This 1977 low-budgeter follows a dysfunctional family residing on an Arizona movie ranch/former mission, who have apparently befallen to a curse placed by a Native American woman accused of witchcraft a century prior.
"Haunted" begins in good grindhouse fashion with an inter title prologue and a topless Native American woman being forced to ride a horse into the desert to die. Fast forward a century later, and the mission from which she was ousted is now a movie ranch being renovated by two brothers; their uncle (Aldo Ray) also resides there, along with their widowed blind mother (Virginia Mayo). The arrival of a young woman, Jennifer--who may or may not be the Native American woman, reincarnated--disrupts the already muddied familial waters.
While there is little by way of logic or followthrough here a far as narrative is concerned, "Haunted" at least succeeds for its propensity for the surreal. Completely bizarre elements, such as a phone booth being installed in a cemetery at the ranch, appear in the film with little to no explanation, and their function as plot devices seems shaky and utterly random. The plot itself predates something like the Salem witch trials-inspired "The Devonsville Terror" in that it focuses on an alleged witch returning a century later to avenge her death, but "Haunted" is much less cohesive and much weirder.
There is some great desert cinematography here, and the film is extremely atmospheric. It is all punctuated by a cheapie folk music soundtrack which was written and recorded for the film, and actually released on vinyl(!) The cast here range from inept to serviceable. Aldo Ray is at his most disheveled, while Virginia Mayo leans heavily into a soapy, melodramatic portrayal of the blind mother whose supernatural ravings may not actually be delusion. Brad Rearden, who some genre fans may recognize from "The Silent Scream," portrays the younger of the two brothers.
All in all, "Haunted" is a reasonably amusing oddity whose entertainment value mainly derives from the slipshod production and sheer strangeness that tends to come from B-grade fly-by-the-seat filmmaking of this era. It is certainly the only film I've ever seen in which spirits contact the living via a cemetery phone booth on a movie ranch--and for that, it's at least something. 6/10.
