La Chose

Early Steven Spielberg TV movie that is a considerable step down from Duel released the previous year, but showing signs of a directorial craft to follow.

Something Evil is not a great horror movie, well it was to those of us at a very young age who were allowed to watch it that is. The plot finds a family of four moving into a pastorally pleasing Pennsylvania farmhouse only to find a demon resides there. Hubbie works all hours in the city while mama and the two young children fall prey to something that manifests itself as red goo in jam jars or via a wind machine. Cue mama fighting the demon trying to take control of her family with love and pentacle art. Yep, it's really that simple, the budget doesn't stretch beyond that.

Spielberg shows some nice skills with his dissolves, close-ups and distorted angle shots, but much of the impact is undone by poor acting and a musical score that belongs on a ghost train ride at the funfair. A couple of characters appear, and then vanish until the last third of the movie needs them, while the special effects on offer are understandable low in quality. For its time, its budget and as an observation to the early work of a man who would become one of America's biggest directors, it's a curio piece worth sampling. But it's hardly essential for horror fans or Spielberg completists. 6/10

I remember watching this movie as a child and it scared the crap out of me.

For years I couldn't look in a dark window without seeing those glowing yellow eyes. After I became an adult I waited patiently for years for this movie to show up on late night TV so I could watch it again and see what scared me so much. It never happened, the movie seemed to have disappeared from the face of the planet. A few weeks ago I ran across a pirated copy of this movie and bought it, My wife still can't understand why I paid almost 30 dollars for a old VHS tape. We watched it last night and of course it was no where near as scary now as it seemed to an 8 year old almost 32 years ago. That being said, I found it to be quite a watchable movie that held my interest despite moving a somewhat slow pace. And the twist at the end caught me totally off guard. Overall I would give this movie a thumbs up especially when comparing it to other movies of its genre and era. If you run across a copy have a look.

There were a lot of brilliant and spooky TV movies made in the seventies (Night Stalker etc),and it's a lost art now. This is, in fact, one of Spielberg's best films and is chilling. I saw it on a farm in the middle of nowhere, so the whole bit with the barn was terrifying. A reminder of what suggestion and the mind can conjure up without gruesome special effects and pointless noise. What was the horrible thing in the jam jar? What were the buzzing objects falling onto the windscreen of that car? Eerie stuff and brilliantly done. Also features a rare appearance by the unusual and authentic Sandy Dennis who died tragically and is sadly missed. Best scare is the demon eyes caught during the filming of a commercial at the haunted house.

It's easy to knock something like this because it's cheap, but you have to look beyond production values and see quality for what it really is. On paper, 'Something Evil' is pretty routine stuff, but it has the kind of energy you only get from young, hungry directors. There's a great sense of atmosphere that transcends the movie's low budget, something that would have never been achieved through routine direction. I've always been indifferent to Spielberg, but this is great.

The fact that you could turn on your television in the 70's and find something like this every week makes me wish I grew up a decade earlier.

SOMETHING EVIL was one of Steven Spielberg's last made-for-TV efforts before he hit the big time with the big screen release JAWS. The film stars Sandy Dennis and Darren McGavin as a happily married couple who unwittingly put their lives and the lives of their two young children into great danger when they move into a Pennsylvania farmhouse that later turns out to be inhabited by evil spirits. Johnnie Whitaker(of FAMILY AFFAIR fame) co-stars as the oldest child.

Had it been made by anyone else but Spielberg, SOMETHING EVIL would be completely forgotten today. Though it came before the lamentable THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, haunted house thrillers were still pretty old hat by the time this TV-made effort came along. Spielberg injects as much life as possible into the deadly dull material, and the great cast does their usual thorough job, but no one can completely disguise the fact that this is second rate stuff. For a more rewarding look at work from Spielberg's early TV years, see the superior DUEL(1971) starring Dennis Weaver.