Country: U.S., made for TV
Horror themes: intruder, rumor of haunting, unexplained events, clothes dummy, objects moving by themselves
Director: John Llewellyn Moxey
I expended significant time and effort over the years seeking out this old TV horror movie, and for good reason: I am 90% certain this is the old 1970s movie that scared me so much as a child that it left a permanent impression. The content of this movie – in particular, a certain object that moved by itself in the girl’s bedroom one night as she slept – seemed to etch in stone the type of horror I would find scary from that point forward.
Unfortunately, The Strange and Deadly Occurrence is quite dated at this point, and I believe it’s highly unlikely to provide significant scares for today’s jaded horror fans. That said, there is one scene I still find to be very creepy!
Synopsis of The Strange and Deadly Occurrence
This made-for-TV horror film stars Robert Stack and Vera Miles as a couple whose new home in the country turns out to be a host to strange occurrences, perhaps inhabited by evil spirits. Director John Llewellyn Moxey (Horror Hotel) manages to raise his share of small-screen chills in this low-key story co-starring L.Q. Jones and Herb Edelman. Fans of the haunted-house subgenre should note that the film was co-written by Sandor Stern, who would go on to script the similar Amityville Horror and direct its third sequel.
Source: Rovi
As I watch (Beware: This partial play-by-play account contains spoilers)
Michael and Christine Rhodes, along with 16 year-old daughter Melissa (“Mel”) have moved into a house out in the country. Felix and Audrey are guests, and the group is having a jovial evening lubricated with a few drinks.
At the very beginning of the movie, there is an electrical problem – solved by a quick visit to the breaker box. A window is found to be open shortly thereafter, and no one remembers opening it.
Already what stands out the most to this viewer is the creepy dressmaking dummy standing there in the room. Those things – along with mannequins, ventriloquist dummies, certain dolls and clowns, etc. – instantly give me the creeps.
Local legend of a haunting
During the discussion of the open window, the subject of local legend comes up. There used to be a Spanish mission where the house now stands. Upon the death of his lover from typhoid fever or some such, a distraught man went berserk, murdered a priest, then set fire to the mission while still inside. As the legend goes, some nights you can still hear the man moaning for his lost love! There’s a smidgeon of relief in the room upon learning that there has been only one resident of the house since the legend – the man who built the house and lived there peacefully for many years before passing away in his sleep.
The horses are making a lot of noise as the family retires. Let’s check on them! We see the daughter Melissa go out to the barn to check on Justice (the horse) from the point of view of a heavy breather hiding in the bushes who seems to follow her to the barn. Then she sees a rodent sniffing around in the straw, so perhaps she has discovered the source of Justice’s unease and there’s no cause for concern after all!
The wife wakes up during the night, probably because she was hot. She opens a window, dons a robe, and checks on the thermostat or furnace setting to find it cranked up into the 90s. They step outside to enjoy the evening country air when the urge strikes to jump into the pool and horseplay ensues. But they left the door to the house, and the stalker apparently enters the house. We see through the eyes of an unknown third party, and we again hear the heavy breathing.
Suddenly the pair hears Melissa screaming in terror for her parents, who come running. Melissa says someone touched her hair and her face, and that it definitely wasn’t a nightmare. Dad notes that her bedroom window is open and that the wind could have easily blown the curtains across her face: mystery solved.
So far, we have no reason to suspect that supernatural events have anything to do with this television movie (except for the local legend).
The next morning, guest Felix notes that they’ve found the original well on the property, dating back to the days of the Spanish mission. Everyone besides Christine, housewife that she apparently is, hops into the big red, two-door seventies car – and no one puts on a seat belt. It’s a little hard to imagine now that this was standard practice back in those days! The group heads for town while Christine performs her housework, alone.
As she works, she hears water running from behind the closed bathroom door, which requires a quite a struggle to open. The bathtub is full and overflowing, the faucet on. Who turned it on? Did Christine even wonder? Perhaps she did not have time for concern; the phone started ringing as soon as she turned the water off.
Her husband Michael is calling. He’s with Felix, who assures them he and his wife do not take baths – only showers – so the running faucet was not their doing.
As Christine is sculpting a bust by the pool, the gardener approaches and tells her about the gopher problem. This gardener was employed by the previous owner, so Christine asked if there had been odd problems with the house before, such as with plumbing or electricity – and though there’s no news there, the gardener happens to mention how horrible it must have been for the previous owner to die that way, by drowning in the pool.
In the afternoon a stranger stops by out of the blue, scares Melissa as she sunbathes in her bikini, and asks Christine if they’d be willing to sell the house to him for a tidy profit. He leaves his number, saying that he is staying in town at a local motel.
Gophers in the kitchen cabinet – you’d think they were giant spiders by they hysterical reaction of the women!
3am – door handle moves, door opens, 3rd person breathing again. New see Melissa in bed – and here comes the scene I’ve been waiting for. There’s a long wooden creak, Melissa looks up, and next we see her clothes dummy moving toward the bed apparently by itself, rocking back and forth, closer and closer, until it falls right onto Melissa in her bed. Melissa screams bloody murder again, which is exactly what I would have been doing!! Father has trouble getting her bedroom door open.
The sheriff visits, thinks Melissa had a nightmare and knocked over the clothes dummy herself.
Guard dog Adolph, visitor who wants to buy house…
Adolph barks fiercely so Michael lets her go; the dog winds up dead by the horse stall.
Time to get a handgun.
Christine is alone at the house again during the day and decides to enjoy the sauna. She gets stuck in there when the door won’t open for some strange reason…
Comment I left on YouTube
Holy s**t, I finally found it!! I have been searching for this horror movie for DECADES; it aired in 1974 when I was about 8 years old, and it scared me to death. This movie is the main reason that my #1 fear is of objects moving by themselves!! I am an obsessive supernatural horror fan to this day. I cannot even begin to explain how horrifying the scene was to me – when the dressmaker dummy moved by itself…my eyes water just thinking about it. Thanks for uploading this!
Postscript: I am about 90% this is the movie I have been trying to find. I could have sworn the movie that frightened me so thoroughly as a kid was called something like “The House That…” but I’ve been unable to find anything so titled which also contains a dressmaker’s dummy that moves by itself.
Resources: The Strange and Deadly Occurrence (1974)
originally written on Saturday, June 18, 2011
Although 
The attempted CGI portrayal of the boogeyman entity in that film is a major weakness of Boogeyman, IMHO; apart from that, it was a rather creepy, atmospheric supernatural horror movie. I believe Boogeyman would have been much scarier throughout – and that this would have been reflected critically, in the movie reviews – had no attempt been made to show the entity onscreen. As all horror fans know, sometimes these things are best left to the imagination.
A man learns his past was more truth than imagination in this horror story. Tim Jensen (
Boogeyman was directed by