The Night God Screamed

Great early 1970's "shocker"...if you are a fan of "Don't Look in the Basement", "Last House on the Left", or various late-night cheapie thrillers. The double shock ending on this one, is surprising and chilling! I'm surprised this movie is not well known by Psychotronic movie fans. The plot is original enough, the cast is a mixture of battle-worn old people and "blah" newcomers. The family / "teens" that Jeanne Craine goes to babysit for...are too old, and all the same age! This movie moves quite well (no boring parts) I think the producer was responsible for the equally obscure and weird 1973 movie "The Baby" (which also has a shock ending). Not on DVD, I had to buy the VHS on E-Bay. Look for this! "The Night God Screamed" must have played at drive ins at one point.

Jeanne Crain plays a woman suffering from PTSD after seeing her preacher husband brutally murdered by a Manson-like cult. She ends up babysitting for the children of the judge who convicted the Manson-like cult leader and strange things start happening. Could this man and his followers have returned to settle the score?

The Night God Screamed has been unfairly hidden and buried since the VHS days. It's not exactly a lost masterpiece of terror, but there's a lot of great suspense on display and a really downbeat and spooky ending that I didn't expect. This seems to be Jeanne Crain's attempt at a "hagspoitation" film and she does well with her role.

If you're expecting buckets of blood, this movie might not be your cup of tea. It's still incredibly brutal and intense at times for a PG movie.

There's a murderous Manson-like Jesus freak cult, following the unibrowed Jesus-lookalike Billy Joe and his enforcer, the hooded cross-toting Atoner The followers are hippy-dippy teenagers with motorcycles.

After the preacher husband of the female lead doesn't let them rob his donations without a few words, he's crucified and stabbed by them. His wife, who did not have a particularly stable mind to begin with, becomes more unhinged. Three of the cultists are put on death row, but The Atoner remains unidentified and free, as do the other cultists who weren't there at the robbery.

A judge invites the preacher's wife to babysit his four teenagers, not wise as she flipped out even more after being threatened with "vengeance" by the cultists after the trial. From there, it becomes a tale of a home invasion, mostly. I don't share the high admiration of the other raters, but it's not bad.

There are certain films that are really well written and very scary, but they are totally unlucky. I recall "Let's scare Jessica to death", which is a very very creepy movie, and you just hope this tension would end, at mean time you hope it would never end. Nobody talks about "Let's scare Jessica to death", and you can't find a DVD or data about it, or even watch it on TV. The same is applicable to "The night God scream", which is a very well written movie, that captures the real essence of horror. There are no zombies or special effects. No bowels or beheading and certainly no rotten corpses, but it's a hell of a movie that makes your blood freeze. You breathe with difficulty and you sit at the edge of the chair. Nobody really understands what the real horror is.. What you see in "Saw", "Van helsing" and "Scream" is just gore. I am not amazed that there was only one comment about such a great movie, because it was born unlucky like "Let's scare Jessica...". If you are not into gore and rotten corpses, and you think that apprehension is the real essence of horror, then do yourself a favor and go find this movie.

"The Night God Screamed" is obviously inspired by murderous activities of Charles Manson and his 'family'.The film is unavailable at this present time on DVD.It mixes relentless suspense and unsettling undertones of religious fanaticism.Jeanne Crain stars as the widow of a murdered preacher who is later systematically stalked and terrorised by the same crazed religious cult once led by twisted Jesus freak Billy Joe Harlan and responsible for her husbands death.Very effective suspense flick which easily maintains a nail-biting sense of tension.The central performance of Jeanne Crain is excellent.She plays the woman on the edge of total breakdown.All in all "The Night God Screamed" is a well paced,highly effective and suspenseful little shocker steeped in a chilling,uneasy sense of twisted religious mania.