The Enchanted

Royce inherits a Florida farm in the middle of nowhere, and despite the warnings of local hunter, Booker T, becomes friendly, perhaps too friendly, with the shy daughter of his hired help.

The Enchanted is all about atmosphere, and some would probably not regard it as horror at all - a folktale or fairytale, perhaps. Director Carter Lord goes for a feeling of magic and growing unease, which he achieves deftly by using the natural world - the forest and its creatures - to suggest an otherworldliness, a portal between reality and imagination. It is the viewer's imagination that creates the horror, and those used to more visceral kinds of scariness may well not get this movie at all. Despite its short running time, the pace is slow, as it takes time for the viewer to get the feel of this strange, isolated place and its inhabitants.

Julius Harris, who plays Booker T, is the only actor here with whom I was familiar, and he delivers an understated, authoritative performance as the hunter / narrator. The rest of the cast are convincingly natural and understated, helping the illusion that this is a real place, yet a place where things are not at all what they seem. It also made me want to live there.

Imagine the films of Val Lewton, or perhaps Picnic at Hanging Rock, set in the Florida wilderness, and you will have some idea. I rated this film highly because there is perhaps no other film like it, and the feeling of strangeness it creates stays with you, even years later.

I have an Original script from 1979. I had to build all Filter Frames for window on locations used. Built temporary wall coverings to match originals, so the wall painting could be done, without defacing the beautiful Ranchers hunting camp cabin walls! . ( Don Sieler painted those walls- he also was an incredible sculpture. I had to gain access to local old fencing materials for a make shift horse pens; use 90 yr old wood to hide small pump-house due to newer pump on location - Mounted the High Speed Airflex Camera high in a tree to shoot a swampy meadow with large sweeping oak trees/ North end of the Everglades.

What a challenge to build / level a tract-system for the Panavision camera in the swampy Everglades environment! Enough wood shims that would support the Dolly, Camera man, and "Big Camera", so the track stay "Level" during the shot, as I pushed him down the track! BTW The Cameraman was an Englishmen! Mike Levine was the Assistent cameraman. Anyhow, just had to put a little input! A blast from the Past for sure!

Thank god this stunning fantasy is finally listed on the IMDb. I've been telling people about it for decades, without being able to prove it even exists! It had a couple network showings on ABC back in the late 80s and after that, vanished. Now, I only hope that someone like Anchor Bay of Janus discovers it and gets a DVD release out there for people to discover.

Straight forward but intricate plot: a young rancher in the backwoods of northern Florida falls in love with a gentle mysterious woman who appears from nowhere. The rancher's best friend, an elderly woodsman attuned to the lore of the forest, warns him that something is very wrong, as his passion for this ethereal and elusive woman draws him into an increasingly mysterious series of events. The eerie finale brings both wonderment and a full gasping sense of the dread that's been growing, in this dark landscape, both natural and supernatural, that no other filmmaker has ever explored.

Director Carter Lord is sparing with dialogue, telling much of his story with visuals, and a truly hypnotic sense of atmosphere. Rarely has a local indy filmmaker made better use of his surroundings, in building unease -- a perfect awareness of how his local countryside might appear to a stranger in those parts, lost and frightened and uncertain, and that's exactly the mood "The Enchanted" captures and sustains. When there's a sudden cut, to a hooting owl in the darkness, then a far off window lit up, it doesn't feel arty -- it feels like, "This is a scary place, and what am I doing outside?" This movie is the closest I've ever seen to what could be called "latterday Val Lewton", something completely in the spirit, and artistic precision, of that long ago series of quiet horror movies for thinking people, like "Cat People", "I Walked With a Zombie" and "The Body Snatcher". Those films, from producer Lewton, weren't appreciated at the time of their early 1940s releases, but have since become landmark horror classics.

Please, some distributor, hunt down and discover "The Enchanted", and get it out there. If I'm half as film literate as I imagine myself to be, I couldn't recommend a neglected gem more highly than this one.