“It’s the Mount Everest of haunted houses.”
When I chose a horror movie for this week’s writeup, I wasn’t really thinking about the holiday. There aren’t many July 4th related horror movies anyway – a fact I lamented in the only other 4th of July Fear Flashback I can remember, the “classic” animal attack film, Frogs. I felt a little bad that I hadn’t even made the effort to find something, though. Didn’t change what I did, but I did feel bad.
What I wanted to watch this week was another haunted house movie. Even though I’d just done a review of the best haunted house movie (The Haunting) back in May. I hemmed and hawed about it for about half an hour, pulled out a stack of other options and then put them all back. Contemplated a ‘Top Ten Haunted House Movies’ list, then decided to leave that to Sailor or Kane. Looked through the queues on my current streaming options. Then gave up.
The bottom line is, I kinda wanted to watch The Legend of Hell House this week. So I did.
The Medium
I have a copy of 2014 Blu-ray release of The Legend of Hell House from Shout Factory. It’s a decent looking release – certainly the best I’ve ever seen the film – but it could use some better extras. This version is supposedly going out of print, but you can find it fairly cheap online.
There are currently no free or subscription options that include The Legend of Hell House, but it can be rented or purchased via the usual online vendors.
The Movie
An adaptation (by the author) of Richard Matheson’s novel, The Legend of Hell House is that now classic set up – a group of paranormal investigators go to the ‘most haunted house in the world’ and proceed to get schooled by whatever haunts the place, falling into traps set by their own fears/ambitions/egos. If Robert Wise’s adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House – the much pithier titled The Haunting – is the pinnacle of these things, Hell House is considerably further down the mountainside. Not to say the view isn’t worth it, though, to keep banging on this awkward metaphor.
A physicist, Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill), is hired by a reclusive millionaire to provide him with proof of life after death. He wants him to do this by investigating the infamous Belasco House. The house was the site of much perversion and debauchery, and a massacre involving the last group to try and investigate the house. He’s to be accompanied by two mediums – the prim and religious mental medium, Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), and the only survivor of the previous investigation, Ben Fischer, (Roddy McDowall). Barret is also accompanied by his wife, Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt). Emeric Belasco (played briefly and motionlessly by Michael Gough) is an obvious Aleister Crowley stand-in, and Belasco house is probably based on similar tales about his Boleskine House.
From the beginning there’s conflict between Florence and Lionel – with the medium convinced that a number of ‘surviving personalities’ haunt the house and the physicist just as sure that it’s only full of undirected electromagnetic energy. Soon Florence is communicating with an entity she is sure is Daniel Belasco, the tortured scion of Emeric Belasco, the original (and mysteriously disappeared) owner of Belasco House. Lionel is certain that the physical phenomena that starts to appear around Florence is actually caused by her – despite her insistence that she is a purely mental medium – and that its violent direction at him is caused by her fear that he’s right in his hypothesis that there are no such things as ghosts.
One of the things I love about this movie is that it requires the scientist to be skeptical of “life after death,” but simply accept such things as mediums and telekinesis. At one point, Florence actually extrudes ectoplasm from her fingertips, and Barrett is mostly concerned with getting a sample. Not flabbergasted at the whole concept. This he can accept, but ghosts are right out.
Meanwhile, I’m wondering why the prim and proper medium – it’s suggested she’s a nun – doesn’t wear any pants during her sitting.
Ben and Ann are bystanders for most of this, though Ann exhibits some strange behavior that might result from her loveless (at least physically) marriage. Ben is a bystander by choice – he just wants to survive (again) and collect his check.
The phenomena continue and escalate – even when the body of Daniel is found and ‘put to rest.’ Most of it ends up directed – violently – at Florence. Pressured by the entity she’s communicating with to consummate a physical relationship (in order to truly ‘move on’), she gives in – only to realize she’s been tricked. Lionel, meanwhile, puts his faith in a new machine that he intends to use to essentially discharge the vast amount of psychic energy infesting the house. Neither Florence nor Lionel have all the facts, and it will be up to Ben and Ann to face the final truth of Hell House.
The film looks and feels like a late-era Hammer film or an Amicus production, but is actually one of only two films produced by James H. Nicholson after his departure from AIP (the other being Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry). The house is a great set, and the film takes advantage of the baroque surroundings by foregrounding weird elements with the characters framed or lost in the background, as if the house is overwhelming them.
I’ve seen The Legend of Hell House before and, when in the right mood, it’s a lot of fun, with enough atmosphere and creeps to keep you entertained. Roddy McDowall is always enjoyable to watch and the direction by John Hough (of Escape to Witch Mountain AND The Howling IV, which freaks me out a little) plays with angles and lighting in interesting ways. The sets are wonderfully baroque, and the exteriors are atmospheric and appropriately foggy. The music – an electronic score by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson (both known for work on Doctor Who) – is disturbing and moody.
If you’re not in the right mood, however, it’s an easy film to make fun of. The ponderous scientific pronouncements and irritating passive-aggressive behavior of Barrett make him a figure of ridicule, rather than authority. (And let’s not get started on how he treats his wife). A whole lot of nothing happens in very melodramatic ways for far too long. There are too many shadowy closeups, screaming women (and men), and moody, shouty people. And the ending – the reason for Belasco’s anger and power – is, if you think about it for very long, kind of ridiculous. As my wife said when the movie was over, “He was short? That’s why all that stuff happened? He was SHORT?!”
The Bottom Line
One of the faux trailers for Grindhouse was Edgar Wright’s DON’T. In retrospect it seems directly inspired – at least in part – by The Legend of Hell House, and if you’re not in the mood for atmospheric, quintessentially British horror, it can be easy to see why someone would make a parody of it. In the right frame of mind, however, it’s a classic ghost story with some good acting, sets and mood.
