Julia came to live with the Bryants. She claimed to be their cousin ...

Tonight, the world premiere of a chilling story of witchcraft, demons and the supernatural!

Notable as an early effort from renowned horror filmmaker Wes Craven, this made-for-TV occult thriller was loosely adapted from a novel by Lois Duncan. Star Linda Blair -- whose film career had taken a detour into TV-movie territory after her legendary bow in The Exorcist -- returns to the demon-possession genre as a teenager who can't seem to convince her parents that her visiting southern-belle cousin (Lee Purcell) is an evil witch. Purcell's diabolical meddling seems focused entirely on the innocent Blair, who loses both her prize horse and her boyfriend to the scheming sorceress before the rest of the family catches on. Though Craven's well-known extremism is curbed by the limitations of television, his talent at generating high-intensity suspense is still evident, making this a modestly entertaining horror item.

ranger in Our House (also released as Summer of Fear) is a 1978 American horror television film directed by Wes Craven and starring Linda Blair. It tells the story of a teenage girl who begins to suspect that her cousin may be a practitioner of black magic and witchcraft after she comes to live with their family.

The film first aired on television on NBC on Halloween night, 1978. Airing opposite the occult-thriller Devil Dog: Hound of Hell starring Richard Crenna, Stranger In Our House fared a disappointing second place in the Nielsen ratings. The movie was then sold to CBS, and ultimately was re-titled Summer of Fear (also the title of the Lois Duncan book on which it was based) and given a theatrical release in Europe.[citation needed]

The film was widely unavailable on home video for several decades until 2003 when it was released in the United States through Artisan Entertainment on VHS and DVD, under the Summer of Fear title.