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Laughably inept movie about a witch's hippie descendant named Lise (Shelby Leverington) who takes revenge on the descendants of those who burned her ancestor at the stake. I've seen this plot done before and better. Terribly directed, edited, acted, written...you name it, this movie sucks at it. Does have some merit as an unintentional comedy, however. My favorite scene is Lise's monologue where she tells this sad sack Roger about how women used to run things and then this one big guy took over and the men started running things so the women killed the big guy and ate him. When she was done with her long-winded story, she seductively says "Hand me the ashtray, Roger." It was supposed to be erotic or something, I guess, but it just made me burst out laughing. This is strictly amateur hour stuff, so avoid unless you're into that sort of thing.

In colonial times, a woman is killed for witchcraft. In present day, Lise seeks revenge upon her ancestor's killers' descendants. Writer/director Ken Friedman seems to have been a minor filmmaker. That's the feel of this indie. It's a minor work of a minor creator. It's boring. Even with an indie, the filmmaker's style can be retrieved. One can see the skills even without the budget. Kevin Smith has his humor in Clerks. Christopher Nolan has his intrigue in Following. Darren Aronofsky has his weirdness in Pi. This indie is boring. Friedman does try but he isn't doing anything good. Shelby Leverington has some beauty but staring at her face in closeup for extended time ends up being boring and pretentious. It's not weird enough to be camp. It's not daring enough to be interesting. It's boring. Even the blood looks weak. There is some competency in the filmmaking but it's not enough.

Back when I was involved in the film industry circa 1980 I used to see many unreleased films, and they often had common defects accounting for their being shelved. Though it actually achieved a release in 1971, DEATH BY INVITATION displays similar problems.

It's a case of poor execution -the standard horror theme of centuries-old-curse leading to lame-duck revenge is trotted out, but delivered so crudely as to have no effect on the viewer. Films operate through tension and release, and when it's all flat (like this baby) or all tension/no release (as in the current sci-fi stinker NEVER LET ME GO) the viewer is left high & dry.

After a truly clumsy opening sequence set in times supposed to suggest the Salem Witch Trials (but on a zero budget), film settles into a rather tedious family drama set in modern Staten Island. It's a corny format of an outsider (striking looking Shelby Leverington, whose career as a character actress managed to overlook this unfortunate debut assignment) preying on a family. Script does a poor job of establishing her relationship, and the subsequent grisly murders are very poorly done, offering little meat for a genre fan to nibble upon.

It devolves into a shaggy dog exercise, not unlike what one would expect if the Coen Bros. made a send-up of low-budget horror films, including the usual cryptic elements. The story is neither compelling nor suspenseful, at best creating a sense of dread. The musical score tries to whip up some tension, but one can't help but gravitate towards a "who cares?" position. I saw THE CURSE OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN and CARNIVAL OF BLOOD from the same producer/distributor at drive-ins back in the '70s, but never saw this one get booked. It would have to be shown early in the evening when the sun was still out, because if it was shown late in the program no one would have stayed to the end.

And the climax is very clumsily edited, with a terrible fight sequence and poor sound. As with many films that never made it out of the lab, one feels that the needed re-shoots or coverage of a "scene missing" were not provided for in the low budget.

Telling is a pointless sequence where our hero wanders around an office building, given the runaround by secretaries, and finally arrives at patriarch Vroot's office only to have their inane conversation drowned out by loud Muzak that Vroot proudly has piped in. This idiotic footage goes on & on and gives one the impression that the director had strayed off the set.

Almost as bad is a preposterous gimmick wherein the detective investigating the family's murders is written to be not merely incompetent but aggressively stupid, so as to prevent the culprit from getting caught, and to keep the story's pot boiling. Even Something Weird's resident presenter Frank Henenlotter cannot alibi this lousy development, which is even worse than some of the outlandishness he tries to slip into his own horror films.

Ironically, I did see director Ken Friedman's next film, MADE IN U.S.A., in first run in 1987 and enjoyed it immensely. He never got a directing career going, but did write a number of very entertaining screenplays like MR. BILLION and WHITE LINE FEVER. So chalk this misfire of a supernatural effort up to lack of experience.

Reborn in modern times, the ancestor of a crucified witch begins a path of vengeance against the descendants of those who targeted her as the burgeoning body count forces a skeptical police officer to stop the rampage.

