13 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark (1973)

A lot of people tend to forget that up to the mid to late 80s there were a number of channels that made "TV Movies."  The most famous and prolific of which was probably the ABC Movie of the Week from 1969 to 1976.  In 1971 they upped the ante to two movies a week with Tuesdays and Saturdays and then in 1973 added a second movie program to Saturday ABC Suspense Movie.  While in some cases it ended up being a rerun of the Tuesday feature, it often times was a low budget original work in the Thriller, Mystery, and Horror genre.  These films, despite being shot fast and cheap, managed to still find ways of being creative and daring.  Although, naturally, some of them were just downright awful.  John Newland's Don't Be Afraid of the Dark falls somewhere in the middle.

The story follows Sally Farnham (Kim Darby) and her husband Alex (Jim Hutton) who have recently inherited a Victorian style house from Sally's deceased Grandmother.  While restoring it Sally finds a room with a bricked up fireplace and a bolted ash door.  When she asks the carpenter about it he says he can't do anything about it leaving it with the ominous message "Some things are better left as they are."  Not one to take no for an answer, Sally unbolts it herself, and unknowingly sets free a bunch of creepy little critters who start to antagonize her in the dark.

The film itself is as one would expect from a TV movie, but despite the constraints of shooting fast and cheap still manages to build tension nicely, albeit slowly, while creating an atmosphere of paranoia.  There's a conscious look at gender politics going on in the subtext of the film with Sally constantly being told, or having it be affirmed, that she must be suffering from hysterics and delusions.  Who would believe a woman in a creepy house could actually be telling the truth about voices trying to convince her to give up her soul?  In fact the first person to absolutely believe her, though the dialogue is clunky, is her best friend Joan (Barbara Anderson), who has to convince Sally's husband that something otherworldly is clearly happening.

It's a creepy little number, best watched in the dark and with an open mind.  While it doesn't fully stand up to the test of time against younger audiences, there is still a lot going on in the film that makes it worthy of it's cult status.  Kim Darby, who is probably better known for her performance as Mattie Ross in the original True Grit, brings a very natural feeling to Sally.  It's painful to watch as her husband completely shuts down her pleas for help until it's too late, as it well should be, and we want her to win up to the very end. While it may seem strange for me to say this, I think this film is a good one to introduce children to the world of Horror. The story itself has the feeling of a scary campfire tale to be told over hot chocolate and s'mores.