Crowhaven Farm aired November 24, 1970 on ABC. It is an Aaron Spelling Production.
Crowhaven Farm stars Hope Lange, who played Charlie Bronson’s wife in Death Wish. Alia Shawkat’s grandfather, Paul Burke (Valley of the Dolls, The Thomas Crown Affair) gets second billing. Other familiar faces include Lloyd Bochner (The Detective, Naked Gun 2) and John Carradine (Everything).
The plot of Crowhaven Farm concerns a big-city couple moving to the country. They don’t eat a lot of peaches. Rather, they encounter a coven of witches who like to play stone Jenga on people.
How does Crowhaven Farm compare to other made-for-TV horror movies like The Intruder Within, Midnight Offerings, Curse of the Black Widow, Satan’s Triangle, Killdozer, Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell , Invitation to Hell, Summer of Fear, Savages, Moon of the Wolf and The Initiation of Sarah.
Let’s find out!
Crowhaven Farm
The movie starts with a lot of plot. A will is read. A man inherits Crowhaven Farm. He drives there. A girl steps in front of his vehicle. He hits a tree. His car bursts into flame like a Ford Pinto tapped on the back bumper. The girl smiles. Crowhaven Farm passes on to Hope Davis.
All of this happens in roughly two minutes. Multiple sequences happen where scenes pass so fast you feel like you watch a high-speed train fly by.
Hope arrives at Crowhaven Farm with Burke and friend, Felcia. The house looks like an Alaskan lodge. One expects to see a moose molesting a trapper outside the window. Hope and Felicia tour the place, and Hope knowingly activates a secret door.
“How did you know about that?” Felica asks.
“I just knew,” Hope says.
Since nearly five minutes passed, Crowhaven Farm is obliged to add more plot. A reincarnation element is introduced. Hope feels like she used to live at Crowhaven Farm.
Hope talks with her husband, Burke. He is a starving artist and wants to turn the barn into a studio. He jams still more plot down our throats. Burke thinks Crowhaven Farm will be good for their troubled marriage, his career, and that “thing about a baby.”
Hope reluctantly agrees. They smooch with all the chastity of a 1950s Mormon couple.
The Crow-Haven Farm
Hope goes for a walk and sees a vision into the past where Pilgrims make a rock pile. This freaks her out, and she tells Burke. He chalks it up to overheating in the sun. Men knew how to properly dismiss female concerns back then. She would likely feel better if she made him a sandwich.
John Carradine pops into the movie as a handyman there to fix the place up…or maybe he simply showed up on set. Dude has 351 film and television credits to his name. You can’t tell me that at least a few of those aren’t him just wandering into a movie and the director shrugging and going with it.
That night, a bunch of locals throw a welcome party for Hope and Burke. Lloyd Buckner takes a shine to Hope, which makes Burke jealous. Again, more plot. Cyril Delevanti (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Soylent Green) is also there. He plays an old man who tells Hope about the witchy history of Crowhaven Farm.
Delevanti also reveals that people accused of witchcraft would have stones piled on top of them until they confessed or died from being crushed. This discombobulates Hope, as it ties into the vision she had earlier.
Buckner tells Hope there is a legal secretary job available in town if she wants it. Hope talks it over with Burke. He doesn’t want any favors from Buckner or a wife who sullies herself with a job. Nevertheless, Hope is insistent. She has glass ceilings to break, dagnabit!
The Scarecrowe-Haven Farm and Mrs. King
Hope begins her new job. Her car doesn’t start at quitting time, so Buckner gives her a ride home. Burke responds in a mature, secure-in-his-masculinity manner.
“You found a man who can give you everything, I can’t, including a child!”
Didn’t Heart write a song about that?
The next day Delevanti visits Hope and drops off a bunch of books about the history of Crowhaven Farm’s witch infestation. He also tells her to check out the local cemetery sometime. With this level of exposition, he could just as well be reading from the screenplay.
That night Hope hears weeping through the bedroom window. She goes outside, and the weeping turns to phantom laughter. She visits the doctor to see what is wrong with her. He essentially says, “Your main problem is that you are childless…”
Yowza! That wouldn’t play with the feminism brigade today!
A Murder of Crows-Haven Farm
Hope enters Burke’s painting studio. Now we know why is career is not taking off. His paintings look like the side of a Kleenex box.
A woman stops by. She heard about Hope and Burke’s infertility problem and says, “Hey, I have a terminal illness. Would you like to adopt my ten-year-old niece, Jennifer.”
