Uncomfortable Kinship: Summer of Fear (1978)

My dear readers, though my sweet Penny Dee and I am able to enjoy a healthy amount of solitude, the breadth of our combined lineage more or less assures that every once in a while, we will find ourselves with guests. Most recently, we were expected to house my sweet Penny Dee’s sisters and while I find their unisonous movements and sparse conversation to be pleasant enough, even the most agreeable of company can become a bit of a burden after some time. All fondness aside, I find the constant keeping up of appearances, the incessant pleasantries and their nightly feast on the psychic energy of their hosts always leaves me feeling a bit put out after one of their visits.

Rachel Bryant (Linda Blair) certainly understands this predicament, as she, too, has seen her peaceful existence upended by family in need. Rachel lives an idyllic sort of teenage life, with little to trouble her young mind aside from community dances and horse exhibitions. But these wholesome pastimes are thoroughly hindered by the arrival of her cousin Julia (Lee Purcell), whose parents perished rather suddenly in an automobile mishap. Everyone seems quite attentive to Julia’s needs, beyond, perhaps, what is warranted for even a recently orphaned girl and soon it seems as though friends and family have forgotten Rachel entirely.

Rachel begins to suspect that Julia’s charms go beyond her winning personality after a spate of erratic equine behavior points towards the possibility that Julia dabbles in witchcraft. Ms. Blair, when not spouting obscenities or spewing streams of pea soup, is as cute as the proverbial button and it is difficult to see, witchcraft or no witchcraft, how her earnest pleas could so thoroughly ignored. And yet when she presents her findings, few people are receptive to the notion that this charming new housemate is in league with forces most dark and so Rachel takes it upon herself to uncover incontrovertible evidence of black magic usage.

The awkward intersection of ancient sorcery and modern transport

Though I don’t typically give critical notice to the oxymoronic category of “television movies,” it is hard to pass up a collaboration between director Wes Craven and Exorcist alumna Linda Blair. Mr. Craven, whose first pair of films featured some of the most unsettling violence available in the genre to date, may not seem like a natural fit for the restrictive world of 1970s television and his uncompromising style hardly feels as though would compliment the occasional commercial break. But a brilliant creative force like Mr. Craven cannot be contained by mere broadcasting standards and, deprived of innards, he infuses all of the horror into Julia’s relationships with men.

The family patriarch, in particular, develops a deeply uncomfortable kinship with his grieving niece and scenes of him feeding her fruit and zipping up her dress are as disturbing as any glistening ream of intestines glimpsed in Mr. Craven’s other work. Summer of Fear is potent proof that from his earliest days, Wes Craven was an artist who could inject highly distressing content into even the most constricted mediums.

Summer of Fear runs 100 minutes and is rated PG-13 for some violence.