This is a film review and commentary almost Fifty years in the making. I recall being psychologically wrecked by this movie in Fourth grade, it was a 2-part series and I crept out out my bunk bed to watch the last half hour of the second night while Mom and Dad were off at work in the late-1970’s running a movie theater in the evening. According to Wikipedia, “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home” was first shown on NBC in January of 1978, which is weird since the movie has total Halloween vibes. NBC aired it again in March of 1979. I came away broken from watching this, would love to find a clear print of it, everything that is available on this are blurry versions on Youtube. I have learned through the years that this freaky flick is part of a sub-genre of Horror movies called Folk Horror. Other entrants in this sub-genre would include movies such as 1966’s “The Witches” (Reviewed on this blog in 2024), “The Dunwich Horror” from 1970, William Friedkin’s “The Guardian” from 1990 and of course, the bell cow of this sub-genre, the brilliant British occult thriller, “The Wicker Man” from 1973 with Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward.
“The Dark Secret of Harvest Home” is long; almost Four hours in one version, this is surprisingly well done, although it is probably too telegraphed for playing in theaters in 1978, it could have been released in theaters in the late 1980’s and nobody would have noticed the difference. Directed by Leo Penn (Father of future Hollywood mainstays Sean and Chris), the movie takes itself seriously. I almost felt like at points they intentionally had the film composer compose cheerier music for a very dark premise. At times, this feels like “Peyton Place” meets “Midsommar”. Film Score composer Paul Chihara at times delivers the creepy goods quite effectively, as well as haunting themes that are supposed to evoke thoughts of ancient rituals. Penn also does an effective job of not using too much music, at times there is silence and this effect accentuates the growing tension on screen.
The cast for this definitely has some recognizable names and faces. There’s Robert Altman film ensemble actor Rene Auberjonois as Jack Stump, a local hermit/peddler. A young Rosanna Arquette is in this as the Protagonist couple’s daughter, Michael O’Keefe (future star of “Caddyshack” and “The Great Santini”) is a young man of the village named Worthy Pettinger who runs afoul of “the ways” of the village. Donald Pleasance is in this as the voice of creepy books on tape for blind people. The main couple is played with fantastic depth and spirit by David Ackroyd and Joanna Miles. Yet this Four-hour opus is dominated by none other than Bette Davis, who gives a mesmerizing performance as the Widow Foley. She’s like part den Mother, patron saint, civic leader and savage authoritarian. Davis was definitely in the midst of a career reboot while making this movie.
Based on the novel “Harvest Home” by novelist Thomas Tyron (a reformed former Hollywood actor), Tyron also wrote the novel that became the gut-wrenching 1972 Horror thriller “The Other” with Uta Hagen. “Harvest Home” is on a similar projectory, taking place in a quiet, undisturbed community somewhere in the woods of Connecticut. While the story begins appearing to be somewhat basic, but all the ancillary messaging here thrown in gives the viewer a shit load to think about, there’s quite a few concepts being bandied about here, mostly in reference to the shortcomings of modern living and the subliminal war between the sexes. While the running time is almost Four hours, there is never a lapse and there is no down time, far from it. The Tv mini-series was a 1970’s and 1980’s phenomenon and this one feels like it got lost in the shuffle, there is quite a bit to discuss.
The film begins in New York City as we are introduced to a family that is surviving in the Big Apple, but that’s about it. The Father, Nick Constantine, played by Ackroyd (a strong, self-effacing performance) is a struggling visual artist and writer. His wife, Beth, played by Miles is committed to their marriage but is carrying baggage with her due to her husband’s recent philandering. Miles is really good in this as well, she couples a standard White Suburban cheery mom persona with an intense Old Testament-type savagery that is simmering under the surface, she has quite a character arc in this flick. Early on, Miles has a series of insightful scenes with her psychiatrist.These scenes are tight and tense, we see what the psychiatrist sees in her; hoping to embody a typical 1970’s pollyanic housewife mindset but struggling with a myriad of self-related issues. One of those issues being she’s not sure her husband is the type of Man she wants. The daughter, played by Arquette, has to pay street gangs protection money to walk her to her piano lesson three blocks away from their Manhattan high-rise. This family is over educated, under performing and psychologically struggling.
