The Legend of Hell House (1973)

               Sometimes, just sometimes, you call something and it turns out to be absolutely correct. I was about four minutes into this movie when I scribbled the note “so mannered but I like it.” The camera framing, choice of shots, sudden cuts to absurd close-ups, I became convinced that someone on this production worked on the tv show “The Avengers.” Lo and behold, it turns out director John Hough got his start as a second-unit director on that very program and directed several episodes of the 1968 season. The obvious effort on screen, all the odd camera placements and harsh editing, fades a bit as the movie ploughs on and the crew members get tired, but there’s always the threat that a conversation scene will suddenly switch to a close-up of the actors talking with their noses only inches apart or a scene transition will position the camera looking up diagonally from a boot or something. This isn’t a complaint, it grounds the movie very firmly in a time and place, and it might also explain some of the choices in the screenplay that we’ll get into. In a very low-key way, it wouldn’t take much effort to place this movie in the same slightly-elevated world as that aforementioned tv show.

              The premise is almost identical to ‘The Haunting:’ a scientist brings two psychics into a haunted house to investigate the spookiness. In this instance instead of the owner’s nephew tagging along it’s the scientist’s wife. More people die in this one, though, and the spookums are actually on-screen, so obviously this is the better movie. What a difference a decade makes. The screenplay was adapted by the author of the original novel, Richard Mattheson, who’s more well known for another book of his, I am Legend. He also wrote that episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ where William Shatner goes crazy on a plane. According to the Wiki he “drastically reduced some of the more extreme elements of the novel, particularly its graphic sexuality and BDSM.” To think of what we couldn’t had.

              The other interesting figure involved was executive producer James H. Nicholson. I knew I recognized that name during the credits, but it wasn’t until afterwards that I was able to do look him up and remembered that he was co-head of American International Pictures, or AIP, one of the most important independent studios of the 20^th century. In 1972 he left to set up his own firm, Academy Pictures Corporation, working through 20^th Century Fox. Unfortunately he died of a brain tumor later that year, his company releasing only this movie and ‘Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.’ ‘The Legend of Hell House’ was reasonably successful and today is considered one of the better horror movies of the time. Some dialogue was also sampled for the Orbital song “I Don’t Know You People,” which gave me a start while watching. It’s not Kate Bush sampling ‘Night of the Demon,’ but it’s not bad.

              Our scientist Dr. Lionel Barrett is played by Clive Revill. Revill was one of those wonderful British character actors whose distinctive face and voice just made a movie better. He was in a couple of Billy Wilder movies, ‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘Avanti!’ He was also in an episode of ‘Columbo,’ which is where I know him from. His wife Ann Barrett is played by Pamela Franklin, who was something of a screen vamp at the time. She gets the ‘and’ billing in the opening titles. The “mental” psychic Florence Tanner, which is a term we’ll return to, is played by Pamela Franklin, who also played the little girl in ‘The Innocents.’ Don’t like the fact that she’s nude in this movie when I’ve seen her as a kid, that was weird. She did a lot of tv work in the 70’s and is considered something of a British scream queen. The “physical” medium Benjamin Fischer is played by Roddy McDowell, who had a very busy 1973. I’m not going to pretend like you don’t know who he is. Everyone is all right in the movie, but none of the characters except for possibly Tanner and Fischer have anything approaching interesting dialogue or scenes.

I don't know that I believe you, movie.

              The screenplay to the movie is just baffling in two distinct ways. Not in terms of the plot or character motivations, everything makes sense and the plot resolves in an understandable fashion. I know what people are doing and why they’re doing it most of the time. The two problem areas are very distinct and separate from each other which is wild, normally deep problems with screenplays tend to build off each other, but as far as I can tell Matheson managed to develop each issue completely independently of the other. The more fundamental problem is one of structure, and the more interesting, fun one is that this seems to be a spinoff of a movie or television series we never saw.

