Looking much like Whistler's Mother with a broomstick close by, Bette Davis dominates the screen once again as a mysterious small town matriarch who welcomes several newcomers from New York City and slowly involves them in the town's mysterious harvest festival which seems to be demonic in nature. David Ackroyd and Joanna Miles play the wary newcomers, with a young Rosanna Arquette as their teenaged daughter, falling in love with the quaintness of the community which begins as soon as they cross a beautiful old fashioned covered bridge. Ackroyd and Miles compare it to Brigadoon, but in what contrast will it be as mystic? What appears to be a Flemish farming community is much more than it seems, and it takes some time for them to realize just exactly what is going on. But by that time, will it be too late? Will some of them be caught under the nasty secret?
This takes some time to get going, with the daily doings of the townspeople taking up much of the screen time. Michael O'Keefe ("Caddyshack", "The Great Santini") is charming as the young lord of the harvest who longs to get away, with a variety of familiar character actors popping in and out of the action and a few chills popping up as well. All eyes are on Davis and her B.D. eyes, her clipped speech charming and reassuring at one moment, and seemingly deadly and sinister the next. What's it all about? It takes over two hours for it really to come together, but sometimes, like a great novel, the exposition is necessary to bring the plot to a dramatic boil. I was glad to find that the TNT broadcast I found is not the highly edited version, although a few chops here and there might have enlivened it a little. But like any good horror story, it's the quiet moments before the frights that really cause you to jump right out of your skin.
This takes some time to get going, with the daily doings of the townspeople taking up much of the screen time. Michael O'Keefe ("Caddyshack", "The Great Santini") is charming as the young lord of the harvest who longs to get away, with a variety of familiar character actors popping in and out of the action and a few chills popping up as well. All eyes are on Davis and her B.D. eyes, her clipped speech charming and reassuring at one moment, and seemingly deadly and sinister the next. What's it all about? It takes over two hours for it really to come together, but sometimes, like a great novel, the exposition is necessary to bring the plot to a dramatic boil. I was glad to find that the TNT broadcast I found is not the highly edited version, although a few chops here and there might have enlivened it a little. But like any good horror story, it's the quiet moments before the frights that really cause you to jump right out of your skin.