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heelmcmahon · 3 years

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Ring Games ♛ Adam Cole

fem!reader x adam cole

18+ readers

warnings: just smut lol

word count: 3337

- The daughter of Shawn Michaels, Y/N, is a wrestler in NXT. She currently feuds with NXT women's champion, Shayna Baszler in a storyline. Her good friend, Finn Balor is the #1 contender for the NXT championship, currently held by Adam Cole. A mixed tag match has been set up for NXT Takeover: Atlanta, winner takes all, no DQ with both titles on the line.

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You do your final stretches before having to walk down the ramp to the ring. This would be the biggest match of your WWE career thus far. You and your tag partner for the night, Finn Balor were hoping to win your respective titles in a hard fought match in the main event. This would be his 3rd title reign and your 2nd. You previously held the title for 89 days before losing it to Shayna Baszler in a ladder match. Your rematch had finally arrived.

You feel a hand on your shoulder whilst shaking off any nerves you may have. You turn your head to see one of your opponents for the night, Adam Cole. Adam was never really a friendly guy to you. He loved to tease you and make sarcastic jokes and snarky comments. There wasn't really any bad blood, he's just an annoying guy to be around. Also, everyone knew how much of a flirt he was. You couldn't help but feel like there was some sort of tension between the two of you. He knew it too. You two are always flirting with each other, you more subtle than him. Your most common form of flirtatiousness was nicknames.

"Hey, Michaels. Don't wine too much when you come up short tonight, it's not easy facing a guy like Adam Cole Bay Bay.", he says. Your ring name is Melody Michaels, after your dad, the Heartbreak Kid, Shawn Michaels. It was hard at first to make a name for yourself in this business without being compared to your dad all the time, but soon you realized you could embrace it and be your own person at the same time. You take a lot of inspiration from him with your moveset. Hopefully tonight will really take your career to the next level.

"Sure, Cole. I'll do my best, just for you." you replied back with a fake smile so he clearly knew you were being sarcastic.

"This outfit you've put together tonight is really something different. I've never seen you wear something like it." He's clearly checking you out since you catch his eyes on your thighs. He was right though. Tonight you had new gear made for the special occasion of main eventing Takeover. You wear a dark purple set. It consists of a top that cuts off a little bit below your boobs with thick straps that cross across your back like an X. The top is sparkly and is lined with rhinestones. The bottoms are high waisted and reach just under your butt. They are super tight and lift a little above your thighs on the sides. They are also coated in glitter and lined with rhinestones. You wear your normal black fishnet tights, black knee pads, and your wrestling boots. You also decide to do your makeup a little heavier than usual. Nothing too extreme but still flawless and noticeable. You're also wearing your signature black leather jacket with a broken heart on the back to carry the legacy of your father. Your hair is curled and hangs low to the middle of your back.

"Yeah well I want to look good when Finn and I win our titles back". You don't look at him when you respond; you stay focussed on your warmup.

"Whatever you say, babe. I'll see you in the ring then." He walks past you but not before sending a wink your way. You simply roll your eyes and dismiss it.

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"And his tag team partner, from Chandler, Arizona: Melody Michaels!" The crowd roars as your name is announced and theme song plays. Finn stands by the end of the ramp waiting for you. You share a quick look, nod to each other, and then proceed to the ring. Shayna and Adam stand in the back corner of the ring eyeing you down. Finn walks up the stairs and holds the ropes open for you. You step in and walk with confidence to the front of the ring, facing the hard camera. You hold your arms out and yell words to pump up you and the crowd. You do the same for the right side of the ring and then turn your back to the camera to acknowledge the fans behind you. Finn waits in the ring for you to finish your entrance while Shayna looks around at the crowd with an annoyed face as they chant your name. Adam however can't keep his eyes off you. He has a sly smirk on his face. Your music dies down and you go stand next to Finn, across from Adam and Shayna.

"The following contest is a Mixed Gender Tag Team Winner Take All Extreme Rules Match! And it is for the NXT Women's Championship and the NXT Championship! Introducing first: the challengers. Melody Michaels and Finn Balor!

You and Finn step forward and acknowledge the fans cheering for you. You turn your head to yell in your opponents faces. "Better say goodbye to your title reigns because those championships are coming back to where they belong." Shayna simply rolls her eyes but Adam responds. "Not a chance, babe. Now backup and let the champs get introduced." He says.

You take a step back and think about his words. He is such a flirty jerk, but you couldn't help but feel butterflies when he called you babe this time around.

When Alicia Taylor introduces Adam and Shayna, you watch Adam take a few steps forward and yell at the crowd. Shayna does her signature "Queen of Spades" pose. They turn back around and hold their titles up to the ref. Adam sends you another quick wink, but before you can process it, the bell is rung.

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You're about 15 minutes into the match. Finn and Adam lay outside the ring trying to regain some strength after they both went through tables. You and Shayna fight in the ring. You hit her with a fisherman suplex and go for the pin. She kicks out at 2. Before she can get back up, you grab her and put her in her own submission, the Kirifouda Clutch. She is slowly fading, but she reversed it and somehow gets your shoulders pinned to the mat. You also kick out at 2. You both get back to your feet. She charges at you and you use her momentum to send her over the top rope. Shayna now stands on the apron. You run to the ropes to gain momentum and spear her through the middle rope. She hits the floor hard. You throw your hands up and taunt to the crowd. However, when you turn back around, Adam Cole stands in the ring.

"What is it, Cole? Are you gonna punch me?" You ask in a fake pouty voice with a puppy dog lip. You hold your hands around your back in an innocent way.

"I could never hit you, babe. You know that." he says looking down at you.