Since this was presented as a mini-series, we do get a lot of time with the primary couple, played by David Ackroyd and Joanna Miles. In accordance, we get an ample dose of character development and this is quality time spent in the movie, especially for a potentially exploitative Horror flick. The couple’s complex and contentious relationship is central to the themes of the film, interspersed are scenes of warmth and camaraderie between the couple. In 2026, everyone appears to be watching streaming shows in lieu of watching movies, character development is back in vogue. (Although back in my day, we used to get such things from reading books.) There is a tendency in modern shows to reintroduce character quirks and flaws to remind viewers of these attributes rather than trust the viewer to remember them. “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home” is a Horror movie at it’s core, but it’s also a story of social commentary and transforming dynamics between Men and Women in the 1970’s of America, at least in a society where Women are provided a choice or at least the wiggle room to take equality and perhaps more if they are savvy enough.
The family receives news of a death in the family, a wealthy relative of the Wife, and an inheritance provides them with new found flexibility. This brings the family together as the daily tension of their lives tempers briefly. The Wife and daughter are especially excited and transformed by the change in fortune. The family goes on a drive into Connecticut like most normal New Yorkers, pondering what to do with their new found autonomy. They incidentally blow a tire on their Station Wagon and end up as if they had passed through a portal in to almost a scene of primitive colonialism, a farming community in rural Connecticut. It looks like the Amish, or a scene from “Witness” with Harrison Ford. The family is definitely tired of living in urban decay and now has fiscal options to do something about it. Dad quits his soul-sucking Madison Avenue job to return to pursuing a career of writing and drawing. The daughter doesn’t have to fear for her safety on the streets of Alphabet City anymore and her extreme Asthma attacks start to diminish while Mom starts seeing her shrink less and less.
In some ways, the movie and plot is similar to a Hammer Horror film from 1966 that starred Olivia DeHaviland that has been reviewed on this blog previously, titled “The Witches”. (AKA “The Devil’s Own”). Though “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home” bangs the viewer over the head with clues, divulging too much of the set-up here ruins the payoff. The film seems to carry a dual storyline; the obvious Horror-infused melodrama that is simmering on the surface and the messaging about what kind of society modern people want to live in if given the choice; what would a Shangri-Lah for educated religious-leaning Anglos look like and what would it’s social dynamics look like? Would people want to live in structured communities that harken back centuries and include a stricter set of laws? Is an insulated community, with its own rules and justice, necessarily a better one? Should people in America, if they are organized and not affecting communities outside of their own, be allowed to run their isolated societies as they see fit, even if some of what they do violates the laws of the United States?
This has the feel of a film that despite it’s running time of almost Four hours, is so full of shock and salacious material that I felt more juicy anecdotes were left on the cutting room floor so it would fit into a two-night Network box. The script, written by Jack Guss and Charles Israel, is surprisingly full of hip conversation. we get character dialogue about sexuality, about beliefs in modern vs archaic medicine, about the dehumanizing properties of industrialism and technology, about the frail accord between Men and Women and their gender identity roles in modern society. Once things start rolling, which is fairly early on, despite the fake smiles on the part of some townspeople, there is no idle chat, there’s quite a bit of stimulating conversation between Ackroyd and Miles separately and Bette Davis as the town’s unofficial Leader and Matriarch, the scenes play like great old theater, Davis at times speaks as if she is in a Shakespearean play speaking in Iambic Pentameter.
Watching this in 2026, I thought to myself why wasn’t this a bigger hit? Although, according to one Video tribute that I saw on Bette Davis’ gothic Horror career resurrection later in her life, it said “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home ” received good ratings. The movie had two network airings in the late 1970’s, once in January of 1978 and a second time in March of 1979 before it became a cult item. Maybe a Horror film about a possible cult of pre-Christian Misandrists living in the woods of New England was too edgy for TV Network executives. The movie does have exploitative and provocative themes which may have been why serious film people avoided it. I wondered why NBC didn’t air this at Halloween, it unequivocally has a Halloween and Fall feel at the film’s climax, night time torches, hooting owls, mysterious people marching through cornfields in the middle of the night with flowing gowns on. To further the Halloween feel, it takes place in New England, there’s hallucinations and rituals at night as well as ghosts, witchcraft and occult skullduggery.
