The Legend of Hell House

The Legend of Hell House
by John Hough

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DVD details

Actor: Clive Revill, Gayle Hunnicutt, Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Roland Culver
Director: 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: 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.

DVD Review: A Haunted House Film Worth Seeing
Summary: 3 Stars

Mr. Rudolph Deutsch has hired Lionel Barrett to investigate a haunted house. This isn't any normal haunted house though. It seems as though anyone who enters the house either leaves the house insane or winds up dead. In addition to Mr Barrett, his wife, Ann Barrett, a mental medium named Florence Tanner, and a physical medium who is also the only survivor of the last team of investigators to visit the house named Benjamin Fischer are all visiting Hell House to try and solve this phenomenon. $100,000 is theirs for the taking if they can do it within a week, but will they be able to survive what's caged inside Hell House? Emeric Belasco, a self-proclaimed genius ahead of his time, may have other plans.

The Legend of Hell House isn't your average horror film about paranormal activity. I'll be up front with you right now, I'm not a big fan of movies about ghosts. I'm just not. I've come across a few that were decent, but I didn't think they were anything special or I just wound up not liking them at all. I actually liked this a lot more than I thought I would. The film isn't heavy on blood, gore, or cheap scares. In fact, more often than not, the scares come from what you don't see rather than what you actually do.

The acting is definitely a strong point in the film. The entire cast has their moments of brilliance during the insanity Hell House is putting them through, but Roddy McDowall is the actor who stands out amonst the rest. His performance just seems to outshine everyone else and he steals just about every scene he's in. There's a scene in the film where he starts screaming and falls to the floor in a seizure like maneuver that reminded me a lot of some of the scenes with Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead. The explanation was that he was blocking himself off from the house since he had been there before. As a physical medium, he was basically putting up walls to defend himself from the house this time around. And in this scene, I guess he tried lowering his guard for a bit and...this happened. The speeches he gives though, his facial expressions and body language, and cold tone. It's weird, but a guy that you look at at the beginning of the film and say to yourself that you're going to hate him because he looks smarmy and only really cares about himself winds up being the highlight of the film.

Another aspect of the film I really enjoyed were the special effects of the film. There's no CGI or anything, but the effects in the film are done very well. There's a scene where Ms. Tanner looks into her bedroom and sees someone lying under the covers in her bed and when she lifts up the covers, you can't see anyone but the door opens and slams like someone was getting up and leaving. It was just done very well. The effects like that were done very well. There are a few that look cheesy(cat in the shower scene, anyone?), but overall they look very good given how old the film is.

The plot was surprising, as well. I wasn't expecting anything really original or anything, but the fact that science is involved so heavily in trying rid the house of its supernatural presence was not only interesting, but a breath of fresh air compared to other methods I would've expected based on other films.

I think it's safe to say that The Legend of Hell House is one of the best haunted house films ever made and the best one I've seen as of this review. It probably isn't the type of horror film for gorehounds or if you're looking for a bloodfest. It's more of a paranormal film with a slight psychological twist. The acting is top notch and the story is a bit more clever than you may give it credit for at first glance. I'd recommend it to just about anyone.

Rating: 7/10

DVD Review: I still cannot watch this movie alone!
Summary: 5 Stars

The first time I saw this film, I was scared to death. The last time I saw this movie, I was scared to death! It may be vintage horror, but it is not your typical "haunted house" flick. It may not have all of those glitzy, Hollywood special effects, but it still manages to chill me to the bone. For good, old-fashioned horror movie fans, this is a MUST have!

DVD Review: A Classic
Summary: 5 Stars

A more visceral tale than Wise's adaption of THE HAUNTING, this big screen version of Richard Matheson's novel HELL HOUSE is still all these years later, one spooky film. A fine cast that includes Clive Revill, Gayle Hunnicutt, Roddy McDowell and Pamela Franklin, it comes really close to capturing the power of Matheson's book. Some chilling moments and a brief cameo by Michael Gough.

DVD Review: Is it...?
Summary: 4 Stars

Is it bloody?

I love that The Haunting is frightening without blood.

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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