The Night God Screamed (1971) User Reviews (14)

Decent obscure horror movie

[The_Void · 7/10 · 9 March 2008]

The Night God Screamed, despite the interesting title, is not a very well known horror film; whether or not that's just down to poor distribution I don't know, but what we have here is an interesting and well made little seventies gem in the exploitation vein, though preceding a lot of the better known entries such as Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left. The title made me expect some sort of religious themed horror movie, but actually religion only plays a minor part in the movie and the movie is actually more of a creepy horror flick with exploitation themes. The main player is a preacher's wife who testifies against a fanatical religious group when they crucify her husband. Time goes by and the judge who put members of the group away invites the woman to look after his kids while he and his wife go on holiday. He gives the kids strict instructions not to leave the house while under her care; which doesn't go down well considering they're all teenagers. The situation gets worse still when they start being terrorised by a bunch of unknown attackers...

The Night God Screamed is a slow burning horror movie that doesn't utilise high amounts of gore and violence but delivers its scares through atmosphere and tension. The film has a real gritty feel to it and this bodes well with the dark plot line. The film stars Jeanne Crain in the lead role. She's not the usual horror movie star, but she does well among a cast of lesser actors and helps to ensure that the film is always interesting. The main bulk of the film focuses on the main characters trapped inside a house and this section of the film is tense throughout. Some of the scenes leading up to the finale are not all that interesting, but the film never actually becomes boring. The ending is decent and the twist does make sense, although it's not exactly impossible to guess. It is a shame that this film is so obscure because I'm sure that a lot of horror fans would enjoy it; somehow, however, I can't see it getting a DVD release any time soon. If you can find a copy of this movie, it is well worth getting hold of.

False Prophet has a uni-brow

[Tromafreak · 6/10 · 24 September 2009]

What is it with the 70's and religious Horror? What is it with the 70's and Charles Manson? Who the hell knows? All I know is, I'm glad I gave this movie a chance. I've been collecting obscure Horror for years, and I've never even heard of The Night God Screamed until just recently. It's never been on TV, at least not where I live, and there's certainly no DVD's to be had. I just got my hands on an old VHS. It's always extra satisfying to unearth something this rare. This is true quality Horror. Billy Joe Harlan has it pretty good, this guy has a cult of followers, plenty of dope, aspirations to be like Charles Manson, and an ego outweighed only by a God-complex. So, why all the hate? I mean, The uni-brow problem is easily solved, I'm certain they had tweezers in '71, so, it can't be that. Maybe it's the fact that there's a new preacher in town, and this lunatic thinks he's entitled to all the Church's offerings. Mr. Preacher won't give it up so easily. Charles... I mean Billy Joe then does what any insane uni-brow with a God complex would do. Yep, a crucifixion, right in front of the wife, nonetheless. Although unharmed, the now widowed Mrs. Pierce walks away slightly damaged, yet more than sane enough to help put Billy Joe and his accomplices away. Let's not forget the uni-brow has other followers who are more than willing to avenge their leader. Revenge is coming, and you'll probably think you see it coming a mile away, but chances are high you won't. Truly incredible Horror with a truly incredible twist. I can't praise this movie enough. The Night God Screamed is every bit as effective as others from the era, like Don't Look In The Basement, if you liked that one, you'll like this, and if you haven't even seen that one, forget about this one for now, because Don't Look In The Basement should be a bigger priority, trust me. If you're not impressed with all that modern, big-budget, PG-13 garbage that clogs up the theaters, then maybe an unknown, Horror gem which relies on nothing but suspense and atmosphere, is just what you need. Recommended to real Horror fans... and of course, any Charles Manson enthusiasts out there. 8/10

Great Downbeat Horror

[evetilly · 7/10 · 7 August 2019]

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.

Actually a fabulous movie. REALLY creepy

[Liza-19 · 15 November 2001]

Jeanne Crain is one of the best actresses ever, and in this, one of her last performances to date, she proves that talent never fades away. The plot is hard to explain without giving the ending away, but it is SCARY. It is not a slice-and-dice, this film uses real terror, the kind where you have no idea what's going to happen. A fabulous movie, but don't watch it alone.

Entertaining and reasonably scary/suspenseful obscure 70s horror.

[capkronos · 7/10 · 1 February 2009]

Not a bad little shocker. In fact, it's better (and much more original) than a good number of inexplicably more-famous '80s slashers and probably would have a better reputation amongst genre fans if it weren't so obscure. The version I saw released by the Canadian label Marquis Video (it was also released on VHS by Guild Home Video in the UK and Trans-World in the US) is very dark and scratchy, which only adds to the authentic, gritty and creepy feel of the film. It would still be nice to see a company clean this one up and release it to DVD sometime in the near future but it's hard to tell if that's actually going to happen or not. SCREAMED is home to quite a few tried-and-true genre conventions. The first half deals mostly with religious fanaticism, a backwoods hippie cult (then-popular because of the Manson murders) and psychological torment, while the second half turns into more of a home invasion thriller/slasher flick with some telephone terror thrown in. However, the film manages to pull it all off fairly well and even throws in a few genuine surprises along the way.

