Horrorfest 2016: The Legend of Hell House

Anyone who reads any of Horrorfest probably has caught on that I always bitch about haunted house movies and ghosts because, with a few exceptions (POLTERGEIST, THE CHANGELING), they're usually simultaneously about the supernatural while allowing the supernatural to manifest itself in underwhelming ways. Time and again I say, in real life, obviously hauntings have to manifest themselves in shadows and bumps in the night and cold spots and things like that because there's no such thing as ghosts, so that's all we're left with. In movies, the sky's the limit, so why waste time on bumps in the night and cold spots when you could just literally show me a ghost? Blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE can be added to the short list of exceptions, because it's good. This UK flick from 1973 was directed by John Hough, who went on to direct a bunch of those creepy Disney flicks like WITCH MOUNTAIN and WATCHER IN THE WOODS. 

Clive Revill stars as a physicist who is hired by a millionaire (Roland Culver) to investigate a mansion notorious for being violently haunted. It was once owned by an eccentric sadist whose sex and drug parties led to all kinds of debauchery, up to and including murder, apparently. Revill's job is to prove the place isn't haunted so the millionaire can unload it. Revill will get a handsome sum if he can last a week there.

Revill brings along his wife (Gayle Hunnicutt) and two mediums (Pamela Franklin and Roddy McDowall). McDowall has previous experience with the haunted house, being the sole survivor of the last time anyone dared to investigate the place.

The movie starts with Revill seeming like the main character, then Franklin comes front and center for a while as most of the haunting seems to start to revolve around her and she has most of the early insights into what she thinks might be going on, but eventually towards the end it turns out McDowall's been our main man the whole time, with his at first subtle performance slowly burning into an over the top all out acting assault. In other words, Roddy's good in this.

So's everyone else. For most of the movie I was sitting there trying to figure out why Clive Revill seemed familiar and eventually I ended up looking him up and realized he was the voice of the Emperor in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, before George Lucas re-made that scene.

Pamela Franklin was in the previous Horrorfest flick, THE INNOCENTS, and is great here at projecting innocence but then able to turn on a dime and get all demonic. 

One cool thing about this movie is that Revill eventually has a plan for ridding the house of ghosts, and it hinges on a piece of scientific equipment. The plan doesn't go down quite the way he intends it to, but I like the fact that he has a plan, and the plan is explained to the audience, and seems to make sense, within the rules of the movie. This is more than can be said for most haunted house flicks, which usually rely on weird magic to fight magic, and not scientific know-how.