The Legend of Hell House
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Movie Reviews of The Legend of Hell House
Movie Review: Classic Haunted House Story
Summary: 5 Stars
This is just a good old haunted house story, totally enjoyable!! It really is a classic!! For fans of ghost stories and haunted houses - this is for you!Movie Review: Classic cult film
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a classic horror film very cult like. I've loved it since it was first released. This film can get into your head.Movie Review: The Legend of Hell House
Summary: 5 Stars
Outstanding classic horror film. A must have for all horror film fans.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.
Movie Review: Hell YES!
Summary: 4 Stars
This screen adaptation of Richard Matheson's terrifying novel, 'Hell House', is, like its source material, a classic of the genre. However, even though it was adapted by Matheson himself and is generally quite faithful to the plot and characters of the book, it is NOT, unfortunately, quite as scary. (For example, my wife loved the film and found it wonderfully eerie, but it was the BOOK that kept her awake and gave her nightmares when she did manage to fall asleep!)
But 'The Legend Of Hell House' was made prior to 'The Exorcist' -- the film that shattered thematic taboos and broke open the limits of what could and could not be shown in a horror film. So one must keep that in mind while watching.
Having stated that one caveat, however, I must also say, unequivocally, that 'The Legend Of Hell House' is in no way devoid of either tension or chills. Heck -- the superb electronic SOUNDTRACK, alone, is enough to give you serious creeps! And the film has sinister atmosphere to spare!
The cast is also first-rate and goes a long way toward keeping the viewer riveted throughout, as does John Hough's super direction, quirky camera angles, and sure feel for suspense.
In marked contrast to Robert Wise's subtle but blood-chilling 'The Haunting', you see extremely clear-cut, unambiguous visual EVIDENCE of the violent supernatural forces at work in the infamous Belasco House. No room for psychological ambiguity here. You damn well KNOW this place is sure-as-hell HAUNTED! And the various effects (NO CGI in THOSE days, thank you very much!) used to bring the house to dangerous life are all top-notch and believable.
The other way 'Hell House' differs from 'The Haunting' (aside from being in lush but understated color) is in its emphasis on science and the use of scientific tools to study and, if possible, solve the mystery of the deadly forces at work within the Belasco House. This makes it stand out, fascinatingly, from just about any other film of its type other than the hardcore scary 'The Entity', which was based on a real case and not exactly a "haunted house" story in the usual sense.
Also, unlike Wise's film, this one is just so damn much FUN! So if I say that 'The Legend Of Hell House' is the most purely ENJOYABLE haunted house film, at least for me, don't take that as damning with faint praise. It just means it's the one film of its creaky-doored ilk that I can watch over and over again and always have a guaranteed not-so-jolly good time with.
Sure, there are other haunted house flicks that I also find lots of fun, but they tend to be more of the guilty-pleasure, B-movie variety, whereas 'Hell House' is a grade-A, first class piece of craftsmanship.
My only wish is that it could have contained more of the Hard-R horrors so vividly present in the book -- i.e. the re-animated fetal frights of "Bastard Bog" in the steam room; the various cadaverous, naked, cannibalistic, sexually depraved apparitions; the amorous severed hand; the hideously putrescent specter which makes love to Florence Tanner; the maelstrom in the swimming-pool dragging the mutilated Dr. Barrett into its depths as the towering ghost of Belasco looks on; etc. etc.
Sorry -- there ain't NONE of that in the film, folks. Heck, the Belasco House in the movie doesn't even HAVE a steam room OR a pool! But, on the strong plus side, it DOES have plenty-o nasty (though invisible) ghosts (or DOES it? There's a mytery aspect to the story which I won't give away here) and some mighty sexy babes in the lovely persons of Gail Hunnicut and Pamela Franklin to embody lascivious hints of the unwholesome sexual undercurrents so prevalent in Matheson's novel.
Doubtless, it will one day be remade, and then the missing aspects of the book can be re-instated. (Just, please oh PLEASE God, DON'T let it end up like the immensely disappointing remake of Wise's 'The Haunting', a film which had ZERO reason to be re-invented!)
But, until then, you could do a lot worse than this above-average film about a team of four brave souls risking their sanity and their lives to solve the deadly puzzle of "the Mount Everest of haunted houses"!