You find a wave of confidence come over you as the crowd cheers. You respond, "Well, what is it that you want, handsome?" Your hand now rest on Adam's bare chest as you get a little closer to him. His face shows that he is surprised by the nickname you've given him.

"Come on now, Michaels, you know what I want." He takes a step closer to you with a seductive look on his face. Now it's his turn to place his hands on your body. He rests them low on your waist.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Finn start to make it to his feet again. You play along with Adam while you see Finn slide into the ring. You also take a step closer to Adam and lift your head up a bit (if it's even possible to get closer). Your mouths are just inches away from touching.

"I'm not sure I do, Cole. But I do know one thing, maybe you should turn around."

He looks confused as he turns around. You get out of the way so Finn can hit Adam with a sling blade. Adam lays on the ground and you look down at him, "Sorry, handsome, I guess that's just what happens when you aren't paying attention." You send him a wink.

Finally, Finn Balor climbs to the top rope and hits Adam with the Coup de Grace. Before he goes for the pin, you see Shayna get back in the ring. With your quick thinking, you tune up the band and kick her square in the face with some Sweet Chin Music. You and Finn both go for the cover on your opponents.

3! The bell rings.

"Here are your winners, and new NXT Women's Champion and NXT Champion: Melody Michaels and Finn Balor!"

The crowd is going crazy. You pull Finn in for a hug and then clink your titles together in a celebratory fashion. Shayna looks beyond pissed. Adam on the other hand, has a look of pure anger, but yet a look of lust is written on his face. You blow him a kiss and display a smirk as you and Finn exit the ring. You walk up the ramp with your backs to the titantron as Adam Cole is still staring you down.

You and Finn walk through the curtain and arrive backstage. You two are greeted with hugs, congratulations, water bottles, and towels. You place your titles down on a road case.

"I had such a great time tagging with you tonight, Y/N", Finn says, "Hopefully we'll get another mixed tag match soon."

"I couldn't agree more, Finn! You seriously killed it out there. I'll see you tomorrow for lunch?" you say.

"You know it. See ya then, Y/N". He gives you a long hug and walks towards the men's locker room.

It isn't long before Adam and Shayna come through the curtain. Shayna shakes your hand and you two have a quick and casual conversation about the match and working together. Then, Adam walks your way. With no warning at all, he grabs your hand pulls you out of gorilla. He drags you through the halls of the arena until you reach his private locker room that he shares with the rest of the Undisputed Era. The room is empty since the Kyle, Bobby, and Roddy left after their matches earlier in the show.

Adam pulls you into the room and quickly shuts the door. He wastes no time before pushing you up against the wall. His left hand is placed on your lower back, pulling you close to him so your lower halves are touching. His right hand is next to your head, resting on the wall. Your faces are extremely close together, but there is still a few inches in between you.

"What the hell was that out there? Huh? Explain to me what that was all about?" Adam says, clearly extremely annoyed.

You decide to act dumb and play innocent. "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about, babe." You stare into his blazing blue eyes.

"Don't play dumb with me, Y/N. You distracted me in the ring and I lost my title because of it. So, now you're gonna pay for it." Adam has an intense and serious look on his face but his eyes long with lust.

You reply to him, your faces now closer than ever. Your hands roam Adam's chest and slide over every part of his abs, quickly looking down at them. "Oh? I'm gonna pay for it? How so?" You look up at him again.

"We are going back to my hotel room and I'm gonna fuck you into the mattress until you scream my name loud for everyone to hear." He says.

You answer simply. "I'll meet you at your car in 10." Your hands slide down Adam's arms and you pull away from him, exiting the room, but not before winking at him for the millionth time tonight.

You walk to the women's locker room. You strip out of your sweaty ring gear and put on your casual everyday clothes. You wear a pair of leggings, a cropped yellow top, with white shoes. You pair it with your WWE PC jacket since it is a bit chilly tonight. You grab your large bag and carry it out to the parking lot.

The walk to Adam's car was much easier than you thought it would be. You spot him leaning on the driver door. He looks up from his phone and sees you coming, so he hops into the driver's seat.

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The car ride back to the hotel was only about 4 minutes. It was silent, but not awkward. You could not wait to get inside and let Adam see and touch every part of your body.

When Adam pulls up to the hotel, you both grab all of your items, walk in, and check in. You walk up to a desk and Adam talks to the lady at the desk next to you. Somehow he finishes checking in before you and walks over to the desk you're being helped at.

"You can just cancel her room", he tells the front desk lady helping you, "she's gonna stay with me tonight," he tell the woman. You shoot him a very knowing look. The front desk lady looks at you and says, "You don't need this room?". You look up at Adam and he's looking down at you. His face looks so serious and stern. He simply states to you, "You don't need that room, Y/N." You look back to the lady at the desk and say, "Sorry, I won't be needing a room tonight." She looks down at her computer screen pushing some buttons. Before she gets the chance to look back up, you are pulled by the arm to the nearest elevator.

Before you can even say one word to Adam about that whole front desk show he just put on, his lips are planted on yours. You hear a ding, signaling that the elevator doors are closing.

With no thinking at all, you kiss him back. Your back is pressed to a wall in the elevator. Adam's hands are set low on your back. You have one on his chest and one in his hair. The kiss is so passionate and full of desire. You both want more. His tongue swipes across your bottom lip. You allow him to deepen the kiss. When he does, a soft sound escapes your lips. This makes Adam crazy. He removes his left hand and places it on your butt. Eventually, his hand rises from your butt to your waist. He plays with the hem of your cropped tank top signaling that he wants it off. Before the kiss can escalate anymore, the elevator doors open. Both of you break the kiss, quickly gather your bags, and move as fast as you can to Adam's hotel room, which apparently you were staying in tonight.

