Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

If you have fond memories of Watcher in the Woods, I have just the ticket for you. British director John Hough (Watcher in the Woods, The Incubus, American Gothic, the British TV series The Avengers) and cinematographer Alan Hume (Watcher in the Woods, Kiss of the Vampire, Return of the Jedi) team up for Hough's first Hollywood production, a 1973 adaptation of Richard Matheson's Hell House. This is the last great classic haunted house film to have not been remade into a cheesy, CGI-infested, postmodern wreck. This is also director Hough and D.P. Hume's greatest work and should not be missed by fans of the supernatural.

The Legend of Hell House (1973), not to be confused with The Haunting of Hill House, begins when a wealthy cripple who is nearing death hires three scholarly paranormal experts (a doctor and two psychics) to establish the facts regarding "survival after death." They are paid a healthy sum of British benjamins to stay in for one week and study supernatural activities at Hell House, the most feared haunted house in the world.

Because this film is a multiple-character study above all else, let's take a look at the four main characters:

New Zealand film comedian Clive Revill (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, the emperor's voice in The Empire Strikes Back) plays a rare serious role as Dr. Lionel Barrett, parapsychologist and skeptic of "surviving personalities." As the scientific brain of the bunch, Dr. Barrett serves as the ringleader, assessing the situation and keeping the mediums under scrutiny. As a parapsychologist, Barrett seems suspicious of the others because he believes that psychic energy, not ghosts, is the source of the house's strange occurrences.

Gayle Hunnicutt (Once in Paris, Turnaround) plays the repressed-housewife stereotype, Anne Barrett. Anne is the doctor's wife accompanying her spouse as he goes on this little business excursion. She is sexually-repressed by her oldschool morality system and Hell House's energy seems to liberate her hidden sexual desire, bisexuality, and curiosity. In relation to the others, the Anne character serves as the audience's "dumb-down-device" to which all the scientific mumbojumbo is explained in lamen's terms - as such, her time on screen is spent more as a distant voyeur than as a participant.

The token big-name is veteran actor Roddy McDowall (Planet of the Apes, Fright Night, Poseidon Adventure) who plays the most interesting and least-cliched character in the film, physical medium Ben Fischer. As a physical medium, Fischer has the ability to channel energy and move objects. He had previously been on a failed investigative mission to Hell House in 1953, coming out the only sane survivor of the entire investigative team. Presently, he joined Barrett's team for the money (or did he?), and he cautiously keeps himself shut down so that the energy of Hell House leaves him and his sanity alone. His brush with death in 1953 has left him a mechanical shell of his old self, and a self-built mental wall blocks out the terrible past experience.

Although the worst talent in the cast, receiving top-billing is actress Pamela Franklin (The Nanny, Necromancy) in the role of mental medium Florence Tanner. As a mental medium, Tanner is your typical psychic, holding seances and talking with ghosts and what not. A young woman and Christian-idealist, Florence Tanner is pure and innocent, approaching the strange happenings of Hell House with empathy for the spirits rather than terror of them. Florence theorizes that Hell House is haunted by "multiple personalities" trapped and led by a tyrannizing super-ghost. She is a mother-figure and lover to one such trapped specter...

These four main characters hold the different themes of The Legend of Hell House together, and each character's respective theme is significantly magnified by the supernatural energy of Hell House: for the doctor, science vs. the unknown and mortality; for Anne, sexual-repression and "real world" morality in a very unreal place; for Ben Fischer, alienation and self-preservation; for Florence Tanner, innocence and over-optimism. The clash of personalities and the mistrust between characters is what ultimately makes the film work. Virtually every line of dialog has a secondary motive and the actors pick up very well on this. We see the doubt and mistrust on the characters' faces and clearly understand what they're thinking and why. Most of the fun of The Legend of Hell House is watching the scholars and their opposing views dramatically clash, unsaid alliances form, and infinite mistrust separating them when they must be unified in order to solve Hell House's riddle.

The Legend of Hell House is about as spooky as haunted house films get - subtle Moog scoring and D.P. Alan Hume's exceptional photography see to that. The camera explores the romantic environment, resting in odd places, hinting that a ghost might be watching from that very spot. The atmosphere directly recalls Mario Bava's breed of colored expressionism, or using colored lighting techniques to heighten mood. It's these elements in particular that make The Legend of Hell House the spookiest haunted house movie ever made, even better than classics like 1963's The Haunting (although Hough and Matheson owe much to that novel and movie).

There are two basic negatives that subtract half a star from my final rating. The infamous "cat scene" special effects are God-awful and seriously detract from the terror of the second half of the film. I've shown a couple of friends this picture and they say, "that movie was pretty cool, but the cat thing sucked!" The other negative is that Matheson's relatively low intelligence level shows through now and again, especially in the dialog of the Tanner character. Granted, Franklin's acting job was pretty horrible, but her lines were equally ill-fitting. These negatives are a shame, but they won't destroy your fun unless you dwell on them.

In my mind, this is the best haunted house movie out there - yes, even better than The Haunting or The Shining (and I do stress "house" for all you Polanski fanatics - I agree that the Apartment Trilogy, while not exactly about "hauntings," is untouchable). A typical haunted house movie with a slight left-handedness character-wise, The Legend of Hell House is entertaining, playful, mysterious, and just deep enough to appease critics. Pick it up if you want a spooky midnight rental and can look past a few negatives.

Oh... and don't expect to see CGI "Casper-ghosts" running around - this is a film, not a videogame.

4.5 STARS

NOTE: Despite the PG rating, there are two scenes of brief nudity (a butt and a shadowy breast) and one scene of implied intercourse. Language is tame with the occasional B-word tossed in - no big whoop. It would be borderlining between PG-13 and R if rated in today's Hollywood rating terms.



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older
Special Effects: Well at least you can't see the strings