Stranger in Our House (1979)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Wow, you'd think a TV movie by Wes Craven would be pretty suspenseful, right? Wrong- this is a snooze-fest that plays more like an after-school special. I'm serious- there are no thrills to be found until maybe the last 10 minutes, if you can call the catfight between the two female characters thrilling. I saw this movie when it first aired and I could really only remember a scene where a horse freaks out. Guess what- that's pretty much the only scary thing that happens, and it's not even scary! I was so looking forward to seeing this again but now that I have, I can truthfully say it wasn't worth the $10 bucks I paid on ebay for it. A much much better movie in this vein was called Midnight Offerings. It starred Melissa Sue Anderson and was much more exciting, with a couple of confrontations between the two main characters and some real, actual thrills. The movie box said it was rated PG-13, but considering there's no violence, blood, nudity, or language, it could have been rated G. I'm not kidding. How Wes Craven could have made this is beyond me. I'm tempted to listen to the audio commentary he provides for this movie, but that would require watching the film again, and I can't imagine putting myself through that again.

Seeing that this was from legendary horror director Wes Craven, and starring Linda Blair (who served as the demon-possessed girl, Regan, in "The Exorcist"), I decided to give "Summer of Fear" a chance. I wasn't expecting a TV movie (which was titled "Stranger In Our House" during it's television run), but I actually ended up enjoying it.The film centers around a teenage girl named Rachel. Rachel lives on a semi-secluded family farm in Northern California with her wealthy parents and siblings. When her mother's sister and brother-in-law die in a horrible car crash, their daughter, Julia, comes to live with them permanently. Julia seems somewhat normal, if not a little bit shy and withdrawn, but as time progresses, she puts an alluring spell over everyone she meets, and pulls all of Rachel's family and friends away from her. She begins getting close with Rachel's friends and her family, even stealing Rachel's boyfriend. After finding some strange items around the house (including burnt matches and a human tooth), Rachel discovers that Julia may be a practitioner of black magic. Now she must stop the evil witch before she launches her final assault.Okay, okay. I have to admit, some things in this movie were a bit laughable, mostly Linda Blair's poofy, frizzed out hairdo. The acting was alright, not great, but you can't expect a whole lot from it. Linda Blair's performance was decent, if not a little whiny at times, Lee Purcell pulled off the 'mysterious cousin' archetype, and Fran Drescher even had a small role as one of Rachel's friends. The film isn't scary at all, but I will say the finale was pretty well done, although by today's standards the effects may seem a bit cartoonish. I found it interesting to see Craven directing a film of this nature in his earlier years, considering he had just done brutal horror films such as "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Last House on the Left".To sum things up, I have to give "Summer of Fear" some credit— being a campy TV movie from the '70s, it has some chops. Although it lacked any substantial shocks or scares (except near the ending), I still found it to be a fun little piece of '70s nostalgia. Give it a look if you enjoy campy '70s horror, or if you want to see some of Craven's earlier work, because it is quite different from the films that he is most known for. All around good television terror. 7/10.

Linda Blair is this film's main draw today, but Lee Purcell is the real star of the show: at first I wasn't too sure about her, but she has the mysteriously seductive presence that her role calls for, and her performance literally gets better by the minute. This may be a Wes Craven movie, but it is also a TV movie, so it is rather tame in terms of sexuality and violence; there are few real surprises and few real thrills until the last 15 minutes and the (long awaited) catfight between Blair and Purcell. With its "evil stranger is disrupting the life of a normal happy family" plot, you could say that this film was ahead of its time; thrillers of this type didn't become popular until the early 90's, with "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle" and others like it. But one look at Linda's hair will convince you that it was NOT ahead of its time in other areas. In short, rent it but don't buy it. (**)

this movie is quite fun with linda blair as this shallow self centeredpre women's lib young girl who rides horses and is the queen ofher little world complete with carol lawrence as her mom and ap-whipped younger brother and a "blue lagoon" style boyfriend it'sdelightful to watch her have everything taken from her bit by bit .and SPOILER she even gets made into a pizza face for a couple ofscenes you can only imagine poor Ms. Blair's chagrin at thatgratuitous syphillitic style decoupage performed on her strugglingnot to be typcast mug! the film comes off as scrupulously lovinglystupid even . . . and fran drescher is interesting cause her acting isso bad you have to rewind her first scene 3 times to try and get thedialogue. go ahead and rent it!