Adam opens the door and you both enter. He pulls you to the bed and pushes you to sit on the edge of the bed. He slowly crawls over you, his hand roaming your body the whole time. Finally, Adam says something, "You're gonna do whatever I say. The only thing I want to hear coming from your mouth is my name. Do you understand?" His voice is very stern. You nod with fake innocence written all over your face, excited for what's to come.

"Good girl." Adam's mouth attacks yours again. His hair drapes over your face like a curtain. His hand reaches for your shirt again. This time, he pulls it off your body. Adam breaks the kiss to pull your leggings and panties off in one go, as you remove your bra. Adam stands up and removes his clothing as well. When he lays back down, you climb on top.

Another strong and sloppy kiss begins. This time Adam shows dominance as he attacks your neck and shoulders instead of your mouth. You let moans escape your mouth. Your fingers are laced in Adam's long hair. Shortly later, Adam gives you a command. "On your back, now."

You remove yourself from Adam's grasp and lay down on the bed. Adam takes in the sight of your naked body. "Damn, babe. I've been waiting for this moment for so long" Adam says. You let out a slight giggle.

Next, Adam gives you no warning and slide one finger deep into your soaking wet pussy. You groan loudly, not expecting the sudden pleasure. Adam seems satisfied with your reaction. He slides in another finger, pumping in out out. Now you're really a moaning mess. Adam takes your vocalness as a sign to add another finger. He slides in and out of your body at a rapid pace. You yell out, "Oh god! Adam! Please!" When Adam feels that you are getting close to your climax, he pulls his fingers out of you. "Good girls get to come, you cost me my title. This isn't going to be easy for you, babe." Adam says to you. You try to catch your breath as ecstasy almost washes over you. You close your legs and wine a bit, not getting the full feeling of overwhelming pleasure.

Adam harshly opens your legs back up. Once again with no warning at all, he slams his cock into you. Now you really scream out. Feeling embarrassed, you drape your arm over your moth in an attempt to keep quiet. Adam notices this and pins your arms on the bed on each side of your head. "Not today, babe, I want you to scream my name so everyone in the building knows who's giving you the best sex of your life."

And with that, Adam picks up the pace. He slams into your body over and over and over, watching you every step of the way. Skin slapping and the bed creaking fills the room. The sounds that escape your mouth make Adam thrust even harder. Suddenly, he rams hard into your g-spot.

"Oh my fucking god! Adam! Don't stop! Oh god!" You moan in pleasure.

"That's right, baby, yell my name. Scream it." Adam lowly groans out.

"Adam, I'm gonna come," you say.

"Not until I hear you screaming my name." Adam says. He thrusts even harder than before, slamming every time directly into your g-spot. Except now, his thumbs plays around with your clit.

"Adam! Adam! Oh my fuck- Adam! Shit!" You finally scream out. Your vision is quickly taken away as your eyes are tightly shut. The ecstasy and pleasure washing over you right now in this moment is unlike any other sex you've had before.

Adam finally allows you to release, "That's right, baby, fuckin' scream it." He releases shortly after into your pussy. You both ride out your orgasms as Adam thrusts slowly and deeply into your body.

Adam lays on the bed next to you as you both catch your breath.

"Fucking shit, Adam," you say.

He laughs quietly and replies, "I hope you're ready for round 2, tonight isn't gonna be easy for you."

And with that, the rest of the night was spent fucking until daylight. As the night went on, Adam became more and more aggressive. You seriously didn't know if you would be able to walk at all tomorrow. But that's tomorrow's problem, right now you're just focussed on Adam... and will be all night.

#adamcole #adam cole x reader #adamcolewwe #adamcoleroh #adamcolesmut #wwesmut #adam cole imagine #imagines #wwe fanfiction #wwe imagine #wrestling #wrestling imagine

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the-master-cylinder · 4 years

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SUMMARY Jessica (Zohra Lampert) has been released from a mental institution to the care of her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman), who has given up his job as string bassist for the New York Philharmonic and purchased a rundown farmhouse on an island in upstate New York. When Jessica, Duncan, and their hippie friend Woody (Kevin O’Connor) arrive, they are surprised to find a mysterious drifter, Emily (Mariclare Costello), already living there. When Emily offers to move on, Jessica invites her to dine with them and stay the night.

The following day, Jessica, seeing how attracted Woody is to Emily, asks Duncan to invite her to stay indefinitely. Jessica begins hearing voices and sees a mysterious young blonde woman (Gretchen Corbett) looking at her from a distance before disappearing. Later, Jessica is grabbed by someone under the water in the cove while she is swimming. Jessica is afraid to talk about these things with Duncan or Woody, for fear that they will think she is relapsing. She also becomes aware that Duncan seems to be attracted to Emily, and that the men in the nearby town, all of whom are bandaged in some way, are hostile towards them.

Duncan and Jessica decide to sell antiques found in the house at a local shop, one of which is a silver-framed portrait of the house’s former owners, the Bishop family—father, mother, and daughter Abigail. The antique dealer, Sam Dorker (Alan Manson), tells them the story of how Abigail drowned in 1880 just before her wedding day. Legend claims that she is still alive, roving the island as a vampire. Jessica finds the story fascinating, but Duncan, afraid that hearing about such things will upset his wife, cuts Dorker short. Later, as Jessica prepares to make a headstone rubbing on Abigail Bishop’s grave, she notices the blonde woman beckoning her to follow. The woman leads Jessica to a cliff, at the bottom of which lies Dorker’s bloodied body. By the time Jessica finds Duncan, however, the body is gone. Jessica and Duncan spot the woman standing on the cliff above them, causing Duncan to give chase. When the woman is caught and questioned by the couple, she remains silent and quickly flees when Emily approaches.

