The Legend of Hell House (1973)
The Legend of Hell House (1973), directed by John Hough.
Having now read Richard Matheson's Hell House I wanted to give this adaptation another try. I like it better than before, understanding more of each character's backstory and inner life. It seems to me that all of the leads read the book and were working from the text.
Unfortunately the audience doesn't have that resource while watching and without it the plot lacks a certain amount of "get up and go". I think some voice-over narration of thoughts would have helped, as was used to good effect in The Innocents (1961) and The Haunting (1963).
Actors, director and photography are all fine, so I think responsibility must fall on Matheson's screenplay, closely following his book. Maybe too closely? Books and movies ought to be different things. The little genre of "psychic investigators in the haunted house" needs more plot design than "they go into the house and various strange things happen".
Our cast:
Young Pamela Franklin is a medium, rewritten from the book where she is older and more glamorous, an ex-actress who has become a Christian Spiritualist (a real thing), attempting save souls stuck between Here and There. The actress had a career in thriller roles, previously seen in The Innocents (1961), The Nanny (1965), The Night of the Following Day (1968) and And Soon the Darkness (1970),
We're used to seeing Roddy McDowall as somewhat eccentric but here he dials it back as another medium who was the sole survivor of an earlier attempt to investigate the House. You can see his wheels turning, thinking thoughts he doesn't care to share because -- what's the point?
Clive Revill is an often seen face but seldom a lead. He is the scientist bringing in loads of apparatus. He believes psychic forces are real but not in ghosts or survival after death, putting him in conflict with others on the team.
Gayle Hunnicutt is his wife, buttoned up and sexually repressed until she enters the House. The really glamorous woman in the cast (again, contrary to the book) the actress is a beauty who never made it big. I remember her best as Irene Adler to Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes.
This is an opportunity to straighten out the catalog of "haunting" books and films which has often confused me:
House On Haunted Hill (1959) is William Castle's fun fright fest with Vincent Price. From an original screenplay, influential for later films: guests paid if they dare to stay all night in the haunted mansion.
The Innocents (1961) is the most literary of these films, based on a classic: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. A governess suspects a malign influence by the dead on two children.
The Haunting (1963) is an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Superb in it's own right and a foundation work for "scientists and the supernatural".
The Haunted Palace (1963), despite the title, is not really in this genre. It is an adaptation of "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" by HP Lovecraft, directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price as part of their "Poe" cycle, despite the authorship.
Our current film The Legend of Hell House (1973) is based on Richard Matheson's Hell House and his own screenplay. It is clear that his book is meant as a companion to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and perhaps The Haunting (1963) made from that.
The Haunting (1999) is credited as a remake of The Haunting (1963) and Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, but I think the influence of The Legend of Hell House (1973) is very strong, particularly in the opulence of the mansion.
House on Haunted Hill (1999) is a remake of the 1959 film. It is cheezy in a 90s sense the way the original was cheezy in a 50s sense.
Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007), unseen by me, is a poorly received sequel to the film above.
The Haunting of Hill House (2018) is a Netflix series said to be a loose remake of Jackson's novel.
Much of the previous crew return for another series, The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), said to be a treatment of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
On psychic investigations: I always imagined "spirit" to be of another dimension or reality only mysteriously intersecting our own. But no: spiritualists really believe spirit is just an attenuated form of matter, which makes sense of all that scientific apparatus.
The screenplay follows the book closely, dialing back some sex and violence. Filmed in sequence, our characters are not quite as beat up in the film as in the text.
Photographed by Alan Hume -- Eye of the Needle (1981), Return of the Jedi (1983), Lifeforce (1985), and three Roger Moore 007 films.
The spooky electronic score suggests wind, breathing, and heartbeats.
Available on Blu-ray from Shout Factory. Pamela Franklin provides a light, somewhat intermittent commentary on her memories of the production.
Contrary to my presumption above, she says she didn't read the book before playing the character, wanting a fresh, uninfluenced approach.
