When he was 8 years old, screenwriter Harrison Smith spent a terrifying summer at his grandparents' house off Kessler Road in Easton. Almost every night, he could hear something or someone banging at his window. On several occasions, the phone lines were cut. Other times, figures could be seen lurking in the cornfields.

By the end of the summer, Smith and his grandparents, Harrison and Gladys Kline, figured out the cause of the disturbances. (Smith won't say what it was to preserve the film ending.) But Smith was so haunted that three decades later he decided to write about his experiences in "The Fields."

"The more I wrote, the more I thought, damn, this would make a good movie," says Smith.

Actor-turned-producer Faust Checho agreed. After reading his friend's screenplay, Checho was knocked out by a story that artfully wove together elements from a number of different genres. "I was 20 minutes into reading the script and I was laughing but also impressed by the drama of it," says Checho, a Bangor native.

Smith, a history teacher at Pleasant Valley High School, and Checho put together the financing for the film. It was shot over two months last fall in the Monroe County village of Kunkletown. Smith and Checho hired "Fourth Dimension" directors Tom Mattera and Dave Mazzoni to direct. But their biggest coup was getting 84-year-old Oscar winner Cloris Leachman to play the grandmother.

"When she signed on, it elevated the film from a B-movie to a real contender," says Checho. "She's a true professional but she also brought such spontaneity to the set. She had the whole crew cracking up."

Smith says members of the community, including the owners of Amy's Country Store and Palmeri Transportation, donated generators, labor, food and space for production offices.

Now that the film is finished, Smith and Checho are preparing a final edit and looking for distributors. They're hoping "The Fields" gets into theaters soon.

"We're both confident with the rough cut," says Checho. "We feel that we really have something different here. The movie could easily have become just another slasher film."

Which is not to say that "The Fields" doesn't deliver some spills and chills along the way. But, notes Smith, "questions are answered at the end. And the answers are something that you can really chew on."

Amy Longsdorf is a freelance writer.

Jodi Duckett, editor

jodi.duckett@mcall.com, 610-820-6704