Beatrice Manley
A country family of five takes in cousin Julia, whose parents recently perished in a car crash. Julia extends her influence over the family and those around them, fooling all except for Rachel, the teenaged girl who knows her cousin is up to no good. This TV horror movie had the title "Stranger in Our House" when it was originally released by NBC on Halloween night in 1978. When released on VHS in the late 1980s, the title was changed to "Summer of Fear", which is the title of the Lois Duncan book on which it is based.
Carol Turner, a frazzled, airheaded mother of two, driving alone from Phoenix to Denver, where her son has been hospitalized, witnesses the shooting of a highway patrolman by a psychopath in a yellow Mustang. Now he is relentlessly pursuing her in order to eliminate the only witness.
A social worker who recently lost her husband investigates the strange Wadsworth family. The Wadsworths might not seem too unusual to hear about them at first - consisting of the mother, two grown daughters and the diaper-clad, bottle-sucking baby. The problem is, the baby is twenty-one years old.
Five young women vacation together at a resort on an isolated island. They are the resort's only customers and, aside from the boat captain who brought them here and the resort's handyman, Wylie, the island's only inhabitants. When one of the women is found dead, the others begin to fear the captain, who's been acting strangely. Wylie and the captain argue over the identity of the murderer, each accusing the other, and a fight erupts. Alarmed, the women attempt to leave the island, but the boat -- their only means of escape -- explodes and sinks before they can board it. Then Wylie comes to their aid, claiming to have killed the boat captain in self-defense and telling the women they're safe. But are they?
