SOMETHING EVIL (1972)
Dir: Steven Spielberg

Just as the public discord and outrage surrounding the carnage of the Vietnam War ushered in a new wave of ultra-violent American horror films, the mass exodus from the nation's urban centers (known racially as "White Flight") was dramatically interpreted/analyzed in countless genre classics. From The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to The Hills Have Eyes to Deliverance to every other TV Movie of the Week, you can be sure bad things happen when city dwellers meet rural folk.

NYC couple (Sandy Dennis and Darrin McGavin) move themselves and two children from Manhattan to Bucks County, PA and the horrors ensuing (while interesting enough) hardly compare with the hellish commute the breadwinner must endure daily. Basically, this is a very, very mild horror telefilm, constructed around the visual flair of a young Spielberg not yet restrained enough to allow story to trump technique. Lots of flashy film school angles and framing nonetheless elevate Something Evil above the staple primetime fodder provided by the script.

The whole city/country conflict is continually explored whether through chic cocktail parties full of Madison Avenue executives on the newly acquired farm (juxtaposed with a party of locals that seems alot more fun and frankly urbane) or a tenant farmer insistent upon archaic rituals like the bloodletting of chickens. In a fabulous moment typical of the divine Ms. Dennis, Sandy calls husband Darren on the phone to complain of the local farmer's strewing of chicken blood across newly sown fields with the single remark: "Do please speak to him. He's draining a live chicken's blood across the fields again. I can't tell you how distasteful I find it."