The Dark Secret of Harvest Home

Directed by Leo Penn (father to Sean, Christoper and Michael and director of many, many TV shows), the near 5-hour movie moves as slowly as the book at times, but it's definitely worth watching. Broken into two nights, the real craziness doesn't really start happening until the second part.

Nick Constantine (David Ackroyd, who played Dr. Nicholas Conrad in the 1970's TV movie ripoff of Iron Man, Exo-Man), his wife Beth (Joanna Miles, Bug) and their daughter Kate (Rosanna Arquette, Desperately Seeking Susan) are living the kind of dreary life that I imagine everyone in New York City does. Nick cheats on her and drinks away his problems as he struggles in the advertising industry. Beth stays in therapy every day of the week. And their daughter has such a bad case of asthma, she can't even stay outside for long. Yet they decide to relocate to a Connecticut village called Cornwall Coombe after falling in love with it on a trip.

Sure, the villagers only do things the old ways, not using modern farming equipment or communicating with the outside world. Sure, they celebrate weird festivals all year long and are obsessed with corn. But come on — the couple's romance is back, Kate is cured and everyone is just so nice!

Kate even has a love interest — Worthy (Michael O'Keefe, Caddyshack), who wants to leave the town behind and go to college. He's been saving money so he can escape, but as Kate becomes more and more part of the town, he sees that their love can't survive.

Then, there's Robert and Maggie Dodd, their neighbors. They once lived in the modern world and have also decided to come here. Robert is blind and listens to Donald Pleasence reading from several plays. And oh, hello, here's Justin and Sophie Hook, who will be this year's Harvest Lord and Corn Maiden in the Corn Play. And most importantly, here's Bette Davis (if I have to explain who she is, stop reading now) playing Widow Fortune, the town's herbal healer and most important person. Davis claims that she wanted this role since she read the book and she's a force in this — perfectly sweet at times and infused with menace at others.

Nick increasingly becomes obsessed with learning the secrets of the town, particularly why one grave — that of a suicide victim — is outside the cemetery. Things get worse when Worthy busts into church and curses the corn and someone called Mother before running away. And then he gets seduced by Tamar, a widow who has a clairvoyant daughter who picks each year's Harvest Lord (she's played by Tracey Gold from TV's Growing Pains).

So what is Harvest Home? Its "who no man may see nor woman tell," a pagan fertility rite connected to the earth mother. Nick is now obsessed with it and his marriage is falling apart all over again. His wife just wants to get pregnant again and he can't figure out why.

Worthy is hiding, but a letter to Nick is intercepted. A posse goes to get him and they hang his corpse in a field as a scarecrow before burning it on Kindling Night. At this point, there's no normal in this town. Nick tries to escape and turns to his blind neighbor Robert, who tells him that Harvest Home is happening. He explains that he was blinded trying to learn the secret and that Nick should just run.

Instead, he goes to save his wife and daughter. The ritual scene that follows is lunacy and worth sitting through this entire movie. To Nick's horror, he learns that his daughter is the new Corn Maiden. He is forced to watch as the Harvest Lord has sex with her, ending with the man's throat being cut as he is sacrificed to the earth. Nick is caught, blinded and his tongue is cut out, much like his friend Jack Stump (Rene Auberjonois, Eyes of Laura Mars and so many other roles). He is trapped in the town now, forever stuck, his virility reduced to being dependant on his pregnant wife and daughter, who are now part of the pagan secret that is Harvest Home.

There's a cut down commercial release of the film, but there's no way to get this on DVD without finding a bootleg. It's worth the search, however. The last ten minutes of the film are perfect.

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Stars like Bette Davis were not getting the big roles for the big screen that they were in the days of the big studio system so many like Davis turned to the small screen. One of her better choices was The Dark Secret Of Harvest Home where she actually went back to her New England roots to play the Matriarch in a special matriarchal society that has developed in an isolated corner of Connecticut.

David Ackroyd with wife Joanna Miles and daughter Rosanna Arquette think they've found this picturesque relic of a town where time seems to have stood still. Even the fact that they find a house in need of a bit of repair seems to be inviting them to stay. What they don't know is that the family is being auditioned by Davis known to one and all as the Widow Fortune who rules the roost there. In fact if this were a beehive Cornwell Coombe would have the men either as worker bees or worse drones.

