WES CRAVEN’S SMALL SCREEN HORROR FILMS: A RETROSPECTIVE
BY AMANDA REYES

While the seventies is often noted for its edgy television offerings, it also often projected the strength of the nuclear family and the domestic pleasures of suburbia, a prominent benchmark of Americana. Some programs inverted that motif with images of corruption, sin and death. Just ask the folks living in the infamous cul-de-sac of Knots Landing, which premiered in 1979, for instance. Writers consistently destroyed the familial mythos that anchored shows like Happy Days and Eight is Enough. So, to say that Wes Craven’s delicious (if TV-PG) subversions of suburban families were unique to the television landscape might be an exaggeration. However, his frustrated imaginings of a prevalent but antiquated ideology remain fascinating.

By the late seventies, Wes Craven had yet to become a household name. But, he was already a fairly notorious exploitation filmmaker whose Last House on the Left and Hills Have Eyes were genre films that took no prisoners, immersed in a cynicism that critics often balked at. While many filmmakers may have felt that television was too constrained a medium, it was also a very popular medium, and millions of people were tuning in daily. At this point, the telefilm was still young but secure in its reputation, at least with regards to ratings. And, since it more often than not called for workmanlike direction, it seemed an unlikely place for a filmmaker like Wes Craven whose visceral expressions of happy families corrupted by outside forces were marked by extreme violence. His first three TV movies (he made four telefilms in all) aired right as Craven was honing his horror skills, developing into a master of fright. Craven’s small screen work feels less substantial, but beneath the veneer of placid landscapes and terrors with happy endings were a trio of interesting, if imperfect, tele-thrillers.

Craven cut his small screen teeth on Stranger in Our House (NBC, 10/31/1978), which allowed the director to work with 35mm film, and within the studio system. Based on Lois Duncan’s young adult novel Summer of Fear (the Summer title was used for network re-airings, an overseas theatrical release, and later, home video), this mild supernatural tale pits Rachel, played by a plucky (and tremendously curly headed) Linda Blair against a supposed cousin from the Ozarks named Julia (Lee Purcell), who showcases some devilish powers. After Julia steals Rachel’s boyfriend and family, a slight death match ensues. A pleasurable time waster, Stranger might well be remembered as harmless holiday fare (it made its auspicious debut on Halloween night), if it weren’t for Craven’s established preoccupation with the corruption of the family. It is certainly on display here, although missing Craven’s then-signature grit and grime. Still, the underlying themes remain intact and are well played, if not presented in any sort of unsettling manner.

The house, where most of Stranger’s action takes place, is located in a real gated community near Malibu, propelling a feeling of xenophobia that pervades the telefilm. Most of the exteriors are idyllic but isolated. Even the local mall, which is wonderfully tidy but small, echoes the idea of a community closed off from the rest of the world, a self-made upper class Promised Land. And, like many havens, this safe refuge can’t hold off the “sinister” outside world.

Julia, the ominous outsider, appears in the form of the less sophisticated cousin from the Ozarks, imbuing softly played but obvious stereotypes. She intersects with the proper upper class, and immediately desires all of the bells and whistles of a gated suburbia. Early on in Stranger, Craven replicates the uncomfortable dinner scene from Last House on the Left as a way to express the inherent awkwardness of positioning the lower class outsider within the confines of a more aristocratic space. But Julia cannot properly assimilate into this shiny new world by herself, and needs to employ an aggressive use of black magic (Rachel finds burnt hair and loose teeth located throughout her bedroom). Following through on the happy endings of TV land, it is proven that occultist enchantments are no match for those who truly belong behind the white picket fences.

Craven’s next small screen feature is the perpetually goofy but likeable thriller Invitation to Hell (ABC, 5/24/1984), which features Susan Lucci (Erica Kane on All My Children) in her TV movie debut. Aided by the always-reliable Robert Urich and Joanna Cassidy, Invitation embraces the yearning to be immersed in eighties excess… and it will only cost you your soul.

Urich is Matt Winslow, the dependable, hardworking dad who moves his family to a small and posh suburban area resting on the what looks like the outskirts of Silicon Valley, and which also echoes the utopic community in Stranger. It is brimming with McMansions, manicured lawns and people enjoying the good life at a club called Steaming Springs (which, as you may have guessed, is also a gateway to Hell). Longing for acceptance and hoping to perpetuate a desirable yuppie image, Matt’s wife Patricia (Cassidy) is eager, perhaps even desperate, to make a deal with the devil, here in the guise of the tiny and stylish Jessica Jones (Lucci).

Promotional artwork.

Lee Purcell bewitches 1970s suburbia in Summer of Fear.

