The Hearse

The Hearse is a 1980 American supernatural horror film directed by George Bowers and starring Trish Van Devere and Joseph Cotten. It follows a schoolteacher from San Francisco who relocates to a small town in northern California to spend the summer in a house she inherited from her deceased aunt, only to uncover her aunt's past as a devil worshipper, which seems to trigger a series of supernatural occurrences. Plot Jane Hardy, a schoolteacher in San Francisco, suffers a nervous breakdown following a divorce and the simultaneous death of her mother. To emotionally recover, she decides to spend the summer in the rural town of Blackford in a home left to her by her late aunt, Rebecca. Upon arriving, she is given keys to the house by Walter Pritchard, a local attorney who claims Jane's mother once promised to bestow him the property. Shortly after moving in, Jane begins experiencing supernatural occurrences, including witnessing apparitions of her aunt Rebecca, and a ghostly black hearse driven by a mysterious man that pulls into the driveway before vanishing. Furthermore, she is unsettled by the locals' passive-aggressive reactions to her presence in the town, including from Pritchard, who is deliberately unhurried to place the home in her name. Jane hires Paul, the son of the local hardware store owner, to help her make repairs on the home. Jane finds a trunk in the attic full of her aunt's personal mementos, including a diary in which she wrote of her life as a minister's wife. Late one night, Jane crashes her car on the way home, and is given a ride by Tom Sullivan, a mysterious but kind man passing by in a vintage black car. Tom pays for a tow truck for Jane, and returns the following night with her car. Jane accepts his invitation to go boating on a nearby lake. Later that night, Jane uncovers more details from her aunt Rebecca's diary that reveal Rebecca was indoctrinated by her boyfriend Robert, who was a devil worshipper, and convinced her to join him in a pact with Satan. Shortly after, Jane has a vivid nightmare in which she is taken away by the hearse as her aunt watches from the house, and Jane observes her own funeral. Jane's mental stability is further challenged by other odd goings-on in the home, including the sounds of what she believes are people breaking in at night. She later sees a woman from one of her nightmares at the local church, but her fears are assuaged by the Reverend Winston.