I found this site by accident. I went to Upper Merion too, 1975. I remember Mrs. Reinert and the rest of the English department. It is sad that we will never know what happened to her children. It was so strange watching the whole thing unfold, involving people I knew; then the books and the movie. Like others have said the movie got a lot of things wrong, but I always figured they were intentionally trying to make things look less like the real thing for some reason. Dr Smith was a joke (we called him JC) but he was the principal. I remember him doing morning announcements and just rambling on and on about nothing. It was great cause we missed part of first period, but he was a weird guy. If you wonder how so many people could be taken in by Bradfield I could never figure it out either. Most of my girl friends had Bradfield's class and they just thought he was wonderful, some kind of genius. I never got it, he always seemed so phony to me, but then I never had a class with him. I had Miss Myers for English and what a shock it was to find out she was dating anyone, let alone living with Bradfield. She was a lot mousier than she was portrayed in the movie, always wore her hair in a bun. I've always had one big question that never got answered: The newspaper stories always talked about JCs family: his wife who died and his daughter Stephanie & her husband who disappeared suspiciously, but they never ever mentioned his other daughter Sherry, she was in my class. The movie didn't go into this side story about JCs daughter & son in law, the local cops thought JC killed them too but couldn't prove anything. It was just odd that in all the background stories that were printed, a second daughter was never mentioned. I always wondered why. Did JC do something to her too?
Review of Echoes in the Darkness
