The deceased couple leaves behind Julia (Lee Purcell), whose newfound homelessness necessitates that she shack up with Rachel and her family for the remainder of the summer. Our introduction to Rachel (Linda Blair) occurs in one such shot, with the teen awakening one summer morning to be told by her mother (Carol Lawrence) that her aunt and uncle were killed in a car crash. Visually, the film conforms to the demands of the television movie, with tight framings on character faces comprising nearly half of the film’s shots. Summer of Fear shows Craven evolving his aesthetic capabilities to service industry demands for genre works that could appeal to both youth and adult audiences.
Craven’s dedication to the horror genre as the best template for addressing a family’s betrayal of its individual members for the sake of upholding either tradition or sanctity answers why the director of The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes chose to direct a made-for-television adaptation of a popular, and family-friendly, Lois Duncan novel. To that end, Summer of Fear could be understood as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema for teenagers, with its bewitching visitor a young female cousin “from the Ozarks” rather than Terence Stamp’s slender sex machine. Few would say that Wes Craven made what could be called “art cinema,” yet his storytelling interests often coincide with those of several of the mode’s practitioners.
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