Craven was burning the candle on both ends during the production of Invitation. He was also working on postproduction for the peculiar sequel to The Hills Have Eyes, as well as polishing his soon-to-be-a-classic Nightmare on Elm Street script, which may explain the somewhat slapdash feeling of the telefilm. Admittedly, Invitation is hardly great cinema (don’t misunderstand me, it is entertaining as Hell—pun intended!), but despite the preposterous story, Craven vibrantly captures the greed and self-indulgence of the mid-eighties. Lucci even said in an interview that she felt the film was “realistic.” A bit of an off-putting statement considering how outlandish the whole affair is, but indeed, while the story comes across as glossy escapism, the underlying themes of consumerism and greed are also distinctly present.

Like Stranger, Invitation leaves behind Craven’s openly monstrous family intrusions of the seventies, presenting corruption in a more synthetic package. Jessica Jones adopts the sleek high fashion of the era, embraces gadgets and opulence, and most importantly, offers the Winslows acceptance into the upper class. For all intents and purposes, Jessica is the eighties American Dream. Patricia is her most obvious target, as she longs for the good life and feels in constant competition for the most expensive furniture, nicest car, sexiest married life, etc. To her, these accouterments lead to security; but to the viewers, it presents an example of how willing some are to exchange personal wellbeing for expensive and attractive things. In fact, the film is awash in high-priced newness, gadgetry, and modernism. The family value fairytales of the past is in conflict with the consumerist desires of a new world. Still, for better or worse, Craven wraps up his TVM with a nice little bow, just as he did with Summer, and manages to maintain some of that fifties’ conservative ideology.

On his next telefilm, Craven switches the concept of selling one’s soul to living a life without a soul. Chiller originally aired as part of CBS’s Wednesday Night Movies offerings on May 22, 1985, almost exactly one year after Invitation to Hell debuted on ABC. Skipping the more overt shiny objects of greed, Craven toned this small screen affair down. And, while the telefilm lacks that oh-so-eighties aesthetic, it comments heavily on the soulless age of corporate greed.

Michael Beck is unnerving as Miles Creighton, a man who was cryogenically frozen by his mother Marion (Beatrice Straight) after his death at a young age. Thanks to a rather devastating blunder at the cryogenics lab, the doctors do their best to revive the long dead man. Luckily, it works, but it would also seem that while his body is back to walk the earth, his soul departed some time ago. Miles resumes life as it should be, and returns to the head of the big corporation that has gone on without him. The company’s family atmosphere extends all the way to their acting president, Clarence (Dick O’Neill), who emerges as a kindly uncle figure during Miles’ absence. However, Miles doesn’t like this warm and happy corporate environment, and literally turns the business into a cold blooded venture.

Craven veers slightly from his usual outside corruption motif, placing the immorality within the peaceful halls of a family run corporation. New too is that the Creighton’s are far above upper middle class, and the family unit has changed into something a little less traditional, with Miles’ mother a widow with an adopted teenage daughter (Jill Schoelen in a small but good role). The closeness of family also extends to the business world, which Miles sees as ineffective, calling to mind the conservative young lions taking over Wall Street and and seeking other careers offering positions of power. Miles also challenges religion and faith, and is not only cold to the touch, but cold in the heart, and dead to traditional norms of the past. And that’s makes him terrifying to the audience.

Compared to Craven’s other telefilms, Chiller is almost dead silent with quiet and meditative dialog, and it is certainly more brooding, and meticulously paced. It is also wonderfully dark and fairly on target with its conceptions of the stony business world emerging from this era. Screenwriter J.D. Feigelson, who was a fan of Rod Serling, and would go on to pen two stories for the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone, brings a discreet psychological terror that pervades throughout Chiller (Craven and Feigelson also directed separate segments of an episode of the new Twilight Zone in 1985). The story is further complemented by Craven’s unobtrusive direction, which eschews overbearing horror visuals and allows the actors to immerse themselves in the heady material.

Susan Lucci is an irresistible force of nature and evil in Invitation to Hell.

DVD artwork.

Whether Craven, who passed away in August 2015, was aware of it or not, his first three small screen films work along a line of symbiotic allegories that expose the core of the middle class as superficial, greedy and easily corrupted. Capturing the artificial charm of the relics of Americana, Craven also manipulates them, revealing the ugly underbelly of self-indulgence, consumerism and xenophobia. While the stories end predictably with the family rising above the odds, Craven’s television films do not veer too far from where his earlier works concluded. However, in those grimy horror flicks, the families were tainted by death, and those who survived were changed forever. The survivors of Craven’s telefilms fare much better. But, the themes that repeat throughout his theatrical career are still apparent, and these charming and deceptively intelligent telefilms deserve a look.