After drowning a girl during a forced baptism, cult leader Billy Joe (Michael Sugich) and his motorcycle-riding Jesus Freak followers break into a church and crucify preacher Willis Pierce (Alex Nicol) when he won't give up the donation box without a fight. Willis' reserved wife Fanny (Jeanne Crain) witnesses the brutal murder from a hiding spot and later testifies to convict Billy Joe and put him on death row. Billy Joe promises he'll get revenge before being taken away and as Fanny leaves the court house, she's given an evil stare-down by some of the other followers. From then on out Fanny becomes increasingly more paranoid and emotionally fragile. She starts hearing the echoing threats of cultists in her mind and believes she's being followed. The judge from the trial asks Fanny if she'll babysit his four "teenage" children; Peter (Dan Spelling), Nancy (Barbara Hancock), Sharon (Dawn Cleary) and Jimmy (Gary Morgan), for the weekend while he and wife go on vacation. Fanny reluctantly agrees and arrives at the secluded country home only to find her charges harboring hostility toward her because the parents insist they all stay home for the entire weekend.

At nightfall, Fanny starts receiving heavy-breathing phone calls, which soon turn into threatening ones as the voice on the other line utters some very familiar sayings; the same ones she heard from Billy Joe at the trial. Not long after, a dummy is left in the yard with a death threat attached, the kids start seeing glimpses of hooded people sneaking around outside from the window, the phone goes out and the power goes on and off. It seems that the surviving cult members have followed Fanny to the home and are now going to get the revenge. Even worse, some of the cultists have managed to sneak inside the home and start murdering the kids one by one... Everything leads up to a twist ending that I personally didn't see coming at all.

Not a particularly violent film, this relies more on suspense, twists and exploiting hard-to-see or barely-glimpsed images in the pitch dark to achieve it's horror. It also benefits a LOT from a quality lead actress in the main role. Jeanne Crain (an Oscar nominee in 1950) does a very good job and helps to offset some of the weaker performances from the lesser-known actors/actresses in the cast. Apparently this title rubbed some people the wrong way, so the film had to be retitled simply SCREAM to play in more conservative areas. Check it out if you can find it!

God did not scream tonight

[FieCrier · 6/10 · 19 July 2008]

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.

Vengeance is the audience, and here's mine!

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 5 July 2020]

A tacky, sickening late entry in the career for nearly forgotten 20th Century Fox leading lady Jeanne Crain who was a bright light in the 1940's and 50's, but outside a few artistic classics ("Leave Her to Heaven", "Pinky") is not as well revered as Gene Tierney or Linda Darnell, two contemporaries who lucked out with better films. She plays the widow of a traveling minister, murdered by a strange cult in retaliation for what they consider blasphemy. Thanks to Crain's testimony, three of the people involved in the murder are sentenced to death, and as she leaves the court, the others from that insane cult taunt her with vengeance. She is obviously quite troubled from the start, but when her boss asks her to look over his children for a long weekend while he is away with his wife, the stage is set for the revenge to occur, and this gives Crain the opportunity to panic, fret, scream and cry with the best of the hag horror heroines, even though she's still quite attractive here.

The schlocky ending is just another nail on the cross digging in the coffin of this tacky movie, depressing and overly sinister from the start, and the type of third rate cinema that didn't deserve to have the participation of someone of Crain's legacy. The kids she is asked to look after are definitely college age and certainly not in need of supervision, but the script asks us to believe that they are of high school age. A twist at the end really discredits anything that has happened up to that time, and makes absolutely no sense. I've seen many films with the subject matter of twisted twenty something's taunt mature adults, and while none certainly can be claimed as good films, at least they could be viewed at in a campy manner. This film doesn't even have that, and I could only shake my head and feel sorry for poor Jeanne Crain who deserved a better film in the twilight of her career.

Fanny Pierce (snigger, snigger).

[BA_Harrison · 6/10 · 13 March 2024]

When Fanny Pierce (Jeanne Crain) witnesses members of a religious cult crucifying her 'false prophet' minister husband Willis (Alex Nicol), she finds herself paralysed with fear, unable to act until the killers have left. Her subsequent testimony in court sees the cult's leader, Billy Joe Harlan (Michael Sugich), and several of his followers sent to death row, but many of his flock remain free and they vow to take revenge.

After the trial, Fanny agrees to 'babysit' for Judge Coogan (Stewart Bradley), ensuring that his four teenage children remain at home for the weekend; however, not long after the judge and his wife have left the house, Fanny receives threatening phone calls and notes, and fears that the cultists have come a-calling.

