what she sees? Can you? or is she an unreliable narrator? There is not enough evidence to know for sure either way. The horror is not in Emily’s easy cruelty or the bloody bodies or the unfriendly creepy locals or the tragedy attached to her haunted old house. It’s in the uncertainty of it all, the plausible deniability that surrounds everything she experiences. Though there is not enough plausible deniability in the world to convince me the mouse she’s holding in that one scene is a mole like the movie wants you to believe

Awl's Review

Zohra Lampert as Jessica is spectacular. This could have been little more than a moody piece of folk horror, and I would have enjoyed that too, but performs the quiet dread of being made to doubt your own mind so well that this film becomes entirely tragedy. Her own voice mixes with whispers to convey her own doubt and fear in a terrific spiral.

The horror is in the ambiguity. Is what she sees real, or is everyone right to doubt her? And the doubt is pure cruelty. She repeats to herself that she must say nothing, no one will believe her, and she is correct. The men around her look at her with increasing paternalistic exhaustion. Even her joy, they enthusiasm she generously shares with the world around her becomes a mark against her. She is not serious. She is but a frightened thing. But you must believe her. Please.

Mariclare Costello as Emily is also such a charming spectre in this film. She doesn't have a place in the film to be a character like Jessica, but she holds her own. Every smile she shares is devious. Her nails are perfectly manicured to slight points. She is sweet and playful and sinister. Who can help but fall for her.

Purely technical, the sound design is amazing. It's incredibly foreboding and the music is very well deployed. I'm charmed by the visual touches: driving a beautiful hearse, serving a meal of canned tomatoes and lettuce, a roadside antique shop stuffed to the gills. It's almost unfortunate the title and poster convey a film utterly unlike what it is, but also, wow, I love the title and poster. Jessica is scared to death of being forever scared.

[ronmerchant]

Mariclare Costello- LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971)

[kwebtv]

Raid on Entebbe - NBC - January 9, 1977

Historical Drama

Running Time: 150 minutes

Stars:

Peter Finch as Yitzhak Rabin

Charles Bronson as Brigadier General Dan Shomron

Yaphet Kotto as Idi Amin

Martin Balsam as Daniel Cooper

Horst Buchholz as Wilfried Böse

John Saxon as Major General Benny Peled

Jack Warden as Lieutenant General Mordechai Gur

Meshach Richards as Major General Allon

Sylvia Sidney as Dora Bloch

Robert Loggia as Yigal Allon

Tige Andrews as Shimon Peres

Eddie Constantine as Captain Michel Bacos

Warren Kemmerling as Gad Ja'akobi

David Opatoshu as Menachem Begin

Allan Arbus as Eli Melnick

Stephen Macht as Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu

James Woods as Captain Sammy Berg

Harvey Lembeck as Mr. Harvey

Dinah Manoff as Rachel Sager

Kim Richards as Alice

Aharon Ipalé as Major David Grut

Mariclare Costello as Gabrielle Krieger

Larry Gelman as Mr. Berg

After the Uganda–Tanzania War, Tanzanian troops discovered Bloch's body in 1979 in a sugar plantation around 20 miles (32 km) from Kampala, near the Jinja Road. Visual identification was impossible because her face was badly burned, but the corpse showed signs of a leg ulcer. A pathologist working with the Israel Defense Forces formally identified Bloch from the remains. Her remains were returned to her son in Israel, where she was given an Israeli state funeral. She was buried in Jerusalem's Har HaMenuchot Cemetery. (Wikipedia)

[theharpermovieblog]

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I re-watched Let's Scare Jessica To Death (1971)

A 70's horror that is probably better known for its title than its story.

Did Jessica leave the mental institution too early? Is she losing her mind? Or, is her new home haunted by a vampiric ghost?

Director John D. Hancock is probably best known for the film "Bang The Drum Slowly" starring Robert Deniro, or possibly for "Weeds" starring Nick Nolte. Here Hancock directs a moody atmospheric horror film, which is considered by some to be an underrated classic...and by others to be a boring piece of trash. I personally lean much more toward the underrated classic side. I have some issues with the film, but they're easily overcome by my deep love for the film as a whole.

When I think of 1970's horror, I think of this movie almost immediately. It's not technically the best, but it is perfectly of it's time. It is an eerie and slow oddball of a film, which I'm deeply fascinated by.

"Let's Scare Jessica To Death" deals with mental illness and the isolation it causes. As someone with mental health issues you can feel outcast and/or coddled by the people in your life. You don't know who to trust, and you're afraid to rely on yourself and your own faculties. What do you do when the world you're trying to rejoin seems terrifying and strange, and the people helping you don't treat you as an equal?

This film contains one of my favorite images ever put on screen in horror. A simple shot of a ghostly vampiric woman walking out of a lake. Actor Mariclare Costello looks enticing and yet truly otherworldly as this vampire. Dangerous and desirable, she is a haunting sight that is hard to beat.

A lot of the film is as haunting as that one shot, in a very effective way. The narration, the whispers, the music, the pacing...it all lends itself to the overall feeling of dread and unease that makes this film work for me. Maybe I'm wrong, but, if you're anything like me ( a horror fan who has lived with mental illness), you should give this one a shot.

"Let's Scare Jessica To Death" is a meandering descent into madness and paranoia, which I can now say with confidence is massively underrated and underappreciated.

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Raid on Entebbe (Kershner, 1977)

This is one of two TV movies about the Entebbe airport raid rushed into production by US networks after the incident. I haven't seen the other movie, Victory at Entebbe (and the reactions I've read have not been terribly encouraging), but I have seen Operation Thunderbolt, which is probably the best known movie about the event, and the more recent 7 Days in Entebbe, which has mostly escaped my memory outside of its ill advised decision to turn its raid into a montage by cutting constantly to a modern dance troupe. So Operation Thunderbolt will be my main point of comparison.

