Coming on the heels of Duel (considered by many to be the greatest TV film ever made), Steven Spielberg's second television film is a derivative & mediocre horror that's marred by numerous shortcomings in the narrative & acting section but its clever camerawork & sinister tone does make the ride somewhat bearable. Worth skipping unless you are a Spielberg completist.

I was 10 when I saw this movie, and I have never forgot about the red eyes in the window when the family drove up to the farm house. Every time I think of the cast of Family Affair, I remember Johnny Whitaker as the little boy who see's these eyes in the window. I did not remember the name of the movie, so I decided to research for the title, after all it has been 40 years since I have seen the movie. I am hoping to find it on Amazon. Any movie you can remember 40 years later is miracle. I just found out this is Steven Spielberg movie and it is one of his first attempts at directing. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who wishes to watch a good movie from the past.

I want to start by saying I love 70s Made-For-TV horror films. Since I was born in 1975, I didn't get to see all these cool movies until much later in life. Some are fairly easy to come by, while a lot more are not so easy to find and have become quite rare, which is a shame because they don't make TV movies like that anymore.After some digging around, I finally managed to get myself a copy of this early Steven Spielberg supernatural thriller. Being a fan of Mr. Spielberg and having already watched some of his earlier works, such as DUEL, JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, and his NIGHT GALLERY segments, I must say that I was expecting better. Not that this is a bad movie, because it's not. And I certainly don't regret the time spent watching it, which was only 73 minutes - so it has a good pace to it and never gets bogged down with any boring filler like so many films of this nature tend to do.While I can see how it could have been a bit scary back in 1972 when it was aired, it just doesn't hold up so well in that department nowadays. Still, the acting is good and the sound of the baby crying is effective. Overall this is a decent, early 70s Made-For-TV supernatural thriller. A solid 6 in my view.

Early TV movie effort from Spielberg that is rather uneven. I'm not really sure why this doesn't work better. I guess there was little money and a lot of TV people looking over his shoulder that may have not helped the process. Whatever the reason, the location screams that it is a set, so flat and airless. When the spirits arise and the winds begin to blow, I realized why it had been absent, before but surely some sense of heat or rain would have given some sense of life to this clapperboard and cardboard. I also wonder whether using Ralph Bellamy was a good idea, he didn't seem to fit too well but would probably have been difficult to tell. Sandy Dennis is pretty much as she always is and I always like her but here when everyone seems a bit strange we could have done with a more staid central character. Otherwise, reasonable enough and there are scares particularly at the end, even if they are a bit undermined by an early sign of sentimentality creeping in and almost spoiling things.