With such a great set-up, The Night God Screamed had potential to be a really gritty slice of '70s exploitation, but for reasons that become clear in the final act, the film is fairly restrained in terms of nastiness. Director Lee Madden cranks up the tension throughout, but with the whole thing serving to set up a rather predictable twist (followed soon after by a second twist), it just isn't all that satisfying. I would have preferred it if the makers had done away with the 'clever' surprise and just concentrated on giving us a brutal siege film with lots of gnarly violence (like Assault on Precinct or Straw Dogs).

My rating: 6/10.

They don't dig our kind of thing

[kapelusznik18 · 5/10 · 9 April 2015]

*****SPOILERS***** At first we see this Charles "Sweet Charie" Manson type hippie leader calling himself Billy Joe Harlen who's using his drug crazed and brain damaged followers to do in this peaceful God fearing couple Fanny & Willis Pierce. It's Billy Joe who feels that in the Pierce's ministry of love and peace that their a serious threat to his power in taking his mind numbed customers or followers away from him. Breaking into the Pierce's church in the dead of night Billy Joe and his gang beat Willis into a bloody pulp and crucify him on the church's crucifix until he bled to death. Arrested and sentenced to death together with two of his followers who participated in Willis's murder Billy Joe puts a curse or hex on Fanny, an eye whiteness to this horrible crime, for her testimony being what convicted him for her husband's murder.

It's now three years later with Fanny not fully recovered from her ordeal that what seems like Billy Joe's followers are now back in action to make Fanny pay for having him and his loyal followers as well as co-murderers put behind bars for life. It all started when Fanny was asked to babysit from the Coogans and what seemed like the Coogan house was put under siege by a gang of faceless psychos out to kill everyone, including Fanny, in it. With Fanny going out of her already unstable mind the final shoe to drop is when the what seemed like the "Angle of Death", dressed in all brown carrying a king size wooden cross, broke into the house determined to kill her and the entire Coogan family.

***SPOILERS*** We have at the end a surprise ending to all this that has to do with the reason that Fanny was driven insane and to the point of self destruction. But the plan to drive her nuts went a little bit too far with her ending up dropping dead, as she fell down a flight of stairs, of sheer fright! As those responsible for Fanny's death then try to concoct an alibi in not having anything to do with it they get a mysterious phone call from the person who's really behind all this horror, whom they thought was one of them, saying that they'll be his next victims!

Where's the DVD or Blu-ray?

[franklineley · 7/10 · 9 July 2022]

A forgotten suspense yarn about the wife of a murdered preacher who gets terrorized by the murderer's bloodthirsty followers while babysitting. A solid babysitter-in-jeopardy thriller that predates Halloween by several years and features a scary cult of Manson-esque cultists as the lead antagonists and a middle aged heroine at the center of the story.

and this movie never played on TV?

[shango7200 · 10/10 · 18 July 2007]

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.

The Lord Works in Mysteriously Disturbing Ways

[Coventry · 8/10 · 29 April 2008]

This unimaginably obscure gem of horror perfectly epitomizes why I, and surely many regular members of this website with me, absolutely worship the 70's decade! "The Night God Screamed" is genuinely creepy without there being much of a budget for make-up effects, the concept is very original and I even daresay unique, the tone throughout the whole film is devastating and grim, the acting performances are far better than they have any right to be and – even though it didn't even need one – the script provides a very clever and almost unpredictable twist near the end. Quite a number of 70's horror movies revolved on satanic cults and devil worshiping ("Enter the Devil", "The Devil's Rain", "Race with the Devil"…), but this film centers, or at least partially centers, on the members of a fanatic Catholic movement and I assure you these Jesus freaks are equally uncanny as Satanists; if not uncannier. Billy Joe, a self-acclaimed prophet oddly resembling Jesus Christ himself, and his herd of brainwashed disciples crucify a preacher before the eyes of his poor and defenseless wife Fanny. The woman testifies in court and the culprits are sentenced to death, but naturally not before Billy Joe swears he'll avenge himself. A certain time later, Fanny becomes stalked and terrorized by religious maniacs, not coincidentally whilst she's babysitting the (adolescent) kids of the judge that sentenced the verdict. In case of movies like "The Night God Screamed", the lack of budget is actually the biggest trump. Director Lee Madden obviously searched for different ways to create suspense and an atmosphere of disturbance, other than the usual visual shocks effects and grisly murders, and he definitely succeeded! The remote rural settings are sublime, the music is chilling and all the characters are terrifically cast. Jeanne Crain is excellent as the dame in distress and especially the Jesus freak dude is supremely eerie. But, undeniably, the biggest triumph here remains the simple yet effective story. "The Night God Screamed" doesn't rely on zombies, vampires or supernatural phenomena. The menace here comes from seemingly normal human beings, with their unpredictable moves and dark twisty minds. It's a truly great film, and I know it's difficult to track down, but luckily enough the people looking for this type of cinematic gold are very persistent.

Creepy religious horror.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 8/10 · 24 September 2008]

"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.

Great underrated movie

[aktowfik · 10/10 · 21 June 2007]

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.