The Legend of Hell House
by John Hough
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DVD details
Actor: Clive Revill, Gayle Hunnicutt, Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Roland CulverDirector: John Hough
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-09-04
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of The Legend of Hell House
DVD Review: Fantastically scary haunted house chiller.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great haunted house film, I think it's one of the best I've ever seen. This film is an outstanding example of what you can achieve in a horror film without resorting to special effects trickery or blood and gore (even though I love that kind of thing). And what also makes this film so effective is it's claustrophobic atmosphere and wonderfully creepy music and sound effects. Kudos to everyone in the cast especially Roddy McDowall as Fisher, the only man to survive a previous expedition. A team consisting of a physicist, his wife, a female medium and the only survivor of the previous visit by researchers are sent to Hell House to prove that the house is really haunted and that there is life after death. Every other team has failed either by going mad or getting murdered inside the walls. These four investigators hope to enter one more time to catch a glimpse, they however might not like what they see. Based on the novel Hell House written by Richard Matheson who also wrote I Am Legend, this almost has a similar plot to The Haunting (1963), which is far more critically acclaimed but I much prefer Hell House.
The biggest complaint anyone makes about the film is the similarities to the 1963 film The Haunting. In that film and in the awful 1999 re-make, 4 people go into a haunted house to see if ghosts really do exist. In this film made in 1973, it's about 4 people who go into a house to see if ghosts really exist. Both of them based on stories from a novel, they are quite similar ideas but end up with differences by the time the credits roll. This film has a great and promising start and then gets spookier and more creepy as the film goes on, the setup was very nice and there was some tension between each of these interesting characters. The four main players are Clive Revill, Gayle Hunnicutt, Roddy McDowell and Pamela Franklin and they are all first-rate, most particularly McDowell as the somewhat eerie Mr Fisher and Pamela Franklin as the eccentric medium Florence Tanner.
The Belasco house in the film is described as "the Mount Everest of haunted houses", built by a strange, reclusive tycoon who had an Aleister Crowley-style obsession with exploring all the darker side of life, and manipulating his guests for his own amusement. There were some great and memorable scenes in this film one in particular is where Clive Revill experiences a violent haunting where he nearly gets killed by a falling chandelier and almost get burnt by the fire place, another great and spooky scene involves a dark and shadowy figure behind the shower curtain (What the hell was that!!?).
This was definitely the ultimate haunted house film, it was terrific and well worth watching, I highly recommend this.
DVD 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"!
DVD Review: Love it. One question though
Summary: 5 Stars
In the theatre version the "tomb" of the adversary above the opening was a Rose and Cross symbol (Rosicrucian). In the VHS version it was smudged to be unrecognisable. Probably somebody made a phone call ! No doubt a biggie from the Freemasons !!! WOOOO ! Another conspiracy !
A GREAT MOVIE !
DVD Review: The Legendary Legend of Hell House
Summary: 5 Stars
The Legend of Hell House This is a movie with a screenplay by Richard Matheson based on a novel by Richard Matheson. Richard's novel I AM LEGEND has been made into a movie three times now. Twice it was called "The Last Man on Earth" (one starring Vincent Price and one starring Will Smith) and once it was called "The Omega Man" and starred Charlton Heston. He also authored the screenplay that gave Spielberg his first unforgettable hit "Duel". And Dick Matheson is the guy who turned Jeff Rice's poorly written novel about a vampire in Las Vegas into the hit TV movie THE NIGHT STALKER (he also wrote the sequel THE NIGHT STRANGLER).
In other words, Matheson is da bomb!
Now, if you look this movie up on IMDB you will read a lot of confused comments by a lot of people. People who think it has something to do with a movie called THE HAUNTING. THAT was based on a novel by Shirley Jackson. And except for the fact that accounts of things that go on in haunted houses are fairly similar there is no relation between the books or the movies.
The cast in this film---Roddy McDowell (CLEOPATRA, FRIGHT NIGHT, etc) Pamela Franklin (SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, THE INNOCENTS, A TIGER WALKS---the last was Sabu's last film) Clive Revill (DRACULA, DEAD AND LOVING IT, THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, A FINE MADNESS) and Gayle Hunnicutt (who is most familiar as Irene Adler in the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes TV series) all bring Matheson's characters to life most faithfully.
Is it scary? Yes, it is---in the old-fashioned way. "REAL" scares, not graphic gross-outs. No CGI around when this one was made and may the God of Hollywoood grant that they never try to re-make it just to insert those. This story is character-driven---the characters of the people researching this haunted house as well as the character of Emeric Belasco---the ghost with the most.
Belasco's name is the true last name of Bela Lugosi, btw.
Oh yes, get this movie.
DVD Review: This film is legendary!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been wanting this movie for a long time. Pretty much top shelf entertainment of the evil house variety. Absolutely love it, haunting without the blood and guts.
Description of The Legend of Hell House
In sits there, shrouded in mist and mystery, a nesting place for living evil and terror from the dead. It's Hell House. Roddy McDowall heads the cast of this exciting chiller about four psychic investigators and the dark, brooding mansion they themselves call "the Mt. Everest of haunted houses." It's already destroyed one team of researchers. Now this brave quartet ventures in for another try at unraveling its secret. But before they succeed, they must suffer through madness, murder and everything else the spirits that dwell here have in store for them. Yet learning the truth just might drive them all insane. An ingeniously-devised ghost story, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE will thrill and delight veteran horror fans from the first creaking door to the very last slithering shadow.Four people enter the Belasco Mansion, the so-called "Everest of haunted houses," hired by a dying millionaire to investigate the possibility of life after death. Physicist Clive Revill leads the quartet, which includes his wife Gayle Hunnicut and two mediums. Pamela Franklin, young and impulsive, immediately makes contact with what she perceives as a tortured spirit, while Roddy McDowall, the only survivor from the previous investigation 20 years ago, closes himself off completely, deathly afraid of the malevolent forces that crushed his former comrades in body and spirit. Science fiction and horror legend Richard Matheson, responsible for penning such horror classics as The Devil Rides Out and Roger Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum, brings a literate sensibility and a refreshing seriousness to the haunted-house genre with this adaptation of his novel Hell House. Director John Hough follows Matheson's lead with a moody but sober approach, balancing the physical threats of objects lethally leaping to life with the slow, subtle possession of the characters by a truly evil spirit. Parts of the script feel like so much scientific mumbo jumbo, with characters discussing the finer points of supernatural manifestation and ectoplasmic activity, but Hough's deliberate direction gives it the necessary solemnity to take it all seriously. --Sean Axmaker
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