That night, Duncan tells Jessica that she needs to return to New York to resume her psychiatric treatment. Jessica forces him to sleep on the couch, where he is seduced by Emily. The next day, Jessica finds the portrait of the Bishop family, which she and Duncan had sold to Dorker the previous day, back in the attic; she observes that Abigail Bishop, as seen on the photo, bears a striking resemblance to Emily. Jessica agrees to go with Emily to swim in the cove. While swimming, Emily vanishes from sight; Jessica hears Emily’s voice in her head and watches as Emily emerges from the lake in a wedding gown. Emily attempts to bite her neck, but Jessica flees, locking herself in her bedroom in the house. Hours pass and Jessica leaves to hitch a ride into town. Woody, who has been working in the orchard, returns to the house, where Emily bites his neck.

When Jessica gets into town, she sees Duncan’s car and asks about his whereabouts, but no one will speak to her; she then encounters Sam Dorker, and terrified, runs back to the house. She collapses in the orchard and later is found by Duncan, who takes her home. In their bedroom, the couple go to lie down; Jessica notices a cut on Duncan’s neck, and Emily then enters the room brandishing a knife, with the townsmen following behind her. Jessica flees the house, knocking over Duncan’s bass case, which contains the corpse of the mute woman.

Jessica runs through the orchard and comes across Woody’s corpse, his throat slashed. At daybreak, Jessica makes it to the ferry and tries to board, but the ferryman refuses to let her on. She jumps into a nearby rowboat and paddles out into the lake. When a hand reaches into the boat from the water, she stabs the person in the back several times with a pole hook. As the body floats away, she sees that it is Duncan. From the shore, Emily and the townsmen watch her.

DEVELOPMENT/PRODUCTION It all began with a father-and-son team, Charles Moss Sr. and Jr., who owned the Criterion, one of the top movie houses in New York, along with a chain of other East Coast theaters. The Mosses wanted to make their own film, and hired Lee Kalcheim to script it. Kalcheim had been writing for television since 1965, working on the likes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Paper Chase, All in the Family and M*A*S*H. The original idea was to do a send up of horror films, which was a natural for Kalcheim given his comedy background, and the fact that he was not a fan of the genre—“I find them slightly silly,” he says.

Kalcheim, who wrote the script in the Moss offices, lived in Connecticut, not far from where Jessica eventually filmed, and he incorporated many locales that were close to him, including coves in front of his home and a ferry that was within walking distance. “The ferryboat was at the end of the road that I lived on, and the orchard was right up the street,” he recalls.

Jessica would undergo plenty of changes in the transition from horror/comedy to a genuine scare film, but as Kalcheim notes, “The situations stayed—the people showing up at the house, the kind of weirdness of the place.” In his original script, a monster lived in the coves. “It was during the Vietnam War, so you had all these hippies, which is still part of the film. And I believe the monster was killed when the lead character rode a motorcycle that had an American flag with a point on the end of it, and he rammed it through the monster.”

Then director John Hancock, and a more serious approach to the material, came in. Hancock, a native of Kansas City, was discovered by William Wyler’s daughter, a development executive for the legendary producer Joseph E. Levine. She saw an Academy Award-nominated short he made in 1970 called Sticky My Fingers…Fleet My Feet and got a number of people to see it including the Mosses, who immediately considered Hancock to direct their project. “The script I was given was kind of a parody of a horror film,” Hancock confirms, “and I tried to make it a genuinely scary movie. I attempted to make it as real as possible.”

Hancock grew up on a fruit farm, which he incorporated into the film, and applied the memories and equipment to horrific ends, like a crop sprayer whose poison kills humans as well as insects. “All that personal material, it’s like a child’s ghostly visit to a farm with a sprayer that poisons you,” Hancock says. “That must have been how I felt as a kid going to my grandparents’ farm, and that made Jessica unlike other scary movies. It was a very personal picture.”

His father was a bass player, and in the film one of the characters plays a huge upright bass. Hancock’s college roommate also felt that the film’s redheaded vampire, Emily (played by Mariclaire Costello), bore some family resemblance. Recalls the director, “He said, ‘If you don’t think that redhead is your mother, you’re crazy!’ I wasn’t conscious of it, but he claimed it was!”

Hancock, who had never shot a fright flick before, worked closely with the Mosses and incorporated their suggestions while he rewrote the script. “They wanted a seance. Why? ‘Well, because people like them.’ They wanted a little girl running around in a gauzy white (shroud), “because it will be scary.’ They had big input into this film, and a very strong sense of what audiences liked. They also had a good sense of what scenes make the audiences go get candy, and I tried to avoid those!”

As Hancock wrote the script, “I learned that indeed the things that scare you in writing them will scare an audience. Locations that scare you when you’re scouting them will scare an audience. I learned to trust in that sense. When I first looked at the mansion where we shot the film, there was a hallway upstairs with a lot of doors in it, and I got kind of a chill. I thought, ‘Well, this is a scary location,’ and indeed it was. All those doors, somebody could come out of any one of them.”

In one scene, Jessica flees into the house and locks herself in her room. As she cowers in fright, papers she posted on the wall flap loudly in the wind, and her inner voices whisper through the walls. “As I was writing that, I got chills, and I was pleased that it was scary to an audience too,” Hancock says.

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Zohra Lampert, who plays Jessica, recalls meeting Hancock backstage when she was performing in Mother Courage with Anne Bancroft at Broadway’s Martin Beck Theater. He approached her about the role, “and I accepted, trusting his judgment,” she says. “I have great fondness for John Hancock, and enjoyed working with him very much.”