Understandably, Hope and Burke are taken aback. Jennifer then enters the room. It is the same girl who caused the car crash at the beginning of the film. Jennifer says she likes Burke’s paintings.
That is all the convincing Burke needs. “We’ll take her!”
But Hope is a bit more cautious. She agrees to watch Jennifer on a trial basis while her aunt visits Boston for some medical tests. Roughly two minutes later, it is revealed the old lady killed herself in Boston, and Hope and Burke will take Jennifer in.
Like I said, Crowhaven Farm throws plot at viewers like it is shot out of a Gatling gun.
In between time, Hope notices Jennifer has a scar on her neck that looks like a human bite mark. Perhaps, Jennifer was at a President Joe Biden photo op at one time. If not, I’m sure Crowhaven Farm will let us know the truth roughly thirty seconds later.
The Black Crowes-Haven Farm
A big storm hits while Hope is at work. She can’t drive home, and the hotels are full. Buckner says, “Stay at my place. It’s cool. I’m not going to be home anyway.”
“Okay,” Hope says.
Meanwhile, Jennifer is back at Crowhaven Farm with Burke. She enters his bedroom, hops in bed with him and says, “I’m lonely, can I stay here?”
“Sure,” Burke says.
Jennifer then kisses Burke on the forehead and says, “I love you.”
Wow, did that get weird and uncomfortable all of a sudden. Is this going to turn into the Director’s Cut of Leon: The Professional? No one wants to see that happen.
NOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOONE!
Hope goes to the doctor the next day and gets some surprising news. She’s pregnant! Crowhaven Farm then goes into a series of snippets that propel the story ahead at the speed of Superman when he flies around the Earth to reverse time.
A New Year’s Eve party happens. Buckner kisses Hope. Burke gets mad. Burke learns Hope is pregnant. Jennifer stands in the background and smiles. Hope freaks out about a door Carradine carries. Develanti visits and dies ten seconds later. Hope starts reading the witch books.
Stone the Crows-Haven Farm
Hope learns the couple who previously lived on Crowhaven Farm couldn’t have children either. They asked the witches for help and made a deal with the devil to have a baby. She also learns that a bite mark is the sign of the devil.
From here, things move rapidly as plot strings come together. The fact that Crowhaven Farm is only 74 minutes long means it is stuffed to the gills with story. We are talking Lizzo wearing spandex here. The seams are strained to the point of Spider-Man’s webbing when he stopped that train.
Let’s try to unpack it…
Hope is a reincarnation of the wife who made the witches help her have a baby. That woman was the lady the Pilgrims piled rocks on to get her to confess. She then betrayed the witches and gave their names. The Pilgrims hung the witches.
Most of the locals are reincarnations of the witches who want revenge. They tell Hope they will kill her and her baby unless she sacrifices her husband to Jennifer, so Jennifer can experience the life that was taken from her. Hope agrees to sacrifice Burke.
Burke also shoots Buckner because he thinks that he is the real father of Hope’s baby. Burke is chased by the police and killed, his spirit apparently going to Jennifer.
The movie ends with Hope pushing her baby in Central Park. The great William Smith, who played a pitch-perfect Kraven the Hunter in an alternate universe, is a policeman who stops to chat. He ties a bow on the baby carriage the same way Burke tied bows. He then says, “I will have my eye on you and your little boy,” smiles and leaves.
Hope is left shaken by what appears to be another reincarnation that is back for revenge.
Crowhaven Farm Summary
Crowhaven Farm is too big for its package. I have not seen many movies move this briskly. It has scenes that are only seconds long before moving on to the next one. Instead of a 74-minute movie of the week, Crowhaven Farm would have been better served to be a short mini-series like It or The Tommyknockers.
Hope Lange is excellent in the movie, playing a woman caught between the present and the past, along with being caught between traditional and modern female roles. The toll infertility can take on a relationship is also well-represented. The pain can be so great, it could even push a person to making a deal with the devil to escape it, but that is jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The end of Crowhaven Farm qualifies as a twist, even though it is not as overt as something like The Sixth Sense or an episode of The Twilight Zone. You spend the movie on Hope’s side, but at the end, you realize she is the ultimate villain. In the past, she betrayed the witches to their death to save herself and her child. In the present, she betrayed her husband to his death to save herself and her child.
Crowhaven Farm is the type of movie that could be effectively remade today because there is still meat on the bone. Give it more room to breathe, an Ari Aster-like director and an A-list actress, and you could have a modern Rosemary’s Baby.
Hollywood is not that smart, though. Their deal with the devil didn’t include getting brains…
