This was a leftover of my casting about for a theme for the weekend. At one point the theme was going to be "Movies Released in 1973 with 'The Legend of' in their titles." Then it was going to be "1970's movies based on books by Richard Matheson," but I couldn't bring myself to pay for a copy of Omega Man. I briefly toyed with the idea of "Movies with Aleister Crowley stand-ins" but I'd already seen The Devil Rides Out (another Matheson screenplay, FYI) and couldn't think of another.
The bottom line is, I kinda wanted to watch The Legend of Hell House and with my (admittedly half-assed) theme weekend over I could simply do that. So I did.
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| And I'm just putting the titles here 'cause I wanna. |
The Medium
The Legend of Hell House is currently on Netflix. I feel like last year all the streaming services lost a ton of horror movies just before October, making it a pain in the ass to find stuff I wanted to watch without paying for each movie individually. That doesn't seem to be the case this year, and I'm finding plenty of options. Perhaps I'm just looking for different things this year, but it feels like the availability is better.
The Movie
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 adaption 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.
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| Oh come on, it's not THAT bad a metaphor. |
A physicist, Lionel Barrett, is hired for a significant sum of money by an elderly millionaire to provide him with proof of life after death by investigating the infamous Belasco House. He's to be accompanied by two mediums - the prim and religious mental medium, Florence Tanner, and the only survivor of a previous investigation, Ben Fischer, (Roddy McDowall). He's also accompanied by his wife, Ann.
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| "I'll just start ignoring and belittling you now, shall I?" |
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 it's violent direction at him is caused by her fear that he's right in his hypothesis that there are no such things as ghosts.
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| There are chained up corpses, though. We can all agree on that. |
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 continues - even once 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 Ben and Ann to face the final truth of Hell House.
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| It's boobs. The final truth is boobs. |
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 fun 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.
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| "I'm not sure I want to go to Hogwarts anymore." |
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?!"
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| And why is the prim and proper medium not wearing any pants? |
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 parody it. In the right frame of mind, however, it's a classic ghost story with some good acting, sets and atmosphere.
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