This is one of the most bland and lifeless of the kind of films of the genre. This is merely due to one important factor where it's so light on horror hardly anything really happens here. Instead, this one turns into such a talky, drama-centered film that this one eats up nearly a third on its running time on several different monologues that just eat up time here doing nothing but generate extreme boredom recounting a story about her encounter with the Devil that would've been better served as an on-screen flashback instead of a dialogue-only sequence, or even the unimportant tale about the female warrior tribe which is just endless, tiresome and has little to do with the movie itself which all combined together make it's inclusion an incredibly weird one but the decision to make it last so long is really puzzling and troublesome for the film as a whole. The revenge tactics employed here are mostly done off-camera and quite rarely make for interesting viewing as to how it plays out here with such a decided lack of interesting moments as the entire film goes through the notion of not following through with anything of value. The attempts at building suspense by focusing on the family around her going about their lives are just flat-out boring, the scenarios presented here are even more so and it really features nothing even remotely engaging or enjoyable. The only remotely tolerable part is the finale, where the full revenge is accomplished in a remotely engaging manner, but it really is just the one scene here that works while nearly everything else here is a disaster.

Rated R: Violence and Language.

There are only two saving graces here, the great soundtrack of oddball library prog-rock-ish music and the smoking hot lead (who is still a terrible actress). Everything else is amateur hour, the editing, the direction, the sets, the effects, EVERYTHING. This is boredom central and should be avoided at all costs.

I agree with the other reviews - so why am i writing. Because watching this actually made me angry. I've dabbled in low-budget filmmaking and its a real challenge. But there is no excuse for two things: 1. an absolute crap script. 2. Tedium in the locations you choose. Follow the rules set down by low-budget filmmakers from the past and don't do what Herschel Gordon Lewis did and shoot against ugly walls in boring living rooms. This film has one scene after another take place at a dinner table. Also, did anyone have any fun whatsoever in making this film? There is little joy in evidence. Hard for me to believe our writer/director went on to write White Line Fever. there is no talent whatsoever in evidence in this ludicrous, uninteresting, incomplete, incompetent script.

I like bad movies. Or, shall I say movies so bad that they are funny--such as "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "The Apple", "The Room" or "Robot Monster". However, there is another type of bad movie that I simply cannot stand--BORING bad movies. These are movies that you can't even enjoy on a camp level and they therefore have nothing to offer. "Death by Invitation" is clearly in the latter category. Now this truly is amazing given the plot--as almost any director should have been able to make this interesting--any director but Ken Friedman that is. While he might be a very nice person and has written a few good films, when it comes to directing, this is not his forte and this first directorial effort possibly is the reason he's directed very few films.

The film is about a lady whose ancestor was killed during the witch trials*. Now, centuries later, she is out to avenge this death by killing the relatives of her killers. And what is her weapon? UTTER AND COMPLETE BOREDOM!!! A great example of this is relatively early in the film when instead of just killing some bad actor (and wow, he was bad), she talked on and on and on about some tribe of female warriors. As for the killing, you really couldn't even see how it happened...nor did you care. You just wanted it to get moving! Add to that that normal incidental music was absent and you've got a ponderous scene and a ponderous movie. Add to that that the cast was made up of mostly first-time actors, very bad editing and composition, a first-time director and a budget (I'm guessing here) of about $324 and you've got a lousy picture. I have actually seen worse films (hence the score of 2) but few that were as dull as this one.

This film does have the feel of an Andy Milligan movie from around this same time zone of 1968-1974. But it rises above that level in spots. It starts rather lamely with a protracted witch trial sequence but then effectively and abruptly cuts to modern day. The modern story plays off the troubles of the times, the family breaking apart with the hippie children and 50's era work ethics of the parents and their strick religious belief--which mirrors a bit the witch trial beliefs.

The modern day version of the wronged witch uses these tensions to help her revenge. As in other films like this the same actors appear in the modern day story who are also in the "flashback" opening. Parts of the flashbacks continue through the whole film and eventually we see more of the flashback story than is presented at the start. Though some of this flashback stuff does just seem like padding in spots.

There is also an underplayed and non-nudity sexual element to the film-- also part of the era. Would the film be more powerful if it had more nudity? Probably given how the story would lend itself to that. I say all this just to give some context to the film as those elements will all seem alien to people watching it now, by and large anyway.

The acting is not great, but not inept either, which is pretty much true of the whole film in most regards. I saw this on TCM and the description says it's about an ax murderer which it isn't, though an ax figures into one scene. Though slowish the film has some memorable things, a double murder, a head floating in a bag full of blood, odd attempts at comedy in one office scene, and the story of the Brazilian tribe of female hunters. That's probably the most memorable scene in the film and is well acted by the generally good looking female lead Shelby Leverington, who went on to a full-on career in acting. The film has that poverty row NYC feel in spots in a good way. It also features that oddly thick blood from the era. Yes this is for fans of the fringes of filmmaking and indie horror, but what's wrong with that? The ending is good and unexpected. The music score is odd and usually dated and ineffective but it too has some good moments. The film has a very thin sound mix and sometimes uses only music in an effective way. If you like this kind of supernatural revenge story and the feel of films of this era give it a shot, it has a few shocks and value amid the clumsy or dullish bits.