“I had seen Zohra in several plays and dated her briefly,” Hancock adds. “I thought she’d be good for the role and vulnerable, easily frightened. A good screamer. The ladies in these films have to be able to scream!” To prepare for the part, Lampert worked with her lifelong teacher, Mira Rostova, as did Costello; Rostova’s other students have included Alec Baldwin, Montgomery Clift and Roddy McDowall.

Practically everyone who worked on Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was a novice to the horror genre, and Hancock bought a 16mm projector and rented a number of Hitchcock films to prepare for the shoot. Jessica has often been compared to the cult chiller Carnival of Souls, which Hancock and Kalcheim both claim they haven’t seen. “I’m not even sure I’d seen Night of the Living Dead by then,” Kalcheim says, referring to another genre classic that Jessica has been compared to.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death opens and closes with the same scene, which was filmed off a pier. Against a beautifully shot sunset, Jessica sits in a boat with her back to the camera as she slowly drifts out into a river and we hear her thoughts in voiceover: “I sit here and I can’t believe that it happened. And yet, I have to believe it. Dreams or nightmares, madness or sanity, I don’t know which is which.” Jessica has been in a mental hospital for six months, and her husband is hoping some time on a farm in upstate New York will do her some good.

“For the first time in months I’m free,” her narration tells us. “Forget the doctors. Forget that place. I’m OK now. We’ll start over.” But she starts seeing and hearing things she’s not sure are real. Voices echo in her head, asking, “Jessica, why have you come here?” But she tells herself, “Act normal,” so as not to alarm her husband.

Arriving at the farmhouse, they discover the hippie girl Emily, who was living there previously, thinking the house was abandoned-or so she says. Soon they learn the truth: Emily drowned in the cove in 1880. As the townsfolk tell the tale, her body was never recovered, and she’s now a vampire roaming the countryside.

Hancock wanted to make Let’s Scare Jessica to Death a variation on The Turn of the Screw where you’re not sure if the heroine is truly crazy or if the horror is really happening. Jessica’s husband certainly has his doubts as to whether his wife’s condition has improved, or if she’s relapsing. “Jess? I think we should go back to New York for a while.” he tells her. “You can see your doctor.” He pauses to consider what he’s saying. “If you want.” As she approached her performance, Lampert says, “I believe Jessica was more dubious about her husband’s fidelity, as well as his belief in her, than anything else.”

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was shot in Old Saybrook and East Haddon, Connecticut. The main house where most of the central action takes place was called the Dickinson Mansion, located in the town of Essex. The first night the film company went to the house being used for exteriors, an incredible fog had rolled in which gave the area a spooky haze that was used throughout the movie. “We got lucky with that,” says Hancock. “It happened to be there when it was time to shoot.”

Primarily a stage director, Hancock was a bit uncertain once he started making his first feature. “I didn’t have any idea what I was doing!” he laughs. “I tended to work quite openly with actors in the theater. I tried to free them up, get them to be real, full and expressive, and limiting that to what a camera sees was something I found frustrating. It was a little hard to accept that indeed I did have to block them through the camera; I couldn’t just have the scene be good, then take a picture. Then I realized it wouldn’t kill off their spontaneity entirely, and accepted to some degree that you lose a little bit of that. A lot of good cameramen will free up actors from marks for that very reason.”

The director recalls that the first cinematographer on Let’s Scare Jessica to Death kept regarding him like he was incompetent. “So I fired him after the first week, and got one who didn’t look at me like that!” That cameraman was Bob Baldwin, who went on to shoot I Drink Your Blood (1970) director David Durston, The Exterminator (1980) and The Soldier for James Glickenhaus and Frankenhooker and Basket Case 2 for Frank Henenlotter. Before Jessica, Baldwin had previously lensed a number of black-and-white stag films in 35mm. “I believe Jessica was one of the first pictures I shot that was not a nudie,” Baldwin says.

Unlike Hancock, the DP didn’t watch any horror films for inspiration before the shoot. As he recalls, they went up to Connecticut right away, and there wasn’t much time to prep. While the first cameraman on Jessica didn’t think Hancock knew what he was doing, Baldwin felt the situation was a big step up from his previous projects.

“The cameraman is really the director on those nudies, because you’re movin’ the camera and doin’ the shots, and all the director cares about is gettin’ the shot, and gettin’ out of there to return the equipment because they’ve only got it for the weekend,” Baldwin says. “Jessica was probably the first really good organization I worked with; it wasn’t like people grasping. When you start, you know when you have a director who knows what he’s doing. That to me was a revelation, I guess !”

Lampert especially enjoyed working with Baldwin, who was “very sensitive to the performer,” she says. “We understood each other and worked in tandem.” Baldwin replies, “I always sort of pride myself on that. I always had a habit of going into makeup and just sitting and schmoozing with the actors before the day started. I spent time with Zohra in the rehearsals, and I was always around. You get so you kind of hold their hand or whatever it takes for them to do their thing.

“Zohra was a good actress,” Baldwin continues. “I felt she had plenty of screen presence. She spent a lot of time developing that character. Some actors can finish a scene and then be back to their regular selves, joking around, then on take two they’re right back into the role. But she’d get into character and spend the day there.”

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death gave Baldwin the opportunity to experiment with camera tricks. One special effect he pulled off was making the ghostly apparition of Emily appear and disappear in the lake, which he accomplished with a Polaroid filter that worked like a Venetian blind. When the filter was rotated one way, you could see the actress floating underneath, but when it was turned another way, only the reflecting glare of the water was visible. “We did a lot of tricks that they do with computers today,” Baldwin notes. “Sometimes I think that the computer is what made everybody lazy. We did a hell of a job for the money we had.”

