CROWHAVEN FARM (1970)
Dir: Walter Grauman

Crowhaven Farm has, inexplicably to us here at Satan's School for Girls, been remembered fondly in the hearts of several of our website visitors. Another Spelling-Goldberg quickie, this time around Hope Lange inherits a creepy old farm owned by her Puritan ancestors, and discovers their dark past through a supernatural intrusion into the present. Full of flashbacks (unwisely shot in broad daylight) and portentous omens, signaled by an overbearing soundtrack, the filmmaking here is relatively crude (even for television standards at the time). Once again we have a New England farmstead clearly set among the rolling hills of Southern California; witch hunts or not, does the East Coast simply have an intrinsic spook factor to the rest of the nation? All those blue states perhaps? A few of the performances are decent (Lange's in particular) but Paul Burke as the bossy hubby is woefully bad, and even worse, figures heavily into the story. Without giving any of the predictable plot twists away, eventually a few minor chills are effected by the return of some long dead (but still nasty) Puritan zealots.

Most interesting in an examination of Crowhaven Farm is its blatant anxieties over the burgeoning women's movement of the period. Lange is a modern female, willing to have a child to please her husband but also determined to work and develop a life outside the home (or off the farm, as the case may be). Her husband is bitterly jealous of this well-roundedness and attempts to control his wife through sudden rages and tantrums. Once a Lolitaesque ghostly child enters their world, he quickly switches from paternal figure to incestous pedophile in a matter of days. From the seductive evil of the pubescent phantom, to Lange's former incarnation as the symbol of anti-patriarchy, a witch, Crowhaven hammers its consevative subtext home gleefully. And these are actually the most fun aspects the movie offers, as well as the creepiest (Lange originally died as an accused witch via a brutal means called "pressing").

John Carradine is on hand portraying his ubiquitous character, the Mumbling Old Man Who Knows Too Much, and through practice, is convincing. A number of minorly recognizable television character actors play the morbidly funny neighbors; a scene straight from Rosemary's Baby and other similar films reminds us that fun old people who throw a good cocktail party must be harboring something dark up their well-tailored sleeves.