(1971) Death By Invitation HORROR

Low budget cheapie, written and directed by Ken Friedman, regarding a lady named Lise (Shelby Leverington), who's mind had somehow been reincarnated from the past to the current present of 1971 which was when this movie been made, to sought revenge on some of the same people who crucified her during the late 1600's, a time when people believed in witches. How did Lise get close to the family one may ask? She somehow gets invited as a guest by the guy who resembled the same guy who used to crucify her during the turn of the century- "Death by Invitation" hence the title. Besides being very talky, talky and because it's really that low budget, I have to say that the first person who was killed I can see her get away with by the police, but the second and third deaths are idiotically clumsily and impossible to ignore which raises even more questions.

No one going into a low budget film like this should expect a masterpiece, but reading the reviews, I was prepared for something far less competent than this movie about an intergenerational curse as the product of a witch burning (think Mario Bava's Black Sunday but set in modern day - well, 1971 - Staten Island).

You sort of expect barely-good-enough performances and barely competent direction with something like this, but several things really threw me for a loop:

First is the performance of the smoking hot Shelby Leverington, the revengeful protagonist of the movie. Her performance here exceeds expectations which adds to the surreal quality of the film generally.

I should also mention, in particular, the performance of Norman Parker as Jake, who matches her excellently and believably.

The other thing is the unsettling yet appealing left-field prog-psych soundtrack which was notable enough that it kept drawing my attention.

There are no big twists here and the plot is hardly original, but the direction is competent and it exceeds a lot of other films with this sort of subject matter from that time period.

I don't agree with the negative reviews of this film. Compared to all of the other occult horror of the period, this one stands up a lot better than most of the rest, avoiding exploitation elements in favor of something a little more subtle. There's some blood and some sex, but it is muted and serves the plot.

This is not Citizen Kane. You have to suspend a few critical faculties for this.

But for what it is, you can do a whole lot worse.

Also: if any woman ever starts telling you a story about the Southern Tribes, my suggestion is to head for the exit immediately.

Yes, much of the film is awkward, it's full of plot holes and script deficiency...but it has a persistent, understated tone of menace that keeps a viewer involved. This low-budget chiller deserves a lot more credit than it gets. There are several horrific murders of youngsters perpetrated by the vengeful witch with no-one catching on to her precisely because of the rather dull and commonplace behavior she exhibits when around other people. That's exactly how real life serial killers get on with it...they can appear quite normal most of the time. Shelby Leverington delivers this quality brilliantly, resembling a near-somnolent Shelley Long. Those heavy-lidded eyes and that sly smirk that appears on her face hint at the triumphant evil underneath the nice girl-next-door facade. Norman Parker is very good as Jake, as well. A prime target for victim-hood, you keep wondering if he's going to wind up in a dripping body bag himself. Only the fact that he's not one of the marked descendants and has sufficient machismo to nullify this female's blood urge allows him to short-circuit his vulnerability, but he still winds up being manipulated into struggling with the justifiably crazed father who comes after the witch with an axe, only to be nearly decapitated during the melee. With much of the plot involving gruesome child murders it was actually a pretty brilliant move to maintain a pedestrian feel to the film. On a bigger budget it could have been done much more effectively, but even sans slick cinematography and a coherent script it still has lingering chills, solely due to the skills of Leverington and Parker.

This is an awful movie. With awful story line. It also has awful acting. The ending it awful. It is not scary at all. This is a big pile of pooh pooh. Do not see it. Life is to short.

This is a strange movie, in a good way. At times it reminded me of Jean Rollin's early vampire movies... but without the nudity to push the outre nature of the creatures. Like Rollin's films and some others of this era, there is no real attempt at realism... and even the plot is just there to string along moments that, for me at least, capture something much more mysterious than what's going on at the surface. Who or what is 'Lise'? Reincarnated witch? Demon? Possessed woman? The film doesn't bother with that trivia... she's just there, a friend of the daughter. I'm not entirely sure if the flashbacks to a witch trial might have been an afterthought, to provide clearer motivation for Lise's actions. The whole 'witch's revenge' plot doesn't gibe with Lise's 'Southern Tribes' story. Without the flashbacks I would have loved this movie even more! What's going on with the scene where Jake and Peter meet at the office... barely able to hear each other over the aggressively bland music Peter has playing? It's something right out of David Lynch.

No, not all the acting is great... but I think that barely matters. The two leads are great at conveying the ambiguities of their characters. Even the guy playing Peter never quite crosses over into the ridiculous overacting I was anticipating.

This is one of those movies for the patient, who can sift the gold from the ashes and appreciate the intent rather than the execution. In the moments of this movie where it works, it really is something special.