Highly charged, highly silly and highly untrue "true story" in which the Lutz family , just ten days into their stay in their idyllic home - run for their lives from a house which is supposedly possessed by a previous owner who had slaughtered his entire family not too long ago.

The movie begins with the infamous house being presented to us on a dark, stormy night with lightening flashing all around, then there are some gunshots - supposedly a motiveless murder of an entire family taking place within.

We move to the present (late 1970's) with the Lutz family surveying the same house which seems to be on offer at an unbeatable price. The Lutz's, James Brolin and Margot Kidder move in to their dream house on their shoestring recession blighted budget and life seems to be a cushy bed of roses until strange things start happening and things start going bump in the night with alarming regularity. Its all very dramatic and subtlety is not the order of the day, yet the film has a cheesy quality and manages to entertain.

Margot Kidder and James Streisand-Brolin perform adequately but Rod Steiger takes the cake! Lalo Schifrin's dramatic score helps things along and then there is one of the worst ever performances in the history of cinema by Rod Steiger to savour.The film was quite a success in its day and has spawned half a dozen sequels each worse then the one before it!