Such a frustrating disappointment

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Coming on the heels of Duel (considered by many to be the greatest TV film ever made), Steven Spielberg's second television film is a derivative & mediocre horror that's marred by numerous shortcomings in the narrative & acting section but its clever camerawork & sinister tone does make the ride somewhat bearable. Worth skipping unless you are a Spielberg completist.

Early Steven Spielberg TV movie that is a considerable step down from Duel released the previous year, but showing signs of a directorial craft to follow.Something Evil is not a great horror movie, well it was to those of us at a very young age who were allowed to watch it that is. The plot finds a family of four moving into a pastorally pleasing Pennsylvania farmhouse only to find a demon resides there. Hubbie works all hours in the city while mama and the two young children fall prey to something that manifests itself as red goo in jam jars or via a wind machine. Cue mama fighting the demon trying to take control of her family with love and pentacle art. Yep, it's really that simple, the budget doesn't stretch beyond that.Spielberg shows some nice skills with his dissolves, close-ups and distorted angle shots, but much of the impact is undone by poor acting and a musical score that belongs on a ghost train ride at the funfair. A couple of characters appear, and then vanish until the last third of the movie needs them, while the special effects on offer are understandable low in quality. For its time, its budget and as an observation to the early work of a man who would become one of America's biggest directors, it's a curio piece worth sampling. But it's hardly essential for horror fans or Spielberg completists. 6/10

I want to start by saying I love 70s Made-For-TV horror films. Since I was born in 1975, I didn't get to see all these cool movies until much later in life. Some are fairly easy to come by, while a lot more are not so easy to find and have become quite rare, which is a shame because they don't make TV movies like that anymore.After some digging around, I finally managed to get myself a copy of this early Steven Spielberg supernatural thriller. Being a fan of Mr. Spielberg and having already watched some of his earlier works, such as DUEL, JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, and his NIGHT GALLERY segments, I must say that I was expecting better. Not that this is a bad movie, because it's not. And I certainly don't regret the time spent watching it, which was only 73 minutes - so it has a good pace to it and never gets bogged down with any boring filler like so many films of this nature tend to do.While I can see how it could have been a bit scary back in 1972 when it was aired, it just doesn't hold up so well in that department nowadays. Still, the acting is good and the sound of the baby crying is effective. Overall this is a decent, early 70s Made-For-TV supernatural thriller. A solid 6 in my view.

My mother first saw this movie when it premiered on television back in 1972. I first saw it a few years ago on the Encore channel (roughly part of it), and thought it was an amazing film. I had recently been looking for a copy on DVD but couldn't find one until I got one on ioffer.com (it was a copy that was recorded on TV and transferred to DVD). In my case, it looked great, and all that. Sandy Dennis played Marjorie Worden and Darren McGavin played her husband Paul. Johnny Whitaker is the couple's son, Steven, and the daughter Laurie is played by twin girls (played by Sandy and Debbie Lampert). The family moves into a farmhouse in the countryside, without knowing until later that the previous occupant had been driven to suicide by jumping out of the 2nd floor window of the barn. Then, some mysterious things start happening shortly later on. Marjorie is hearing sounds of a baby crying, the family has a party at the house (and two guests mysteriously die on the way back home), multi-colored gel in a mason jar in the barn then in the house, and the son is being possessed by the devil! Another shocking thing is the sight of those scary ass red demon eyes peering out of a window while some silly commercial is filmed. Several other mysterious things are seen in the film, but they are odd as well. To me, those hideous eyes are what freaked me out the most. The family then moves out of the house to get away from the evil lurking in there. This movie never runs very long (at 73 minutes), but it's still worth watching. It would be great if this could be released on DVD (commercially), but until so, just deal with what is recorded from TV.