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Robert Urich, Susan Lucci, Joanna Cassidy, Soleil Moon Frye
Simply amazing.

This early Wes Craven creation has absolutely everything from white-hot tract houses to evil children to laser-shooting space suits to computers to demonic possession to late-seventies corporate angst to Susan Lucci in chandelier earrings as the devil incarnate, who happens to work at a country club. A surprisingly lucid and well-constructed parable about selling out to, well – just about anything (greed, lust, corporate America), Invitation to Hell is surprisingly well-told for a story that is so aggressively weird and composed of such disparate genre elements (horror, sci-fi, family drama, corporate thriller, satire).Craven’s hand is certainly visible at the helm; as with his later work, the fantastic is planted so firmly in a banal suburban setting that it’s both shocking and surprisingly fitting (much like A Nightmare on Elm Street).

Lucci is absolutely riotous as alpha-bitch Jessica Jones; the fact that the devil would take the form of a slutty membership director at a barren country club is simply brilliant in its inanity, and she plays the part so straight it’s impossible to tell if she was in on the joke or not. Building a very effective story on a simple Stepford-like premise of “belonging”, the film culminates in a special effects extravaganza of monumentally trashy proportions (much of which involves Lucci’s makeup).