I think the films' differing strengths can be chalked up to the fact that Raid on Entebbe is a TV movie directed by Irvin Kershner and Operation Thunderbolt is a theatrical release directed by Menahem Golan. Kershner's movie is unsurprisingly sturdier on a dramatic level, mostly because it tries to define the people defined as individuals and to an extent tries to parse out each of their contributions and points of disagreement. It's a largely positive look at the Israeli response to the instigating terrorist incident, but it doesn't feel as nationalistic as Golan's movie, which depicts the response as the machinery of the Israeli state turning entirely in concert.

Kershner also benefits from a star studded cast (meaning this movie probably had a bigger budget than most TV movies). Some of the cast merely fills up the screen without adding much (nearly every frame contains at least one recognizable face; I watched this in part for Charles Bronson but he sadly seems to sleepwalk through his scenes), but there are a number of actors who do make an impression. Peter Finch in his final performance depicts Yitzhak Rabin as an actual person instead of a historical figure, a young James Woods steals his scenes as one of the commandos, Silvia Sidney and Martin Balsam get some of the juicier parts from the hostages (along with Kim Richards AKA the little girl who gets blown away in Assault on Precinct 13). Even the terrorists are somewhat humanized. I liked the contrast between Horst Bucholz and Mariclare Costello (who resembles an angry German Susan Saint James), the former's reluctance and apologetic demeanour versus the latter's harshness and fanaticism. But the most entertaining performance here comes from Yaphet Kotto as Idi Amin, who probably benefits from having the most boisterous person to play (and this is one of those cases where even good imitations can't compare to seeing the real person) but nevertheless brings his usual charisma. As far as depictions of Amin go I think I prefer Joseph Olita in The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin, but that is a much worse movie otherwise and Kotto does a fine job here.

Golan's movie is probably a bit hammy for much of its runtime but snaps into focus for the very good action climax. Kershner's docudrama approach keeps the movie more engaging or at least more sober for most of its runtime, but given the TV movie production, the action scenes hold up better than expected, with the rehearsal scenes playing with a good amount of verve and plenty of tense moments in the climax (bullets flying over the heads of hostages, a pursuit through a hallway that gets resolved with a grenade) and more firepower than expected (some nice explosions as the commandos blow up the Ugandan air force's MiGs). And while some of this is an expectedly dry visual experience, there are some nice surreal touches during Amin's first visit, the psychedelic haze through which his helicopter descends followed by the POV shot of the cameras as they shoot him breathlessly.

Anyway, I'm a sucker for this kind of thing in general but this is stronger than I expected for a TV movie version of this event.

[docrotten]

LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971), Interview W/Dir. John Hancock – Episode 192 – Decades Of Horror 1970s

“I sit here and I can’t believe that it happened. And yet I have to believe it. Dreams or nightmares? Madness or sanity? I don’t know which is which.” Sounds like an unreliable narrator, yeah? Join your faithful Grue Crew – Doc Rotten, Bill Mulligan, and Jeff Mohr – as they talk with director John D. Hancock about his 1970s classic, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971).

Decades of Horror 1970s Episode 192 – Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), Interview w/Dir. John D. Hancock

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! And click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

A psychologically fragile woman has nightmarish experiences that lead her to believe that another strange, mysterious young woman she has let into her home may actually be a vampire.

  Director: John D. Hancock

Writers: John D. Hancock (credited as Ralph Rose), Lee Kalcheim (credited as Norman Jonas)

Produced by:

Bill Badalato (co-producer) (as William Badalato)

Charles B. Moss Jr. (producer)

Music by: Orville Stoeber

Cinematography by: Robert M. Baldwin (as Bob Baldwin) (photography

Selected Cast:

Zohra Lampert as Jessica

Barton Heyman as Duncan

Kevin O’Connor as Woody

Gretchen Corbett as Girl

Alan Manson as Sam Dorker

Mariclare Costello as Emily

The 70s Grue-Crew has a special episode for you with this one! Joining Doc, Jeff, and Bill is the talented director of Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), John D. Hancock. Not only does he discuss what went into making that extraordinary and creepy classic, but he also shares insights into his involvement in Jaws 2 (1978) and Wolfen (1981) along with industry insights. Join them as they get a special peek behind the curtain with John D. Hancock.

The 70s Grue Crew only touch on Hancock’s experience with Jaws 2. For a comprehensive interview with Hancock on the subject, check out this video podcast episode of The Daily Jaws.

At the time of this writing, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is available to stream from multiple PPV services. The film is also available as a Blu-ray disc from Scream Factory.

Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1970s is part of the Decades of Horror two-week rotation with The Classic Era and the 1980s. In two weeks, the next episode, chosen by Doc, will be The Killing Kind (1973), directed by Curtis Harrington (Queen of Blood, 1966; Whoever Slew Auntie Roo, 1972), featuring Ann Sothern, Jon Savage, and Cindy Williams.

We want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans: comment on the site or email the Decades of Horror 1970s podcast hosts at feedback@gruesomemagazine.com.

Check out this episode!

[brand-upon-the-brain]

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (John D. Hancock, 1971)

[schlock-luster-video]

On May 11, 2012, Let's Scare Jessica to Death was screened as a single feature on TCM Underground.

Here's a new drawing of Moniclare Costello!

[brody75]

Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

[kino51]

Let's Scare Jessica to Death   1971

[ozu-teapot]

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death | John D. Hancock | 1971

[moviemosaics]

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death

directed by John D. Hancock, 1971