The one memory that stands out for those who worked on Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was the weather, which made it difficult to film in the lake. “I remember we shot in October, so for all those scenes in the water, they were freezin’ their asses off!” says Kalcheim. “If you look at the leaves on the trees, you’ll see it was not conducive to swimming!” Not only was the water frigid, “Our legs were being nibbled on by fish!” says Hancock.

“The water was cold, I remember that part!” adds Baldwin. “And poor Mariclaire, she had to swim in that white gown with that white makeup.”

Director John Hancock Interview

John D. Hancock

WHAT WAS THE BEGINNING OF YOUR INVOLVEMENT WITH LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH? John Hancock: I’d made a short film on a grant from the AFI called Sticky My Fingers, Fleet My Fest that was about businessmen who play touch football in Central Park. It had received an Oscar nomination and had also been shown by CBS during half-time of their big Thanksgiving football game. That secured me a lot of attention and William Wyler’s daughter Kathy, saw it…. She then recommended me to the producers of Jessica, who were looking for a director. There was a very important chain of exhibitors known as B.S. Moss Enterprises who were run by a father-and-son team who were both named Charlie Moss.

DID YOU EVER CONSIDER RETAINING KALCHEIM ‘S TITLE: IT DRINKS HIPPIE BLOOD? John Hancock: No! Kalcheim later wrote comedies like MA’S H and specialized more in humour than horror Naturally, he delivered a script that read like a parody of a scary movie. It was a playful send-up of the horror genre and didn’t take itself seriously at all. From what I remember, it had some hippies moving out to an isolated house in the country who encounter a blood-drinking monster that lives in the water. That was the nugget of a good idea but Kalcheim ‘s whole approach to the story, the characters – and the monster – did not interest me very much beyond that. The Mosses then asked me if I wanted to do it, and I said, “Sure, but only if I can rewrite the script.” I made it eminently clear to them that did not want to do a satire of a horror picture. wanted to do a movie that was legitimately terrifying

KALCHEIM ADOPTED THE PSEUDONYM “NORMAN JONAS” AS HIS CO-WRITING CREDIT AFTER YOU REVISED HIS DRAFT, BUT WHY DID YOU INSIST ON CALLING YOURSELF “RALPH ROSE”? John Hancock: I believe Kalcheim used his fathers’ first name for his credit as I did with mine but, in retrospect, I probably made a mistake in using the pseudonym. The producers wanted certain things in the script like a séance and this mysterious girl dressed in white who appears to Jessica. These additions didn’t make much sense to me, but the Mosses felt they would be particularly enjoyable and scary. I trusted their instincts because they had a concrete experience of audiences; they knew what people liked and what they didn’t like and in that regard they certainly had an advantage over most studio executives If you are a seasoned exhibitor, you know what kinds of sequences will make audiences get up and go buy candy and what sequences will keep them glued firmly to their seats. So I inserted the things they asked for into the screenplay, thinking, “Well, they are probably smart so I do as they ask.” … I didn’t want to be deemed responsible for these things as a writer, but I was certainly willing to be held accountable for them as a director

HOW DID YOU APPROACH REWORKING THE STORY? John Hancock: My initial approach to rewriting Jessica was to introduce as much personal and autobiographical material into the film as I possibly could. So the location of the fruit farm, an apple farm, and the image of the crop sprayer spewing pesticide is very much a scene out of my own childhood, have very strong memories of my father arriving back home coated white with poison and I did a lot of spraying myself so that cozy rural milieu was incredibly familiar to me. My father also played the double bass like Jessica’s husband does in the film. That big, black, coffin-like bass case was very much a fixture of my youth. It was something that traveled back and forth with us from our house in Chicago out to our farm in Indiana because, being a musician, Dad would take his bass along so he could practice.

WHY WERE YOU COMPELLED TO INVEST THE FILM WITH SO MANY ASPECTS OF YOUR LIFE? John Hancock: I probably wanted to appropriate it make it something unique to me. I do think the feeling of being alone on the farm as a child certainly filtered into both the script and the film. I don’t know to what extent I specifically set out to do that, but it did make its presence felt. Jessica is a little like a child’s view of moving out to a farm: that feeling of wonder, curiosity and fear. 1 was very fond of our farm, but the pesticides, the loneliness, the graves and the idea that a lot of other people had actually died in the house where we were living – all of those things crawled out from my conscious and subconscious mind, and informed the movie. In scouting the film, I found several spooky locations that certainly scared me-interiors as well as exteriors. … I used an upstairs hallway in the house where Jessica and her companions are staying that had so many doors there was something quite disturbing about it: the idea that someone – or something – could suddenly come lurching out of the shadows at any moment and grab you. It was very unsettling. I think a couple of the most effective scenes in Jessica are filmed in that hallway

SOME CRITICS FEEL JESSICA EXTRACTS FROM CARNIVAL OF SOULS AND NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. WERE THOSE MOVIES IN ANY WAY INFLUENTIAL FOR YOU? John Hancock: It’s true that Carnival of Souls and Night of the Living Dead sometimes get mentioned in relation to Jessica, but I had not seen either film before making my picture. As a matter of fact, when I eventually saw Night of the Living Dead a few years later, I didn’t like it at all. Frankly, I found it crude and heavy-handed and I’m still not a fan of it. I don’t wish to offend or dismay anybody by saying that I certainly appreciate the fact that a lot of people consider that picture to be important and influential; I’m merely stating it was neither of those things for me. However, one film I did very much like and I had actually seen it before making Jessica – Was The Haunting. I thought that was a stunning movie and the idea of having a neurotic female as the lead character was an incredibly useful thing. It invited all kinds of underlying tenures, subtleties and developments to our story

