The Legend of Hell House
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Movie Reviews of The Legend of Hell House
Movie Review: the legend of hell house
Summary: 3 Stars
this movie was not what i expected. i found it BORING! nothing about it was especially good.Movie Review: A classic haunted house film
Summary: 4 Stars
This film is not overly scarry by any means, but it's a well acted, well written film that never goes over the top. It is certainly one of the better haunted house flicks made (though none can top The Changeling). I only wish Hollywood would stop putting out the trash horror films they continuously spew out and would watch some of the classics and get back to basics.Movie Review: spellbinding horror masterpiece
Summary: 4 Stars
LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE is a genuinely-terrifying entry into the `haunted house' genre, based on the book "Hell House" by Richard Matheson. The shocks and surprises are brilliantly-executed and just as harrowing for the audience as they are for the on-screen victims.
Barrett (Clive Revill) leads an expedition into the infamous `Hell House', the mission being to complete a total spiritual cleansing of the area. He's joined by his wife Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), young and idealistic medium Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) and Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowall), who took part in the previous attempt to exorcise the house 15 years ago and was the sole member to emerge unscathed.
Slowly but surely, the effects of the house and the unspeakable horrors that ocurred within it's walls succeed in turning the members of the team against one another. Outstanding acting from all concerned but the big standout is Pamela Franklin (who could win a Nicola Pagett look-alike contest) and lights up the screen in her performance as the sincere young medium who is deceived into aiding the wrong side. Gayle Hunnicutt makes the most out of the least-developed and passive character in the piece, who becomes a raving nymphomanic in one of the most memorable scenes. Roddy McDowall is amazing as the world-weary Ben, and Clive Revill brings a good dose of sensibility to Barrett. The DVD is presented in a crisp 16:9 print. Colours are very rich and black levels are good and deep. The ahead-of-its-time electronic score is provided by Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire. One of the greatest horror-thrillers ever made.
Movie Review: Legend of Hell House Shines on DVD
Summary: 4 Stars
As a horror movie, The Legend of Hell House may be a bit obscure, especially since it was released in 1973...the same year as The Exorcist. But it's truly an excellent film for the genre, with an intriguing plot, a solid script and very capable acting, especially from Pamela Franklin. In a nutshell, it's a great things-going-bump-in-the-night opus that you'll probably enjoy seeing over and over again. As presented on Fox's DVD transfer of the film, it is crisp, clear and in perfect visual condition. Movie Review: "Welcome to my house . . . The answer is here, I promise you."
Summary: 4 Stars
On the back of Richard Matheson's novel, there is the following quote from Stephen King: "Hell House is the scariest haunted house novel ever written. It looms over the rest like the way the mountains looms over the foothills." Yeah, I agree. This novel is very scary and well-done. As a matter of fact, Matheson came up with an unbelievably clever and well-thought out backstory and "solution" to exactly what is behind the haunting of Hell House. Unfortunately for me, I saw the movie version on TV as a small kid during the seventies so I never got to read the book first without knowing the secret, or the solution, to the haunting of Hell House. So read the book first before you see this movie, if possible. (By the way, this solution to Hell House was used in part by Stephen King in his novel 'Salem's Lot to explain the power of the Marsten House. Check out that book too.)
Now the movie. I think I remember Matheson saying that his novel Hell House was very much influenced by Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. And you see the same premise: there is a legendary haunted house and four people end up going to investigate it. However, Matheson's novel is much more sinister because we are told how the last two previous attempts to investigate Hell House--"the Mount Everest of haunted houses"--ended in deaths and serious permanent injuries for virtually all involved.
Richard Matheson said he wasn't totally satisfied about how this movie turned out. This is ironic because it was him who also wrote the screenplay adaptation for this movie. (As you might know, in addition to his works of prose, Matheson made a name for himself and supported himself by writing tons of screenplays for TV and the big screen.) Matheson was disappointed that he had to tone down the sexual content of his book. In this movie, the sexual content is toned down, or is implied, but I don't think it has any effect on the quality of the movie.
For the most part, Matheson's script adaptation of his own novel is pretty good. Indeed, I just watched the movie yet again and I thought that one particular scene involving the character of Florence made more sense in how it was portrayed in the movie than how it happened in the novel. However, Matheson did make a huge mistake in how he handled the backstory of Hell House in the movie. In the book, he has Ben Fischer give an account of how Belasco lived in his life in his mansion. However, in the movie, Fischer gives a rather skimpy account of what happened. They could have had Fischer recount what was said in the book virtually verbatim and it wouldn't have really added to the length of the movie that much. And including this information in the movie would have made the movie even scarier because it explains why the house has such a well-deserved infamous reputation that makes the scientist Barrett call it "the Mount Everest of haunted houses".
I thought the casting for this movie was excellent-so much so that whenever I read the novel, I imagine the actors in the movie when I recreate the novel in my mind. The setting for the book was originally in Maine with American characters, but for the movie they changed the setting to somewhere in Britain, and they employed all British actors, with the absolutely stunning Gayle Hunnicut, a native born Texan, being the lone American. However, Hunnicut does such a great British accent that you'd never guess she wasn't British. However, I would argue that changing the movie's setting to Britain made sense since-and I'm really not trying to be a wiseguy, especially since I love the novel so much-Matheson had his American characters in his novel at times speaking like they were British! In any case, the beautiful Pamela Franklin as Florence Tanner, Roddy McDowall as Benjamin Franklin Fischer, and Clive Revill as Dr. Lionel Barrett all do great jobs portraying their respective characters. They portrayed their characters just as I imagined them while reading the book. By the way, look for Michael Gough to make a cool appearance. You might know him better as the actor who played Batman's butler in the 1989 movie.
Different people have commented on how it's obvious that there wasn't a huge budget for this movie. Yeah, I agree, but it doesn't really take away from the quality of the movie. When Barrett goes to talk to old man Deutsch at the beginning of the film, it looks like they shot this sequence at some sort of enormous museum in Britain rather than at an actual British mansion. I read that Matheson based Belasco's infamous mansion "Hell House" on the Hearst mansion in California. However, it looks like most of the scenes inside the house were shot on a sound stage, which meant that certain scenes could not be shot as described in the movie such as those that took place in the theater, or more importantly, in the pool and steam room, and the infamous 'Bastard Bog" tarn outside the mansion. They get around this by shooting these scenes in different locations, but after reading the novel, it's too bad that they couldn't have shot this movie at the actual Hearst Mansion or something comparable rather on a sound stage. I would love to see it get remade some day this way. It's too bad they couldn't have done so originally with this terrific cast.
By the way, in some ways this is a rather cheap DVD release. I mean, all they include in the extras section related to the movie is the original movie trailer. They could have at least interviewed the surviving actors and director for the DVD release. Also, the print of the film that they made the DVD copy off of has an obvious flaw in the picture and sound for the first few seconds. Sloppy, people! Really, really sloppy! It's too bad that they didn't get somebody who actually gave a damn who would have taken the time with this DVD release to have made it as good as it could have been in terms of extras, print and soundtrack quality, like they tend to do with other older movies. Apparently Matheson's movie Duel got better treatment when it was released on DVD.
All in all, this is a good adaptation of Matheson's great haunted house novel. At the very least, this is worth checking out if you enjoy intelligent horror. Four and a half stars.