THE HAUNTED (1991)

Studio:     Fox
Director:    Robert Mandel
Writer:     Darrah Cloud
Producer:  Daniel Schneider
Stars:     Sally Kirkland, Jeffrey DeMunn, Louise Latham, George D. Wallace, Joyce Van Patten, William O’Connell, Stephen Markle, Diane Baker

Review Score:

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Summary:

A suburban family seeks help from demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren when they discover their house is haunted.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Halloween, 1955 – Janet Smurl recalls being frightened of a neighborhood haunted house known as ‘The Tinley Place’ while trick-or-treating as a child.

August, 1975 – Janet and her husband Jack move into a duplex on Chase Street in West Pittston, Pennsylvania with their daughters Katie and Colleen. Jack’s parents Mary and John move into the other side of the house.

The Smurls meet their neighbors Cora Miller and Dorie Hayden. Minor instances of paranormal activity plague Jack and Janet while they renovate the property.

March, 1985 – Now raising twins Erin and Shawn in addition to her daughters, Janet hears a woman’s voice in the basement. Janet goes next door to see if Mary called for her only to discover Mary heard Janet’s voice using offensive obscenities.

Janet feels a presence touching her body while sleeping. Continued occurrences of supernatural activity cause Janet to become frazzled as friends and family question her wellbeing.

Janet asks Cora about the possibility of ghosts haunting her home. Cora mentions seeing noted demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren on television.

Janet sees a black shape move through the kitchen. Janet goes next door. Mary confirms that she saw the same apparition as Janet. Janet and Mary tell their husbands what they saw, but Jack and John dismiss the notion of something supernatural.

Janet researches paranormal phenomena at the library. Janet discovers evidence of Satanic activity in her neighborhood’s history.

Jack hears a voice whispering from inside Janet’s pillow. Jack finally believes his wife’s claims when an invisible presence touches them both in bed.

Janet convinces parish priest Father Larson to come to the house. Father Larson begins feeling strange while blessing the home. However, Father Larson repeatedly insists to Janet that the Catholic Church will not sanction an official exorcism.

April, 1985 – A light fixture shatters and falls, narrowly missing the children as the family sings Amazing Grace.

Cora tells Janet that Ed and Lorraine Warren are delivering a demonology lecture locally. Janet appeals to the Warrens for help and they agree to come to the Smurl home.

A demonic succubus rapes Jack in the living room.

The Warrens arrive at the house. While Ed interviews Jack and Janet, Lorraine investigates the home. After seeing several apparitions, Lorraine concludes that a demon is manipulating three other spirits in an attempt to destroy the Smurls.

Furniture begins shaking. Ed recites a prayer to calm the paranormal activity. Ed and Lorraine leave Jack and Janet with holy water and a defensive prayer. The Warrens recommend that Jack and Janet fight the entity as a family.

Paranormal activity forces the family to get out of the house by going camping. However, the black apparition follows the Smurls to their campsite. When they return home, Cora and other neighbors report seeing the Smurl house in supernatural chaos while the family was gone.

Jack and Janet send the four children to stay with their Aunt Lily. However, the spirit follows the children to Lily’s home.

Ed and Lorraine have former Catholic priest Father Kearney perform an exorcism. Paranormal activity rattles the house while everyone prays. Father Kearney concludes that the exorcism worked once the smell of roses overwhelms the room.

After several months without any paranormal activity, an unseen presence attacks Janet in the basement. Mary sees the black shape again. Janet levitates in her sleep.

With the Catholic Church unwilling to help, Jack brings his family’s story to the press. The case attracts numerous reporters and widespread attention.

The diocese finally sends Father Kent to investigate. After staying in the house for two days without seeing anything unusual, Father Kent leaves.

The Smurl house becomes a prominent target for vandals, crazies, and lookie-loos. The paranormal activity subsides again after a church group performs a community prayer inside the house.

June, 1987 – Unwanted attention forces the Smurls to move into a new home. However, the demonic presence follows the family. An epilogue reports that the haunting continued until a church sanctioned exorcism ended the ordeal in May 1989.

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Review:

“The Haunted” aired as a made-for-TV movie on Fox in May 1991.  Although it earned a Golden Globe nomination for lead actress Sally Kirkland’s performance as well as an Emmy nom for Michael D. Margulies’ cinematography, the movie’s 12.8 million viewers landed “The Haunted” last in its timeslot with an overall ranking of 58 out of 85 network programs that week.  To add a little more context, 25 million more people watched reruns of “Major Dad” and “Amen” at the same time.  It would be fair to say “The Haunted” didn’t exactly catch fire.

The film might have stayed hidden in cobwebbed memories if not for someone noticing two familiar names in the cast of characters.  22 years before Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga made the roles famous, Stephen Markle and Diane Baker played noted/notorious demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren on the small screen.  This revelation, along with being unavailable in any format other than VHS, brought “The Haunted” new life as a “lost” chapter of sorts from “The Conjuring” universe.