The women acclimate quite quickly, but Ackroyd starts developing suspicions. Sad to say they prove to be right. These folks have their own kind of religion, Christianity with pagan fertility rites. There's one male among them who is the Prince of the Harvest and what perks come with John Calvin's office. But what a price he has to pay for them.

The kid who is scheduled to be Calvin's successor wants to commit the unpardonable heresy of leaving. Michael O'Keefe plays him and it's his story that makes Arquette start to question 'the ways'.

Bette Davis really was born to play the Widow Fortune, I cannot imagine another actress doing justice to the role. O'Keefe as the young man who thinks there just might be something more to this old world than a New England farming community that has some strange ways is very touching in his performance.

I'm not a big fan of these kind of horror novels and the films that come from them. But author Tom Tryon did a wonderful job in creating some real three dimensional characters, not just meat waiting to be slaughtered by some guy waving an ax.

The Dark Secret Of Harvest Home is more than horror film fans.

Say what you will about the translation of Tom Tryon's fine gothic chiller Harvest Home into this TV film, Bette Davis' performance here is riveting and really nails home the creepiness of the tale. Unlike her sad farewell in The Wicked Stepmother (1989) where she was clearly having trouble focusing on her acting, here she is a powerful presence that (goose)fleshes out this telefilm the way it should be.

Playing the Widow Fortune (a prophetic name if ever there was one), she is the matriarch of Cornwall Coombe, a small Connecticut village just on the other side of the Lost Whistle covered bridge where "the ways" hold sway over the villagers. What they do and how they do it is bound by tradition, one hundred percent, so when a city family comes to stay, culture clash is inevitable.

Of course we all know this is a gothic chiller standard--sophisticated city couple/family comes to small quiet village only to find it mired in evil and horror, et cetera. Too true. But Davis' character is spellbinding enough that the viewer can overlook this tried and true plot point and enjoy the proceedings. Additionally, aside from some minor outdated bits of dialogue here and there, the script is actually pretty intelligent; a low stupidity quotient in the dialogue helps tremendously.

Unfortunately the VHS release of this film was chopped considerably; the original five hour length was shown on TV but unless the viewer taped it (as I did), it's completely unavailable. High time for a DVD release.

This is a great way to spend an evening with a roaring snowstorm outside. And the ending really is a shocker.

Many horror fans, and those who try to write such stories, understand that Stephen King has taken inspiration from the work of others. And there can be little doubt King was influenced by Thomas Tryon's outstanding novels "The Other" and "Harvest Home."

The TV movie version of the latter book, titled "Dark Secret of Harvest Home," was the second and final adaptation of Tryon's work and was originally aired in 1978, two years after the big screen success of Stephen King's "Carrie." Unlike 1972's "The Other," "Dark Secret of Harvest Home" was presented as a mini-series with a superb cast headed by Bette Davis.

Thomas Tryon wrote with an elegant style somewhat reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft's. His plots were engaging, his characters interesting and well developed, and his New England settings evoked the gloom and obscure anxiety traditionally associated with that region. So why has his work faded into obscurity while King's is heralded as the greatest in the history of horror?

Regrettably, Tryon started writing rather late in life after a well-regarded career as an actor in such films as "The Cardinal," and died while his creative powers were on the wane. He also chose to explore genres other than the Gothic (with generally good results.) There is also a more staid, pre-World War II air about his work that might not appeal to the Baby Boomers and Gen-X'ers who form King's core audience. Nevertheless, Tryon's Gothic efforts translated wonderfully onto the small screen, and he deserves a well-deserved place in the pantheon of American Gothic writers. Thankfully, American Movie Classics has begun airing the TV movie version "The Other" again. Hopefully, 'Dark Secret of Harvest Home' won't be far behind.

This was a terrific mini-series with just the right mix of fantasy and horror. The reverence the people of this matriarchal town holds for its main crop, corn, is nearly as creepy as the out of control little girl who foresees things. Nice touches were the long sharp scissors Ms. Davis wore on a cord hanging from the belt of her long black dress, the shunning of the old couple and the suitable cluelessness of the menfolk.

This was an edge of your seat, can't wait to see what happens next movie. Anyone who missed it one its first run should try to get a copy--it's a truly excellent creepshow.