The candor involving adult relationships and discussion of Feminine power might have been too much for some 70’s couch potatoes. The sexuality involved hints of Pagan worship, which would most certainly chase away pious and faith-based viewers. The movie has some strong Female characters in it, although it is probable that the husband would be considered the protagonist here. The husband runs afoul of the local authorities of Cornwall Coombe in two regards; by one, his publisher has fronted him money to write a book that in part would identify some of the area’s spooky past of ghosts and local gothic legends, a subject that nobody wants to talk about and the Husband is starting to think there is some morally sketchy shit going on here. In the present.There are hints that this village has lived in some manner in the same way for at least 300 years, and that there are influences that go back to societies potentially from thousands of years.
Bette Davis is the marquee star of this, as the crone, probably a look that was too Feminine dominant to be a breakout hit in the late 1970’s, the actual conflict between Men and Women here could be considered daring social commentary or misogynist clickbait, watch and decide for yourself. The Men in the village are portrayed as manual labor, non-thinking types, they are simpler thinking, like plowhorses snd handcarts. This kind of analogy Horror may have been too much of a slow burn for the obvious Horror crowd. The town is made up of a religious sect that has Luddite-type beliefs in not relying on technology to solve their problems. The film uses titles on screen to inform us of the next step in the events of the local calendar, we are taken through a barrage of annual events in the town that seem to not only foster community but provide structure for the town as a whole. The leader of the village, the Widow Fortune, who is always dressed in Black, is played with vigor and chilling dynamism by Davis. She has quite a bit of dialogue here and she doesn’t miss a beat.
Ackroyd as the writer pushes himself into a unavoidable conflict by wanting to expose an old damaging truth about the town but it comes at a price, which is intertwined with the protagonist couple’s power struggle with each other. The question arises is the husband playing detective because it is the right and just thing to do, is it because he wants to add juicy content to his book he is working on or does he resent how much his wife and daughter are enjoying their new found liberation, status and security? He understands how to navigate the world of the urban jungle, He feels emasculated by a society that is both progressive and arcane. In their life in New York, he could hide his excessive drinking and philanderings in the chaos of urban existence. Here, in the serenity of the country and a life of organized community, there’s nowhere to hide your flaws.
Arquette is effective as a sort of animated archetype of a teen American daughter, her character arc is endemic of the story’s trajectory, she is innocent and sickly at first, but becomes immersed in the society that gives her a safer, freer and structured teen life. Davis as the crone mother seems to want to recruit as many strong willed Women as she can. She pays special attention to Arquette as Katie and Miles as Beth. There is a transference where Miles stops confiding in her shrink and starts confiding in Davis. The cliff’s notes of what are the big Horror movie payoffs here? The slow-burn tension, the performance and presence of Davis and the climactic sequence are worth the effort, including the fact that because this was originally shown on NBC, it was shot in some sort of process that gave it like a PBS documentary sort of look for a couple of key nighttime sequences, which adds a feeling of historical accuracy and almost appear to resemble a nightly news video.
The scenes involving the marriage however, is where the most interesting dialogue occurs, where we get all of the issues floating around in this film crystallized. In once scene, Davis supplies the couple with an old brew she has made. They drink the elixir while sitting outside in the night time moonlight while discussing things lovingly and suddenly the nighttime bugs stop singing and Ackroyd hallucinates and believes he is seeing mythical imaginary figures dancing in the moonlight that represent the fertility of the harvest. The movie puts forth the the notion of a town where men have accepted the yoke for generations. They are there to provide manual labor but aside from that, they pursue the pursuits of overgrown children; drinking, fighting, hunting, philandering, entertaining.
In another scene, one of the earlier therapy scenes, Miles as the Wife discusses her husband’s alcoholism and philandering have led her to sexual frigidity, that his self-indulgent behavior turns her off, she wants a man she can respect, she’s a Minister’s daughter, after all. Miles tells the shrink that she wants to submit to someone, but not to him. She also still wants another child, which the husband does not. This film is interesting in that the Men for the most part are passive here with the exception with a few who possess pollyannic fake confidence. No character is as paradoxical here as Davis as the Widow, she is both a soothing presence and.a one Woman centuries old surveillance state. She brings dying children back to life, she has conversations with Cows while she walks them, she knows pragmatic and pertinent information on a little bit about just everything, she is the all-knowing folksy crone with a suburban look via the 17th century, you betcha.
