The Legend of Hell House
(1973)
In comparison to this trio, The Legend of Hell House is something of a throwback; its slightly
stagey tone, and cobwebbed production values have much more in common with
Hammer than the decade’s incoming new wave of horror. The characters are stock
types and the cast is at least half-comprised of faces you’d consider
traditional choices (stage actor Clive Revill; Roddy McDowall, whose rare
appearances in the genre belie the feeling that he could be a natural successor
to the likes of Vincent Price and Peter Cushing). Director John Hough, an ITC
veteran, worked on The Avengers
before moving into films; his sophomore effort was Hammer’s Twins of Evil (a guide to the general
sensibility showing here). Cinematographer Alan Hume was both a veteran of The Avengers and numerous Carry On… films, and several of the
small cast (Peter Bowles, Michael Gough, Ronald Culver) and producer Albert
Fennell worked on the series too. This is a film produced out of the background
of traditional British film and television; it was never going to be ground-breaking.
And yet Hell House
ought to be seen as a post-Hammer piece, with one foot trailing in the past as
it nurses a contemporary setting and approach to its subject matter. As such, it distinguishes itself from typical Hammer or Amicus fare (be it period vampire movies or portmanteaus) in certain significant respects .
Prolific writer Richard Matheson provided the screenplay, based on his novel Hell House. He also wrote the screen
version of The Devil Rides Out, five
years earlier. There are some tonal similarities between the two films, but Devil’s main claim to fame, as good as it
is, comes from the twist of casting Christopher Lee as the hero. The
investigation of a haunted house formed the basis for the earlier (and much better
regarded) The Haunting (1963), itself
based on the 1959 novel The Haunting of
Hill House. Nigel Kneale’s The Stone
Tape, made by the BBC in 1972, took a low-key, no-frills approach to
investigating psychic phenomena (although it wasn’t quite so restrained in some
of its characters’ reactions). So it’s not as if this was fresh territory. And Matheson
has little interest in the rigours of scientific inquiry, merely the trappings;
his language is rarely more than jargon (be it physics or supernatural).
But the semblance of verisimilitude goes a long way. The
subtitled reminders of time and date punctuate each incident at the house,
lending the appearance of a scientifically documented, procedural approach. It
also serves to heighten the atmosphere; every time we are updated, we expect an
event to occur imminently, even if one does not (Stanley Kubrick would employ
this device to surreal effect in The
Shining). And the sound design of the film is a clever and creepy, courtesy
of former BBC Radiophonic Workshop co-conspirators Delia Derbyshire and Brian
Hodgson (surely an influence on John Carpenter). The divide between sound
effects and music is never all together clear and their sonic contributions are
immeasurably important in punctuating otherwise fairly hackneyed, or even
slightly silly, signs of spooks (slamming doors, smashing crockery, gusting
winds). The ominous electronic heartbeat that introduces us to the house
informs us of both its living nature and the repressed sexuality that will
drive events.
Admittedly, anyone discovering Hell House today will probably level the charge that it isn’t
very scary. I’d be hard-pressed to dispute that the attack on
Florence by a possessed moggy is anything less than unintentionally funny. But,
when it comes to the requirement for palpable scares, I may have different
criteria for judging horror movies to others. It’s a genre I tend to approach
selectively (such that certain subgenres will find me. If the premise is a
strong one, the horror need not be overt; the aforementioned The Wicker Man is a good example of
this. Hell House is unlikely to have
you on the edge of your seat, but there’s something very seductive about the
psychic investigation format, the faux-realism of the date and time stamps informing
us of the team’s progress, the trad-horror trappings of a gothic mansion
besieged by billowing fog/dry ice and the ominous electronica on the soundtrack.
These elements furnish it with the glow of a movie that could have only been
produced at this point in time and, depending on your disposition, you will
just as feasibly embrace the result as ridicule it.
And the counterbalance to potential disappointment over the
lack of frights is that the film is enormous fun. From the rudimentary
poltergeist effects to the dedicated investigators assuming expectedly
adversarial roles based on their disciplines, Hell House manoeuvres through familiar territory to a thoroughly
daft final reveal.
