This is one of those movies where the first half hour or so is boring because you know the premise and are forced to wait around while it's set up. All in all, it's really nothing you haven't seen before, and the production is TV-movie level at best. Just not my bag, I guess. Really didn't care for Burstyn's character's dismissal of the typical Hollywood cold-and-calculating scientists. Maurice Jarre's score is great, so I'll give a few points for that. I did like the epilogue a lot.

First, this is a feast of Americana, located largely in Kansas, and at times reminiscent of John Ford, with Burstyn talking to a tombstone, Eva Le Gallienne supplying the ham, and 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.