April 20: Regional Horror — A regional horror movie. Here’s a list if you need an idea.

Do you think Jessica Harper ever wonders, “Could I not be in a cult movie?” 

In The Evictors, Harper brings that signature wide-eyed vulnerability to the humid, claustrophobic world of 1940s Louisiana. She plays Ruth Watkins, the wife of Ben (Michael Parks). They’ve just learned that every couple who has ever lived in their new home has been killed since the Monroes had a shootout all the way back in 1928. Every time Ben goes away on business, his wife is threatened by a shadowy figure who turns out to be one of the Monroes. In fact, everyone ends up being one, including their real estate agent, Jake Rudd (Vic Morrow). 

Despite teaching Ruth how to shoot, Ben may have taught her a little too well, as she thinks he’s the man who has been bothering her. She shoots and kills him just as she learns that Jake is Todd Monroe and that he’s been reselling the Monroe house over and over again to unsuspecting young couples, while his sister-in-law Anna/Olie e befriends the new tenants to learn more about them, and their brother Dwayne Monroe (Dennis Fimple) does the killing. Then Jake buys the house back, splits the money with his family and it all starts over again. But during an argument, Dwayne murders Olie and then goes after Ruth. Jake kills him.

In the bleakest of turns, the film skips forward five years to find Ruth hasn’t just survived. She’s been assimilated. Now insane and living as Jake’s wife, she’s become a willing gear in the Monroe family’s murderous machine.

Director Charles B. Pierce was the king of drive-in docudrama. While he’s best known for The Legend of Boggy Creek and The Town That Dreaded Sundown, this shows a more polished, albeit cynical, side of his filmmaking. Unlike Hollywood slashers, Pierce’s films feel lived-in. The sweat, the heavy Southern air, and the period-accurate 1940s costuming give it a grit that feels more like a True Crime magazine come to life than a standard horror flick. That may be because he was inspired to make this after reading a detective magazine article about a Kansas family who murdered somebody trying to evict them.

This was one of the final gasps for American International Pictures, the legendary studio that fueled the drive-ins. Its financial failure signaled the beginning of the end of an era for independent regional distribution.

Pierce considered it his most downbeat film and told Fangoria that it had a dark ending because “I probably just didn’t have any other way to end it.”