SUCH AS THE USE OF AN UNRELIABLE NARRATOR John Hancock: Yes, and, of course, that was a literary device before it was a cinematic one. There is a recurring tradition in literature, in ghost stories and horror stories of the unreliable narrator. You don’t know if you can trust the observations and perceptions of the main protagonist and you begin to question everything you’ve come to learn about them. Is this really happening or is it all just a by-product of madness and delusion? loved The Turn of the Screw, the way that novel makes you question whether or not the supernatural events are actually occurring or if the heroine is crazy. I thought it would be interesting to have a central female character in Jessica that is recovering from the effects of a nervous breakdown. This fragile- and possibly dangerous – woman is struggling to hold it all together and her slack grip on reality is loosening further. So, there’s an apparent threat that she will relapse and be totally consumed by her illness and I thought that would be a fascinating element to play with.

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WERE YOU AMBIVALENT ABOUT THE GENRE AT THIS EARLY JUNCTURE OF YOUR CAREER? John Hancock: No, I’ve always liked horror films. But I was motivated to make Jessica the kind of horror film that I wanted to see, something that spoke to my fears. I was alarmed by the notion that you can’t defuse or defeat evil – it forever lives inside and all around us – so I worked that fear into the story. I actually scared myself one night when I was writing the script and that experience was revelatory to me. I didn’t think it would ever be possible to scare myself during the act of writing and concentrating, but it did induce the shivers in me. I was writing the script at night and, at that time, I lived on the Hudson River in an old Tory place called Sneden’s Landing That house and the surrounding neighborhood had a peculiar atmosphere and the shadows always seemed very thick and threatening. The air was almost pungent with a Revolutionary War feeling and you really found it easy to believe that ghosts were wandering around that area at night. It was perfect, as I found that unnerving atmosphere assisted in getting me into the proper frame of mind to create a horror movie.

ONE OF THE FILM’S MOST REMARKABLE MOMENTS OCCURS WHEN EMILY SINKS BENEATH THE LAKE IN A CONTEMPORARY BATHING COSTUME ONLY TO SULLENLY RE-EMERGE IN A SODDEN 19TH-CENTURY WEDDING DRESS. John Hancock: God, I don’t know where that idea came from. I do know that over the years a lot of people have told me they find that scene incredibly unsettling. That image just came to me suddenly one night as I was writing. Actually, that was the same night I told you about earlier when I got scared working on the script. It was that very sequence, and the one that directly follows it where Jessica runs inside the house, barricades herself in the bedroom and hears the voices whispering to her in the darkness…. But the sight of Emily rising out of the water as this dripping apparition in a wedding dress seemed a disturbing one to me for some reason. It’s just so unexpected and weird and potent. I immediately knew it would be very scary if I executed it right

DO YOU RECALL ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT SHOOTING THAT SEQUENCE? John Hancock: I can distinctly remember feeling glad that I was safely on the shore with the camera shooting Mariclare Costello emerging from the lake. I’d spent a lot of time filming with the actors in the cold November water and, frankly. I was thankful to be out of there! We also had to realize this creature that Jessica sees moving below the surface – and this was before animatronics and mechanical effects were common tools. We didn’t have the time or money to do anything complex. So, the morning before we shot that stuff, Charlie Moss and I worked this thing out in the swimming pool at our motel using a dummy with cement blocks at the bottom attached to various pulleys. We used the buoyancy of the puppet, pulling it up and down, and allowed the movement of the water to emphasise the swirling motion of the hair and the dress It was strangely disturbing to behold, actually.

ONE OF THE MOST QUIETLY DEVASTATING THINGS IN THE FILM IS THE USE OF WHISPERING VOICES ON THE SOUNDTRACK. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT? John Hancock: I first had the idea for the whispering voices that Jessica hears when I was writing the script, but that approach became far more elaborate during post-production. Since this brittle woman has only just been released from an asylum, I felt there was always the possibility that she might hear voices that this veiled matiness could somehow be roused by her surroundings and the people she meets. Of course, it may all be happening to Jessica for real and this evil entity is indeed out to get her. The auditory elements helped to embellish that uncertainty. So, the whisperings and mutterings on the soundtrack gradually evolved and got thicker and denser. They became this cacophony that is always questioning and disturbing and pleading with Jessica. I can remember sitting down and writing dialogue for the voices whilst we were in the editing room cutting the film. I had to figure out exactly what they were going to say, when they should speak and how they could contribute to the character and the narrative. It was important that the voices gave the ambiguous impression that this woman may be losing her sanity again.

SOME OBSERVERS HAVE COMMENTED IN RETROSPECT THAT JESSICA SERVES AS AN ELEGY FOR THE “BITTER DISAPPOINTMENTS OF THE LOVE GENERATION.” IS THAT HOW YOU READ IT? John Hancock: I was a little too old to be a hippie. Well, I was a hippie in a way, I guess, but maybe I considered myself to be something of an observer rather than an active participant in the whole Love thing…. I knew a lot of hippies back then and I can remember thinking. This is all just a tad. It will eventually pass and be replaced by Cynicism, Suspicion and despair. Just you wait and see!” And that pretty much came to pass throughout the 1970s. … You could already feel that negativity brewing when we were making Jessica, that things weren’t working out the way some of us had hoped and dreamed they would. There was Vietnam, all the civil unrest, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and the dream was over. So, was certainly aware that the ideals of the Love Generation were perishing. Maybe that was the significance of Jessica and her friends riding around in a hearse with the word “Love” painted on it. It may have symbolized that those hippie values were now dying or dead. But there was also something weirdly cosmic to me about the contrast present in that image, which spoke to the eternal mysteries of life and death.

