Something Evil (1972 film)

Summary

A young couple moves into a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania. What they don't know is that there is an unseen presence in the house, and that it wants to take possession of the wife.

Details

The family reads a protective spell inside a "pentacle" in Something Evil...

• Release Date: 1972
• Country/Language: US, English
• Genres/Technical: Horror, Suspense, Thriller, made-for-TV
• Setting: 1970s Pennsylvania, Folk Mythos
• Runtime: 1 hr 13 min
• Starring: Darren McGavin, Sandy Dennis, Ralph Bellamy
• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Writer: Robert Clouse
• Producer/Production Co: Belford Productions, CBS Entertainment Production
• View Trailer: (link)
• View Film: (link)
• Wikipedia: (link)
• IMDB Page: (link)

Ratings

MPAA Ratings

• Rated: not rated (equivalent to a G or PG)

A 1970s TV movie, there's really not much offensive here. There were one or two scenes in it that gave this cataloger mild bad dreams after seeing it as a toddler in the '70s, but I think most modern viewers will find it rather tame and even boring.

Tentacle Ratings

A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:

• S____ (One Tentacle: Debateably Lovecraftian; has almost no direct connection to Lovecraft's work)

Really, this is not much more than a very unimaginative and workmanlike early demonic possession movie (The Exorcist would not hit theaters until not quite two years after this aired on TV, and the very similar Amityville Horror wouldn't appear until later in the decade), especially coming from Stephen Spielberg; this essentially sets the basic template for the standard-issue "Lifetime Movie Channel Haunting Plot" for low-budget made-for-tv haunted house movies to come.) I'm stretching to include this example as "Lovecraftian" mainly because the strange, low-key Pennsylvania Dutch folklore involved here was just off-kilter enough to have stuck with me for nearly 40 years after seeing the movie as one of the the things that drove my interest in Lovecraft's eccentric take on occultism; specifically, the Hex Signs painted on the barns to ward off evil, the use of some variation on Egyptian Secrets of Albertus Magnus as a sort of "good guy" (or at least neutral) Tome, and the peculiar version of "the devil" which appears in this movie as a weird jar of protoplasm that cries like a baby, or as an animated floating red blob that falls on someone's windshield during a night drive to force a car crash - none of which is even under-explained, it's just treated as perfectly normal, as if there's a chance this happened everywhere, every day, in the U.S. outside of New York City. It really wouldn't have taken much to have converted this to a (weak) Lovecraftian effort: set the story in Arkham instead of Pennsylvania, dress up the strange rural occultism to Elder Signs and the Necronomicon with references to Yog-Sothoth instead of the devil, and you'd have a decidedly "Lovecraftian" film on paper, but somehow one that would come off a bit less charming and imaginative, to the limited extent that this one is for its odd "Folk Mythos": as-is, it's like a Mythos story localized to Pennsylvania rather than New England, which comes off more as a fresh take on the Cthulhu Mythos to me than it does the traditional Demonic Possession or Folk Horror film it otherwise undoubtedly is.

Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.

Reviews

Review Links:

• Y.Whateley - 'This is undoubtedly not a very good movie, nor is it especially Lovecraftian, outside of its eccentric take on occultism, inspired by Pennsylvania Dutch folk magic, which comes across as something akin to a watered-down "Cthulhu Mythos", minus the alien names, transplanted to rural "Southern" states like Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and North Carolina. The hippie-fueled power-of-love-and-beads ending feels a bit cheap and unearned, and would have benefited from a more Lovecraftian cosmic pessimism, while the movie as a whole suffers from a lack of interest or conviction. Where the movie does shine for me with some rudimentary charm and imagination (besides a surprisingly creepy child actor and of course the skill and enthusiasm of veteran actors Darren McGavin and Ralph Bellamy) is in that low-key use of Pennsylvania Dutch "Folk Mythos" inspiration: the completely unexplained weird crying animated red blob-in-a-jar stood out to five-year-old me, gave me a couple nightmares and always haunting my subconscious as a potential hazard of night-time driving, which together have stuck with me for 40 years as a sort of half-remembered "Kindertrauma" until I at last rediscovered the movie on YouTube by accident, proving I hadn't somehow imagined the whole movie. Really, it's a 2/5-star made-for-TV horror movie that's probably a must for made-for-TV horror junkies or Stephen Spielberg completists, which many modern viewers might find vaguely disjointed and boring, but I look at this thing and see some potential for what might have been, had Spielberg exerted just a little more inspiration and interest here....'
• Unkle Lancifer at Kindertrauma (link) - "What may have been a standard seventies occult pastiche is elevated to classic status by [director Stephen Spielberg]... incorporating inventive camera moves and creeped-out sound effects, whilst always taking full advantage of the charismatic cast, this made-for-T.V. movie rises far above the chaff and delivers an eleventh hour switcharoo truly worthy of preservation."
• Jack Gattanella at The Cinetarium (link) - "Despite all the script's issues, I bought into this woman's dwindling hope and sanity at this farmhouse, and because it's such a quick watch the upside is not dwelling too long on what doesn't work. There's punch here and impact and daring-do with camera and editing and performance, and it shows a filmmaker ready to distinguish himself from the pack. It's a directorial tour-de-force in the midst of what would otherwise be plain mediocrity."
• Andy Webb at The Movie Scene (2/5 Stars) (link) - "The trouble is that the actual story to "Something Evil" is in itself not that interesting... ...now only of interest to those interested in Steven Spielberg's early career and as such will see various elements which he would improve on in later movies. But as a horror movie this has little going for it and watched for frights it comes up short."

Synopsis (SPOILERS)

 Spoiler Section (Highlight to Read)

A young couple moves into a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania; what they don't know is that there is an unseen presence in the house, and that it wants to take possession of someone. The presence takes the form of a toad, a pair of disembodied yellow glowing eyes, a jar of goop that cries like a baby, and an animated floating red blob that plops onto a car windshield by night, and what it is seeking is to possess the family's young child. In addition to being the source material that The Amityville Horror would rip off, this film essentially sets the basic template for the standard-issue "Lifetime Movie Channel Haunting Plot" for low-budget made-for-tv horrors to come: young family moves into a rural house, wife is left alone with kids all day while husband callously works, weird things happen around the house, husband brutally thinks wife is crazy for complaining, wife wants to leave, husband insensitively cannot afford to do so, things get worse until a confrontation is forced, husband is finally forced to admit the house is kind of weird, wife busts the ghost at last.... The ending is something of a hippie-fueled let-down, in the form of the wife defeating the devil through the "power of love" in the last 30 seconds of the movie.

Notes

Associated Mythos Elements

• setting: Folk Mythos
• tome: Pow-Wows; or, Long Lost Friend or Egyptian Secrets of Albertus Magnus (the cover was impossible to read in the blurry version I watched, but the content familiar)
• race: Demon