First, this is a feast of Americana, located largely in Kansas, and at times reminiscent of John Ford, with Ellen Burstyn talking to a tombstone, Eva Le Gallienne supplying the ham, and Richard Farnsworth, as a grizzled Last Chance Gas proprietor, softly singing "Come-a-ti-yi-yippie-yippie-yay" and showing off his two-headed snake for a dime. Beyond that, it's a remarkably serious and unhokey treatment of occult power. A bit more sensationalism and showmanship, in fact, could have been dared without endangering the seriousness (as the very surprising and pleasing ending shows), and the conflict with science and old-time religion could have been a bit more sharply drawn. Still, there is more sense of wonder and excitement in stopping a nosebleed or getting a paralyzed toe to twitch than there is in all the psychic fireworks of, say, The Fury or Scanners, both of which are dedicated to starting, not stopping, nosebleeds. And there is one really heart-stopping moment, with possible overtones of exorcism and vampirism, when the pure love and compassion of the free-lance healer are locked in mortal combat with a malady more twisted, more awful, more evil than anything she has had to wrestle with before -- a moment much more exciting than a roughly comparable one from cinema history where Jason Miller is sitting atop Linda Blair, punching her in the face, and yelling, "Take me!" With Sam Shepard; written by Lewis John Carlino; directed by Daniel Petrie. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
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