Before Jaws and the bicycle baskets of E.T., before Close Encounters and the blood-soaked beaches of Normandy, there was Something Evil. A made-for-TV movie about demons, dread, and domestic unraveling, it aired in 1972 as part of ABC’s Movie of the Week. It lasted a scant 73 minutes, had no sharks or aliens, and no one remembers it unless they were unlucky enough to stumble across it during a lonely VHS purge in 1989.
But buried within the Satanic baby cries and suburban hysteria is a fascinating time capsule—not just of early ’70s genre television, but of a young Steven Spielberg feeling his way into the dark. Something Evil is a sometimes goofy, occasionally chilling, and surprisingly emotional little thriller that hinted at the technical wizardry and psychological acuity that would come to define one of the most important filmmakers of the 20th century.
And best of all? It stars Sandy Dennis in full fray-nerved, wide-eyed tremble mode, making toast and unraveling like someone who’s read Rosemary’s Baby a few too many times.
The Devil Wears Culottes
The plot is blessedly simple. Paul and Marjorie Worden (Darren McGavin and Sandy Dennis) move into a charming, remote Pennsylvania farmhouse with their two kids. Paul is a hotshot New York TV producer. Marjorie is a painter with psychic tendencies and the emotional stability of a spilled teacup.
Almost immediately, the house whispers. Literally. There’s a mysterious red barn. There’s an unseen child crying at night. A glowing jar of… jam? Jellied evil? Hard to say. The film is less concerned with coherent demonic lore than it is with atmosphere and vibes—and to its credit, it delivers both in chilling doses.
When people start dying in car crashes and Marjorie begins to suspect she may be possessed by something wicked (not helped by a wind machine permanently set to “panic attack”), the movie shifts gears from pastoral horror to a psychological breakdown, with a thin coating of Satanism on top. That it never fully commits to either is part of its weird charm.
Sandy Dennis and the Hysteria of the American Housewife
Sandy Dennis is the reason Something Evil remains worth watching. Let’s be honest: if this were Charlene Smith from Days of Our Lives, we’d have forgotten it by the first spoonful of evil applesauce. But Dennis brings with her a whole freight train of fragile brilliance. Her wide eyes and thin voice tremble with unspeakable tension. She doesn’t just look scared—she looks like the world is unraveling and she’s the last thread holding it together.
This is horror anchored in an incredibly vulnerable performance, and Spielberg clearly knows it. He trains his camera on her like a documentarian filming a nervous breakdown. There’s something fascinatingly uncomfortable about watching Dennis try to convince her family (and herself) that she isn’t insane while the shadows get longer and the baby keeps crying from inside the walls.
It’s one of those performances that’s either a career embarrassment or a minor triumph depending on your patience for hysteria—but in a world of horror heroines who simply scream and run, Dennis stands out for turning a haunted farmhouse into a battlefield of maternal dread and metaphysical self-loathing.
Spielberg, Before the Beard Was Famous
As for Spielberg—he’s not quite the Spielberg we know yet. He’s still hungry, still showing off, still using his camera like a paintbrush dipped in anxiety. Long before Poltergeist (which he co-wrote and produced), he’s already experimenting with the idea that terror hides not in monsters, but in houses that won’t shut up and families that look too perfect to be safe.
There are tracking shots that anticipate Jaws. There are slow zooms and strange angles that feel ripped straight from Duel, his brilliant 1971 TV movie that got him the attention of Universal in the first place. There are flashes—particularly in the eerie stillness of the red barn or the candlelit close-ups of Dennis—where you see the talent boiling beneath the surface.
Is it over-directed? Occasionally. There are at least three zooms that scream “Film School Final Project: Satan Edition.” But for every indulgence, there’s a haunting visual—a windchime twitching when there’s no breeze, or a child’s toy moving just slightly too much—that lingers like cold breath on the back of your neck.
A Devil of Domestic Proportions
Unlike many horror films of the era (The Exorcist was still a year away), Something Evil leans heavily into the idea that evil isn’t confined to castles or cemeteries. Evil is in the blender. In the barn. In the box of paints you left open by the window.
This smallness works in the film’s favor. It doesn’t try to out-Satan The Omen or out-haunt The Haunting. Instead, it stays close to its characters and lets the tension bubble up like spoiled milk in a baby bottle. When the local handyman (played with haunted weariness by Jeff Corey) finally delivers the Big Exposition about how the Devil is real and maybe lives next to the scarecrow, it lands with the quiet dread of a bedtime story told one night too late.
The Devil’s in the Details (and So is Spielberg)
There’s something charmingly dated about Something Evil—from the hazy color grading to the way characters talk about demonic possession like it’s a weather forecast. But within that ‘70s TV sheen lies a film more thoughtful than it has any right to be.
The sound design—those damned baby cries, the relentless whispering—is genuinely disturbing. The score by Robert Prince blends subtlety with shock. And there’s a nearly surrealistic use of objects—marbles, jars of preserves, windchimes—that makes the familiar feel treacherous.
And yes, for those eagle-eyed enough, Spielberg himself appears at a party scene, looking all of 12 years old and quietly absorbing the madness around him, probably wondering if the Devil had union rules.
Final Verdict: A Forgotten Curio with Genuine Chills
Something Evil isn’t a classic. It won’t send you shrieking into the night, nor will it replace The Shining on anyone’s horror syllabus. But it is a strange, poignant, unsettling time capsule. It’s a film made by a director learning how to terrify without needing buckets of blood. It’s a showcase for an actress burning slowly from the inside out. And it’s a rare example of a made-for-TV movie with more atmosphere than it probably deserved.
So if you’re in the mood for a slow burn of psychological paranoia—with a side of demonic parenting and some deeply unsettling windchimes—Something Evil just might be your new cult favorite. Just don’t be surprised if your jam jars start whispering back.