A fairly obvious movie and book to compare this to would be the 1975 Horror Sci-Fi Social Commentary picture, “The Stepford Wives” with Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss and based on the Ira Levin best-seller. Both films take place in rural Connecticut, involving educated and professional people seeking refuge from the relentless grind of New York City in the 1970’s and both involve Horror analogies dealing with gender power dynamics where one gender seeks to dominate or eradicate the other. In “Stepford Wives”, Levin creates a world of go-getter upper class Men who would appear to prefer to have robots to real Women as wives. Here, educated and intellectual Men are the endangered species. Men in this society are encouraged to devote their attention to farming and house renovation, to drink corn liquor, fist fight and philander while the Women do the oranizin’ and the plannin’ and the thinkin’, like a Summer Camp that never ends,
Besides the film’s final half hour, which I found just as compelling as I did when I first saw this Fifty years ago, this film does well as like a soft version of Louis Malle’s thought provoking and dazzling visual film, “Black Moon” (also from 1975), about the unspoken clash between the sexes. The ending reminded me when I was Ten, about the kind of tawdry things that I thought adults might be doing in the dark woods at night but wouldn’t speak about it. It was a fantasy of mine as a child that something mysterious and dangerous must be going on in the world (especially at night) and at some point I would be called upon to help combat it. Ackroyd and Miles are an attractive couple, we feel relaxed when they are enjoying each other’s company and can feel that doom and gloom is on the horizon when they quarrel. There’s chemistry when they kiss and when they hold each other. The film veers into candid territory where it is apparent Ackroyd looks for his wife to look the other way in regards to his drinking and womanizing , she in turn does not seem to approve in totality with his brand of masculinity.
The face that was marketed by NBC for this film is obviously Davis, and she is almost ethereal here in her presence. When the Horror reveals itself, Davis never leaves character or loses composure yet her fire and brimstone sounds like a voice from an era gone by. Sometimes she is cute and folksy, other times she’s a misandrist gang leader. She made at least three movies that I can think of off the top of my head within a four year span where she essentially played the same character, the crone in a gothic Horror (or ghost) story. This movie, 1976’s creepy “Burnt Offerings” and 1980’s “The Watcher in the Woods”. Though she had established herself as a fantastic icon of gothic horror as far back as the early 1960’s, Davis seemed at ease in these roles that were in more shlocky exploitative territory, but her presence in return brought more prestige to these movies. Her character here is so unusual in that she is heroic and sincerely likable at times and endearing, and at other times, she’s a menace. She and Ackroyd have scenes together of true kinship and bonding.
Watching this after almost Fifty years, I thought this was a true find, a compelling Horror yarn that involves your emotions as a viewer and not just tensing up as people chase each other through corn fields. The intensity of the ending sequence stayed in my mind for days after, if you are searching for Halloween-related fare to send chills down your spine and you don’t mind a movie that takes it’s time, this might be of interest, the night time visuals give it Halloween atmosphere and mysticism. “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home” contains social commentary issues of intellect worth discussing. There is a great scene of dialogue half way through the movie where the couple of Ackroyd and Miles have drinks with another educated couple that has moved to the quiet town from New York City, years before the protagonists. The other couple’s wife is originally from the town, her husband was a professor who is now blind, and that’s relevant. After experiencing another weird and potentially traumatizing village tradition day together, Ackroyd suggests that the town seems to be part of some kind of arcane cult, the others don’t suggest he is wrong, but they do suggest that under the conditions of this town, Ackroyd himself is either correct in his paranoia or he himself is showing signs of being a contrarian lunatic who is looking for conflict because he feels threatened by the Feminine power that is omnipresent and the adherence of the townspeople to wholesome innocent living and discipline. “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home” has got way more going on intellectually than any 1970’s TV Network mini-series had any right to be.
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