FILMED WITHOUT A DISTRIBUTOR, JESSICA WAS THEN PICKED UP BY PARAMOUNT. John Hancock: Yeah, and Paramount demonstrated great faith in the film. They gave it a wide release – just a sensational release. That title, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, was Paramount’s title as we originally simply called it Jessica Frank Yablans, who was running Paramount at that point, came in with his team and gave the movie a more commercial-sounding title. I think the studio was right to do that as they really knew how to sell it. They knew how to generate the right heat and it was fascinating to observe them working to create the moody ad campaign for my movie. They did a great poster for it and wanted to emphasize certain aspects more prominently. It was like, “Okay, this is a horror film, so let’s make that fact clear to the audience. Let’s not be hesitant about this. Let’s eagerly embrace it and see how they respond.”

AND HOW DID AUDIENCES RESPOND? John Hancock: When the picture was first screened at The Criterion, they used all the old kind of ballyhoo: outside the theatre they had a horse-drawn hearse and coffins, and really created this wonderful, celebratory atmosphere. That energy was then carried inside the theatre when the audience sat down to watch the movie and they really had a great time with it. Seeing the picture play as well as it did that night was terrific. It was a packed house with the most vocal crowd I’ve ever been a part of They were about 70 percent black and were constantly yelling at the screen. … It’s obvious that Jessica is a cult film as it touches the hearts and minds of a certain kind of horror movie fan, for somebody who prefers their horror films to be a little more patient and profound -horror that has some emotional resonance and psychological truth to it. But I’m always surprised and delighted by the various reactions to Jessica and the different kinds of people it seems to attract…. A screening was recently organized in Chicago and there was one guy there that actually had his teeth filed to points so that he looked like a vampire. Naturally, he just loved the movie!

LASTLY, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT RUMORS OF A REMAKE? John Hancock: I’m not surprised there was talk of a remake. Nothing surprises me in this business anymore. There are so many remakes now it shows you the dearth of good ideas in Hollywood as studios just want to plunder their own past. I’d heard – and maybe this was ten years ago – that Robert Evans was making another picture using the same title. I don’t believe he was planning on doing a faithful remake with the same story and characters, but Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is clearly a good title. It’s a cult film so I imagine the attention would be somewhat modest. But it’s such a vivid title it would probably reawaken interest in my movie. I must confess, though, was delighted when Evans project didn’t happen. I mean, Jessica has aged so beautifully I liken the film to a fine wine: it’s actually gotten better in the barrel as the years have gone by.

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CONCLUSION/RELEASE/DISTRIBUTION The Let’s Scare Jessica to Death shoot ran about 24-25 days, with a budget around $1 million. Filmed without a distributor, Jessica was picked up by Paramount Pictures as the previously moribund studio was starting to come back strong with Love Story, with a subsequent string of blockbusters like The Godfather to come. Former Paramount advertising executive Charles Glenn recalls, “I remember them bringing in the picture, we saw it and I liked it a lot. I felt it was extraordinarily scary. There was something raw about it that for me added to the suspense.

Hancock was incredibly pleased that Jessica was picked up by a major, and he felt the studio did a great job promoting the film. “They did a wonderful campaign, a wonderful poster, and they had a lot of the old ballyhoo outside the theater when they screened it, with a horse-drawn hearse and coffins. Paramount picking it up and that kind of major release was more than I could have hoped for.”

The studio also coined the movie’s final title; Hancock recalls that it had just been called Jessica, while Glenn remembers that it was then called The Satanists. The director confirms that the moniker change was Paramount’s idea, “and boy, were they right.” An advertising firm that worked with Paramount sent in a list of possible titles, and Let’s Scare Jessica to Death immediately leaped out at Glenn. Paramount wanted to change the title “to something more intimate, as though we were doing it, or someone could do it or someone has done it to you,” Glenn explains. “Like when you were a kid, ‘Let’s scare Mary when she comes around the corner.’ It was absolutely more in keeping with the screenplay and the arc of the picture. The title itself helped put it into the marketplace. It made the movie appealing to exhibitors.”

Yet with Let’s Scare Jessica to Death having strayed far from its initial comedic origins, Kalcheim was not thrilled with the finished product. “Honestly, when I saw it, I wasn’t crazy about it,” he says. “I took my name off and put my father’s name [Norman Jonas] on.” If the film had remained a comedy, “I believe it would have worked well. Obviously back in 1971 I didn’t like it much, but it seems to have improved with age. I saw it recently with my kids and some of it holds up very well. John (who also took a pseudonym, Ralph Rose, for his writing credit) created a real mood. It had a very good cast. I knew Zohra Lampert from Second City, and she was a terrific actress.”

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death ultimately turned out to be a modest success for Paramount, and everyone involved was pleased with the film and the experience of making it. Hancock went on to direct the sports drama Bang the Drum Slowly, which featured a breakthrough role for Robert De Niro, for Paramount, yet he says, “My father liked Jessica better!”

CAST/CREW Directed John Hancock Produced Charles B. Moss Jr. William Badalato Written John Hancock Lee Kalcheim

Starring Zohra Lampert Barton Heyman Kevin O’Connor Gretchen Corbett Mariclare Costello

Music Orville Stoeber

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Fangoria#241 Fangoria#334 Rue Morgue#173

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) Retrospective SUMMARY Jessica (Zohra Lampert) has been released from a mental institution to the care of her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman), who has given up his job as string bassist for the New York Philharmonic and purchased a rundown farmhouse on an island in upstate New York.

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