              Let’s start with the structural one first, that’s more boring. The premise is established wonderfully quickly: in a series of harsh cuts through short scenes of rapid-fire dialogue it’s established that the current rich and more importantly elderly owner of the Belasco House (nee Hell House) has bought it for the express purpose of investigating the possibility of life after death. He’s hired Dr. Barrett and two others to stay in the house for one week to perform research with the promise of $100,000 dollars each if they can survive. Every previous attempt has left everyone who went into the house mad, disabled, or dead, with the exception of Fischer. Might as well point out that this movie will always use the worst possible era-appropriate terms available, those are not the words they use to describe the fates of the previous researchers. I’ll be doing some cleanup on the language throughout. There’s a brief exposition scene where Barrett’s wife insists on going along and then the four of them arrive at the house, bam, five minutes start to finish.

              The structural problems then kick in, because after following Dr. Barrett up to this point we suddenly start following Tanner. Barrett doesn’t like her due to the usual ‘science vs. faith’ business, she’s all spiritual about ghosts and believes her gifts are given from God to help people, he’s all scientific and rational, blah blah. Their big debate is whether ghosts are the surviving personalities of people who have died or just mindless energy left over after death. Fisher is almost interesting, he’s the only survivor of the previous research attempt that’s stayed sane. For the entire first half of the movie McDowell is very quiet and still, only speaking when asked questions and then giving little quasi-sarcastic “Oh really?” responses whenever anyone says anything about the house. It’s not what I want from my McDowell performances.

              Tanner starts getting visits from camera tricks pretending to be an invisible ghost that she senses is the original owner’s illegitimate son, Daniel Belasco. In between doors opening and sheets flying around she starts poking around the house. I’m not sure what the other characters are doing during this section of the movie, it doesn’t really bother to tell us. She forms an emotional connection with the ghost, which escalates to the point where the tension between herself and Barrett causes the ghost to attack him at dinner, throwing tables and cutlery around. Barrett thinks it’s actually Tanner using the energy of the house. A bunch of stuff happens, including finding a body in a wall, burying that body and performing last rights, Tanner’s revelation that the house is full of individual spirits all dominated by Belasco, and then she fucks a ghost. Like on screen we see the expression on her face during the moment of ghost penetration. I’ll just say it starts as consensual and draw a line under that subject. Turns out it was all a trick and ‘Daniel’ has now possessed her body.

              While all this has been going on Dr. Barrett’s wife Ann made the mistake of reading a sexy book. This causes her to start falling under the influence of the house. She begins wandering around at night in sexy nightwear hitting on Fischer with all sorts of drunken orgy talk. The first time he responds by slapping her awake (1973), the second time Fischer just kind of looks confused at her until the scene is witnessed by her husband. Dr. Barret is pretty much an asshole about the whole thing until he begrudgingly kinda forgives her for being influenced by the scientifically proven haunted house.

              After Tanner gets possessed the focus shifts back to Dr. Barrett. During all of the above he’s been busy assembling a big silly-looking machine he calls something like ‘The Reverser.’ The point being that if ghosts are energy that you can measure you can get rid of it by radiating the house with energy of an opposite polarity. This concept alone merits its spiritual inclusion into ‘Dr. Who’ lore. As Fischer is in the process of escorting Tanner off the premises they hear this explanation of the theory behind the machine. Tanner listens calmly, then when they’re distracted tries to smash the machine. She then runs away in the confusion and into the chapel, which she’d refused to enter before. She tries to talk to Daniel, but her face turns horrified as she realizes what’s actually going on. Then a crucifix falls on her, crushing her to death. She writes the letter ‘B’ in a circle with her own blood on the crucifix, which does come back later as a clue.

