If you can ignore the basic and sometimes crappy production values, you can expect a surprising good movie. This is a B movie after it shows in some of the dialogue. Don't let that distract you.At times very slow moving and some would say quite boring to the point where a lot of people would turn it off.......DON'T. The last 30 minutes of so makes up for the whole movie and for me made it worth watching to the end.Really good performances from Zohra Lampert and Mariclare Costello, neither of whom I had never heard of until I watched this. The rest of the actors are a bit wooden, but that could easily be blamed on the script and dialogue.The really great thing about this movie is that the ending is completely open to interpretation. Did it all happen or was it all the imagination of a really messed up mind?If you don't mind old movies with low production values this is one worth watching.An easy 7/10 for me, well worth the 90 minutes.

Released in 1971, "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" chronicles events after the title character (Zohra Lampert) gets out of a mental institution and moves into an old house on coastal Connecticut with her husband (Barton Heyman) and a friend (Kevin O'Connor). There they discover a hippie-like squatter named Emily (Mariclare Costello) whom they eventually invite to stay because they all get along. Jessica starts to hear voices as they catch wind of rumors of a drowning victim from 90 years earlier who's now a ghost or maybe even a vampire. Are the increasingly crazy happenings real or all in Jessica's mind? This is a realistic mystery/horror movie in the mold of 1967's "The Shuttered Room" and 1962's "Carnival of Souls." I mean 'realistic' in the sense that the tone is believable. It's a low-key, haunting slow-burner, so if you want over-the-top, cartoony horror, look elsewhere.Zohra Lampert is effective as the mentally unstable protagonist. The way the movie constantly looks into her thought-life and the uncertainties thereof is reminiscent of 1968's "Rachel, Rachel." The theme is the hypnotic power of a woman, in this case a potentially evil woman. Reflect on Jessica's situation at the end. If she dares to speak out, who would believe her story? The drowning victim from the 19th century was named Abigail. I bet this was where King Diamond got the name for his notable 1987 horror-metal concept album.The movie runs 98 minutes and was in Connecticut, USA (Essex, Chester, East Haddam & Old Saybrook).GRADE: B

I'm very wary when a film is frequently described as either 'atmospheric', 'haunting', hypnotic', 'poetic', 'eerie' or 'dreamlike': nine times out of ten, 'dull', 'dreary', 'uneventful' and 'boring' seem to be more apt adjectives as far as I'm concerned. Let's Scare Jessica To Death is a prime example.The film stars Zohra Lampert as Jessica, a recently discharged psychiatric patient who is still struggling with her sanity (her troubled thoughts made audible for the viewer to analyse). Together with her husband and a hippie friend, Jessica travels to a remote island, where she hopes to start a new life. These idyllic plans soon go awry, the prejudiced townsfolk treating the newcomers with disdain and their new home occupied by squatter Emily; worse still, Jessica starts to see visions of a girl who might be a vampiric ghost. Then again, Jessica might simply be off her rocker.Is there really something supernatural afoot or is Jessica lapsing into insanity once again? I cannot say with any certainty because I frequently found myself lapsing into sleep, such is the soporific effect of the ambiguous but ultimately very tedious storytelling. Moving at a snail's pace, Let's Scare Jessica To Death didn't so much 'scare me to death' as 'bore me stiff'.

The lurid title could easily side-track you from what is essentially an extremely frightening exploration of a woman's descent into madness. You can read it, of course, in a material sense as the title suggests; but everything in this film has the potential to signify something else entirely, and its this ambiguity that makes this film so macabre and interesting. Everything, from the killing of the 'mole' to the conclusion where Jessica is trapped in the middle of a lake on a barely floating boat, could be signifying or at least implying something else. Classic metaphors for the human consciousness are bodies of water; being trapped in one or drowning metaphors for madness. The films ambivalent set of monsters, from a strange set of undead elderly villagers to sexually promiscuous vampires, threaten Jessica and her sanity. The fact that there is no ultimate explanation for the strange set of phenomena that take place is also demonstrative of the horrific and inexplicable quality of psychotic behaviour for those suffering from schizophrenia (for those of us that have had the misfortune to experience it) or the side-effects of drugs. This film is really worth seeing