While those factors earn the movie status as a cult curiosity, fascinated fright film fans might want to cool expectations a skosh.  “The Haunted” doesn’t feature anything revelatory or extraordinary that would qualify it as an undiscovered gem.  The film fares better as an entertainingly dated oddity fit for a bite of lukewarm 1990s nostalgia.

“The Haunted” bases itself on a “true” story the way all Ed and Lorraine Warren cases are based on “true” stories, which is to say barely.  Taking cues from the same-named book coauthored by the Warrens and newspaper writer Robert Curran, “The Haunted” tells the tale of Janet Smurl and her suburban family’s unusual haunting, which plays suspiciously like a diet version of “The Amityville Horror” (review here).

Director Robert Mandel sets a throwback TV movie tone immediately.  Common clichés charmingly race against one another as Janet and Jack Smurl move their kids and Jack’s parents into a new home.  Jack’s dad carries a lamp under an arm while sauntering up the sidewalk.  Two eager women in floral print dresses stop by to welcome the new neighbors before their car is even unloaded.  One of the ladies baked brownies.  Released in 1991 yet taking place between 1975 and 1987, “The Haunted” features all of the big glasses, baggy clothes, and bad hairstyles you’d expect to see from three different decades crashing together onscreen.

Boxes are barely unpacked when weirdness starts warming up.  Jack’s hammer mysteriously goes missing for a minute.  A wall stain seeps through a new coat of paint.  An unplugged toaster spontaneously catches fire.  Is your skin pimpled yet?

Then the entity haunting the home does something truly unexpected.  It leaves the Smurls alone for the next ten years.

Things pick up again in 1985 when the unseen presence forgoes futzing with casual renovations and targets Janet for terror.  The entity succeeds not only in driving Janet mad, but driving Sally Kirkland to chain-smoke a comical number of cigarettes.  Play a drinking game that compels taking a shot each time Kirkland puffs and you’ll pass out from alcohol poisoning by the second commercial break.

Sticking to routine, “The Haunted” continues cycling through standard beats of haunted house horror.  Janet’s husband Jack dismisses his wife’s claims of possible paranormal activity, leading to a predictable “I’m not crazy!” confrontation between the two.  Jack eventually comes around of course, particularly when he is raped by a succubus who transforms from a woman to maybe a man to who knows what while grinding veteran actor Jeffrey DeMunn’s lap in a beautifully bizarro moment.  This demonic sexual assault easily becomes the film’s signature scene, standing out for its jarring nuttiness and also for being unlike any other aspect of the production.

Darrah Cloud’s teleplay otherwise stays thick with religious references.  “The Haunted” isn’t particularly preachy, but faith makes up a big part of the family’s philosophy while prayer becomes primary ammunition in exorcising evil.  The most hilarious consequence of the Smurl Family’s devout Catholicism involves Janet’s mother-in-law refusing to speak to her for several days because she attributes overheard obscenities to Janet’s voice.

For all of its “power of prayer” posturing, “The Haunted” still gets in a couple of anti-establishment licks.  Sitting on its hands whenever Janet asks about an exorcism, the Catholic Church gets booed as a bureaucracy more concerned about public perception than assisting a troubled family.  The diocese’s dismissal spurs the Smurls to look for help through less conventional channels.

Enter Ed and Lorraine Warren.  With unintentional irony, “The Haunted” confirms through their ineffectualness that the Warrens were largely useless hucksters.  After Lorraine says, “yep, you have a demon,” the couple proceeds to play organ music, dribble holy water, and shout like Father Merrin at rattling furniture.  Then Ed says something like, “that’s all we can do.  Here’s some holy water and a prayer for when the activity amps up again.”

The presence returns that same night, forcing the family to flee the house.  Even though the first one didn’t do much, Jack Smurl calls Ed at least twice more begging him to return for another rain dance.  Ed and Lorraine can’t come however, presumably because they’re preoccupied embellishing some other supposed ghost story.  They later refer a priest to perform a cleansing ritual, but his chanting yields the same temporary results Ed and Lorraine’s did.  What value the Warrens may have had in this case isn’t reflected in their paltry onscreen efforts here.

“The Haunted’s” final lesson teaches us that George Lutz was a far better showman and salesperson.  While the Smurls were mashing a hodge-podge haunting whose lapsed chronology and inconsistent events make next to no sense, Lutz crafted a cottage industry of claptrap that forever changed the name of an unfortunate Long Island town.  With more creativity, ‘The Smurl Haunting’ might have been more than a poor man’s “Amityville Horror.”  The same goes for “The Haunted,” which now has to deal with being a poor man’s “The Conjuring” too.

Review Score: 60

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