EDITOR’S NOTE: The Enchanted was on the CBS Late Movie on March 18 and July 23, 1987.
The Enchanted is a Florida regional film that mainly played in the South but still found its way to the CBS Late Movie. Its filmmakers self-released it on DVD, but the first Blu-ray release is on the new Severin All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2 box set.
This does have quite a budget for a regional film—supposedly over a million—and was made between 1979 and 1983. Why this was sold to TV and not to the video market — which was making big money at the time and was begging for product, much less horror and horror-adjacent product — is a mystery.
Booker T. Robertson (Julius Harris) and his dog Pete are walking the swamps of the Everglades when they come upon a trailer filled with people. Since Booker knows everyone, the idea that strangers are here frightens him a bit. On the way back home, he runs into the son of one of his dead friends, Royce Hagen (Will Sennett), who has decided to leave the world behind and move back home.
Royce is fixing up the family farm and has hired a family new to the area, the Perdys—Pa (John Hallock), Ma (Helen Blanton), and their children—who provide him with cheap labor and romance, as he’s fallen for their daughter, Twyla (Cassey Blanton). Booker isn’t so sure about them, but his warnings go unheard.
That’s because Booker knows that in the woods there are two worlds, one for the living and the other for the dead, along with a “Hole In the Wall” where spirits can move back and forth. Once Twyla moves into Royce’s bed, Booker washes his hands of this.
The Perdrys are all vegetarians, and Twyla is quite strange. She’s somehow a virgin despite being past thirty, paints nature murals all day and is deathly afraid of cats. Meanwhile, as love blossoms, animals are being killed all over town by wolves.
Writer Elizabeth Coatsworth created the story this is based on, starting with The Enchanted: An Incredible Tale and telling the Perdy story across four books. The family feels vaguely hippy, and by 1979, when this was made, hippy meant the Manson Family. Who faints when they see a chicken being served for dinner? But the twist—given away super early—is pretty great, and I love the issues everyone talks about in reviews as downsides. I see them as upsides: amateur acting, long glimpses of nature and animals instead of storytelling, odd editing choices. Add in Phil Sawyer’s synth score, and you get a singular movie that presents the unknown within the known, the mystery and magic of a part of America gone unexplored and often forgotten.