              Everyone still alive leaves the house and lets the machine do its thing. At no point do they address what happened to Tanner’s body, so I assume they shoved it in a corner and draped an afghan over it. They go back inside the house and Fischer announces to his amazement that it’s clean! Except it’s not and soon some of Dr. Barrett’s lab equipment blows up in his face. This somehow transports his body to the chapel where a bunch of candles are placed on his corpse. Ann finds the body and runs out to Fischer, begging him to leave with her. He instead says he has to stay and finish things, for the sake of those who have already died. It flatly contradicts everything we’ve seen about his character to this point and is motivated by seemingly nothing. The movie has established very well that he was barely even verbal for so much of the movie because he was keeping his psychic abilities completely contained and shut off to avoid pissing off the house. It was how he survived the last research attempt. Apparently a bunch more people dying in front of him made him brave?

              And so for the last chunk of the movie Fischer is suddenly the main character. Turns out there is no actual protagonist to the movie, we just follow people around until they die and then move on to the next one. Fischer pieces together some very weak clues dropped over the course of the movie to figure out that there was no Daniel, no other ghosts except Belasco, and his legend as a towering giant of a man was something he left behind about himself. It was completely made up and instead he was pretty short. Possibly even as short as five foot tall! That’s the climax of the movie, by the way, Roddy McDowell in a chapel set standing in front of a wind machine yelling short person insults off-screen. There is a single line of dialogue earlier establishing that Belasco was supposed to be six foot five, that is all the movie gives us to set up this finale.

              Eventually insults like ‘funny little dried-up bastard’ prove too much for the homicidal ghost and he just gives up. They discover a secret room with Belasco’s preserved corpse inside. Played by Michael Gough, which is neat, probably done as a favor to someone. They figure out that Belasco not only wanted to turn into a ghost, he had predicted a spirit-cleansing machine like Dr. Barrett’s and so placed his body in a lead-lined chamber to shield his corpse and thus his spirit. The two survivors prop open the door, turn the machine back on, and walk into the end credits.

You do eventually get some quality McDowell.

              Not every script needs a single protagonist, but we spend close to two-thirds of the movie following Tanner while Roddy McDowell kind of mopes around in the background. There’s a reason for his performance, and as he gets more involved in the story he starts to become a more energetic character, but Pamela Franklin is a great screen presence and to get that far into a story and suddenly have who you thought was the main character killed off so bluntly, without the death having some kind of thematic resonance or greater purpose within the story, is very off-putting. The entire structure of the script is off-balance, tilted too far in one direction.

              I mentioned the script is baffling in two ways. I would characterize the structure issues as actual problems, things that detract from the movie. The other one I’m not sure about, I enjoyed what it did to my viewing experience but I’m not going to assume that would apply to anyone else. I mentioned “mental” and “physical” mediums before, and if you’re not entirely sure what those terms mean then tough shit, the movie doesn’t care. It’s going to toss those and other phrases around absolutely secure in the belief that these are common terms that everyone uses, you’re the weird one for not knowing them. Also there’s a publicly known haunted house with a body count in the double digits, verifiable victims and survivors who can be studied and interviewed. There are machines in the movie that demonstrably measure spiritual activity. Early in the movie Tanner is alone in her room at night when the door opens and a wind blows in. A bunch of stuff moves around and from foley and camera placement it’s clear that a ghost has entered. She is completely unimpressed, casually sensing the ghost’s name and even joking around with it. Instead of waking up the others at once she offhandedly mentions the visitation the next morning during breakfast.

              This movie plays like the sequel to something, or like an expanded episode of a tv show. I’m not kidding when I said this could plausibly exist within the world of “The Avengers.” I would also say “Sapphire and Steel” but it’s actually not weird enough for that. Here’s where the heightened-reality style camera shenanigans Hough learned from working the “The Avengers” pays off. The script assumes that we’ll follow along with its made-up supernatural rules, and it’s a lot easier to swallow that when the entire production is a half-step down from ‘Dr. Who.’ When Dr. Barrett accuses Tanner of using the psychic energy contained in the house to attack him and that she made up Daniel, her bewildered response is that she’s just a mental medium, she couldn’t do something like that. No context, we’re supposed to figure out what all this means on our own. She even gestures to Fischer, saying maybe it was him since he’s a physical medium. I should point out that there’s a grand total of one instance of McDowell doing anything psychokinetic, and that’s making a small window break at the very end. It’s true that his character is deliberately not using his abilities during the movie, but at no point is it demonstrated how his power set differs from Tanner’s.

