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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

No one going into a low budget film like this should expect a masterpiece, but reading the reviews, I was prepared for something far less competent than this movie about an intergenerational curse as the product of a witch burning (think Mario Bava's Black Sunday but set in modern day - well, 1971 - Staten Island).You sort of expect barely-good-enough performances and barely competent direction with something like this, but several things really threw me for a loop:First is the performance of the smoking hot Shelby Leverington, the revengeful protagonist of the movie. Her performance here exceeds expectations which adds to the surreal quality of the film generally. I should also mention, in particular, the performance of Norman Parker as Jake, who matches her excellently and believably.The other thing is the unsettling yet appealing left-field prog-psych soundtrack which was notable enough that it kept drawing my attention.There are no big twists here and the plot is hardly original, but the direction is competent and it exceeds a lot of other films with this sort of subject matter from that time period.I don't agree with the negative reviews of this film. Compared to all of the other occult horror of the period, this one stands up a lot better than most of the rest, avoiding exploitation elements in favor of something a little more subtle. There's some blood and some sex, but it is muted and serves the plot.This is not Citizen Kane. You have to suspend a few critical faculties for this. But for what it is, you can do a whole lot worse.Also: if any woman ever starts telling you a story about the Southern Tribes, my suggestion is to head for the exit immediately.

DEATH BY INVITATION is very similar in tone to that other indie feature of the era, MARK OF THE WITCH, albeit not as good. The reason for that is that the budget is even smaller. Things start off with a historical witch-burning before we move to the then-current day, where a mysterious young woman is possessed by the spirit of a vengeful witch and wreaks havoc by murdering the descendants of the townsfolk responsible for the immolation. Being an independent feature, this is a story which is very dragged out and static, mostly consisting of just two or three characters conversing in a small room. There's a little atmosphere which comes from the creepy soundtrack, although occasionally a blare of library music takes you out of the zone. Where this film does hit home is in the acting of Shelby Leverington, in her debut performance. She hits just the right creepy note and is surprisingly powerful; a shame that the rest is merely so-so.

Laughably inept movie about a witch's hippie descendant named Lise (Shelby Leverington) who takes revenge on the descendants of those who burned her ancestor at the stake. I've seen this plot done before and better. Terribly directed, edited, acted, written...you name it, this movie sucks at it. Does have some merit as an unintentional comedy, however. My favorite scene is Lise's monologue where she tells this sad sack Roger about how women used to run things and then this one big guy took over and the men started running things so the women killed the big guy and ate him. When she was done with her long-winded story, she seductively says "Hand me the ashtray, Roger." It was supposed to be erotic or something, I guess, but it just made me burst out laughing. This is strictly amateur hour stuff, so avoid unless you're into that sort of thing.

Back when I was involved in the film industry circa 1980 I used to see many unreleased films, and they often had common defects accounting for their being shelved. Though it actually achieved a release in 1971, DEATH BY INVITATION displays similar problems.It's a case of poor execution -the standard horror theme of centuries-old-curse leading to lame-duck revenge is trotted out, but delivered so crudely as to have no effect on the viewer. Films operate through tension and release, and when it's all flat (like this baby) or all tension/no release (as in the current sci-fi stinker NEVER LET ME GO) the viewer is left high & dry.After a truly clumsy opening sequence set in times supposed to suggest the Salem Witch Trials (but on a zero budget), film settles into a rather tedious family drama set in modern Staten Island. It's a corny format of an outsider (striking looking Shelby Leverington, whose career as a character actress managed to overlook this unfortunate debut assignment) preying on a family. Script does a poor job of establishing her relationship, and the subsequent grisly murders are very poorly done, offering little meat for a genre fan to nibble upon.It devolves into a shaggy dog exercise, not unlike what one would expect if the Coen Bros. made a send-up of low-budget horror films, including the usual cryptic elements. The story is neither compelling nor suspenseful, at best creating a sense of dread. The musical score tries to whip up some tension, but one can't help but gravitate towards a "who cares?" position. I saw THE CURSE OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN and CARNIVAL OF BLOOD from the same producer/distributor at drive-ins back in the '70s, but never saw this one get booked. It would have to be shown early in the evening when the sun was still out, because if it was shown late in the program no one would have stayed to the end.And the climax is very clumsily edited, with a terrible fight sequence and poor sound. As with many films that never made it out of the lab, one feels that the needed re-shoots or coverage of a "scene missing" were not provided for in the low budget.Telling is a pointless sequence where our hero wanders around an office building, given the runaround by secretaries, and finally arrives at patriarch Vroot's office only to have their inane conversation drowned out by loud Muzak that Vroot proudly has piped in. This idiotic footage goes on & on and gives one the impression that the director had strayed off the set.Almost as bad is a preposterous gimmick wherein the detective investigating the family's murders is written to be not merely incompetent but aggressively stupid, so as to prevent the culprit from getting caught, and to keep the story's pot boiling. Even Something Weird's resident presenter Frank Henenlotter cannot alibi this lousy development, which is even worse than some of the outlandishness he tries to slip into his own horror films. Ironically, I did see director Ken Friedman's next film, MADE IN U.S.A., in first run in 1987 and enjoyed it immensely. He never got a directing career going, but did write a number of very entertaining screenplays like MR. BILLION and WHITE LINE FEVER. So chalk this misfire of a supernatural effort up to lack of experience.