If scriptwriter Lee Kalcheim had his way, we may occasionally laugh at an overlooked horror-comedy called It Drinks Hippie Blood. That was the title of the screenplay he handed to producer Charles B. Moss Jr., but within it, the wacky satire director John Hancock saw something different: a tragic drama about a woman whose tenuous grasp on reality is weakened by strange events, but is any of it real? The result of Hancock’s rewrite, now called Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, baffled audiences when it was released in 1971. But now its sense of ambiguity, much of it anchored in the hypnotic central performance of future Emmy winner and two-time Tony nominee Zohra Lampert, is seen as the signature of a bleak masterpiece. – Richard Whittaker