              I just used the term power set! This whole thing feels like a comic book adaptation of issues sixteen through eighteen. We get such brief introductions to the characters and the setup is so perfunctory that I was playing catch-up for the first half. Not that it’s super complicated or anything, everything not explained is completely obvious through context clues, I was just continually surprised by how the movie would simply reference concepts as though they were commonplace when the movie itself is making these concepts up. If I thought it was deliberate I’d call it an interesting exercise is world building, making the audience piece everything together by having the characters use professional shorthand, but I don’t think it was. Maybe there was an exposition scene that got cut.

Season 7, Episode 3, 'Super Secret Cypher Snatch'

              One last thing to say about the movie, and that’s just to briefly complain about a problem that I made up in my head. Although it’s never in question whether the house is haunted or not, Dr. Barrett is perpetually suspicious of the two psychics, especially Tanner. McDowell had so little to do during the first half of the movie that I started to suspect him of being the secret bad guy because if he wasn’t, why cast him? Barrett introduces the idea of the house as a reservoir of physic energy that Tanner was tapping into, but that could just as easily have applied to Fischer. He was the only survivor of the previous group, which also made him suspicious. Then Tanner died and wrote the letter ‘B’ as she was dying. As it turns out it she meant Belasco, but it could have just as easily meant Fischer’s first name, Benjamin.

              So in just a couple of minutes, as the three survivors seemingly left Tanner’s corpse in the chapel while they turned on the machine and then stood awkwardly outside, I whipped up a huge plot twist, where it turned out that Fischer had been using the energy of the house for his own ends all along. As a “physical” medium he could have easily caused all of the phenomenon that convinced Tanner there was a ghost of Belasco’s son. He was present for the confrontation between Barrett and Tanner that turned telekinetically violent. He was the one that Ann kept hitting on in the middle of the night. He was the one who determined the house was clean of spirits before Barrett’s equipment blew up and killed him.

              But no, turns out he was just a cowardly character who suddenly gained courage because a couple of people he didn’t much like were killed by a crazy haunted house. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the character of Ann because she’s really just there to let Dr. Barrett give exposition to someone and then be sexy on screen, but after she finds her husband’s mutilated corpse she does give up any semblance of dignity and starts begging Fischer to leave with her because they are going to die. The entire time they were having the conversation where she’s arguing they should leave, and Fischer starts being all noble and insisting he has to finish this, I kept waiting for McDowell to pause and allow his expression to relax into evil. Instead they just have a boring ending where good triumphs over evil and the two characters who had no interest in investigating the house were the only ones who survived. I was so ready to get mad at having another surprise evil character reveal as the nihilistic ending to a horror movie, and instead I got mad at a stock happy ending to a horror movie. I couldn’t even get mad about the thing I wanted to get mad about!

              It took me forever to get through ‘The Haunting.’ I took a page and a half of notes for ‘Carnival of Souls.’ This took one sitting and only a half page of notes like ‘script gets real stupid @ 32:00’ and ‘wife finds sexytimes book.’ This isn’t a complaint, by the way, I need a break from the movies I had to seriously think about. I was prepared to really like this thing for the first fifteen minutes or so, really digging the style, but then the script problems kicked in. Mind you it was still an enjoyably dumb movie, when McDowell finally cuts a bit loose in the back half I started to enjoy it again. It does have some of that 70’s nihilism, half the cast lives but they’re not very happy about it. Overall, I’d put this up there with ’13 Ghosts’ as the movie I most enjoyed watching. Tentatively recommended.