At the request of a dying millionaire, physicist Lionel
Barrett (Revill) investigates a famous haunted house that was once lived in by
depraved “Roaring Giant” Emeric Belasco. Barrett’s wife Edith (Gayle
Hunnicutt), mental medium Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) and physical medium
Ben Fisher (Roddy McDowell) accompany him. Each will be paid £100,000 for their
troubles, but they have a limited period in which to assess the house (the five
days leading up to Christmas – a curious choice as there is no apparent
relevance in the film, although it seems there is in the book). Fisher is the
only survivor of a previous investigation in which eight people died.
The oppositions are established almost immediately. Lionel,
the scientist, appears to be the lead, the her-type, despite being sceptical of
theories concerning “surviving
personalities” and “controlled
multiple hauntings” as suggested by Florence, the second lead. He does not
deny the effects of the phenomena (be it the movement of physical objects or
ectoplasm – which he pronounces as the organic externalisation of Florence’s
thoughts) but claims that it amounts to “mindless,
directionless power” of an electromagnetic nature. He’s even brought a
whacking great machine with him, which, once assembled, will suck all the
unwanted energy from the mansion. During the early stages Ben takes a back seat
to the debate on beliefs, while Edith seems like a fourth wheel.
So one of the pleasures of the film is that expectations
concerning the characters are subverted. We expect either Lionel or Florence to
be proved correct, so the eventual reveal that both are wrong comes as a
surprise. And it may not be a twist quite of Psycho proportions, but I doubt that anyone going in would expect
the survivors to be Ben and Edith. Ben stands out as reticent, fearful, bookish
and bespectacled (with milk bottle goggles that enlarge his eyes significantly);
a weakling. He’s exactly the sort of character ripe for a nasty demise before
the first act is over. And the stirrings of repressed sexual desire in Edith
make her a similar likely target (any woman getting all sexy doesn’t usually
stand a chance).
But it turns out that Lionel is not just scientifically
detached, he is also emotionally remote (he slumbers while Edith lies awake, her
desires unsatisfied). His inability to entertain ideas outside of his comfort
zone ultimate leads to his death. His reaction to the machine registering
energy once more (“I don’t accept this. I
do not accept this”) is the character’s signature moment, and the last
thing he says. You wonder that he allowed his wife to join the party, and the
initial reluctance he expresses in this regard is one of the few moments that
sets his blinkeredness in relief. Florence is afflicted in a different way, too
open and credulous towards what she believes the spirits are telling her until
it is too late. It’s a refreshing twist that the battered underdog (Ben)
emerges as the hero, and not by proving he is a man through some clichéd macho
feat but by confronting his fears.
Revill brings an air of starchy certainty to Lionel, quite
unlike the fun he was clearly having in Modesty
Blaise a few years earlier. His shock at the sight of Ann flaunting herself
at Ben is the one point where he shows weakness; his Achilles’ Heel. Matheson’s
novel was more pronounced in exposing the Barretts’ marriage problems (Lionel
had directed all his passion into his work, was afflicted with a limp as a
result of polio and was impotent), as it was generally with the libidinousness.
As the adaptor, Matheson removed much of the overt sexual content (citing
producer Stanley Chase’s objection that orgies would seem passé to a modern
audience; this seems a remarkably clueless assumption, although that’s not
unknown with producers). It’s questionable whether the film suffers from this
restraint (it was a PG in the US, somewhat surprisingly - although, maybe not
given the general slackness in censorship at that time - and an X in the UK). A
strong erotic undercurrent runs throughout; making it more overt might well
have unbalanced it as much as the indiscriminate sex and nudity did in the
later Hammer fare.
Florence’s invitation to (what she believes to be) the
spirit of Belasco’s son to make use of her is unsettling enough without the
need to go as far as the novel. Franklin’s performance is easily the standout;
she’s a beguiling presence, so earnest and commanding that you believe her
until told otherwise. She made her debut in another ghost story, the masterful The Innocents, 12 years earlier. Her
best-known role came as the freethinking Sandy in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but she gave up acting at the
beginning of the ‘80s after becoming trapped in an endless cycle of crappy US
TV series. It’s a great shame, as the promise of her early work wouldn’t have
been overlooked so easily today; she’d most likely have earned Kate Winslet
roles and status. The most haunting moments of Hell House are the ones featuring her vocally augmented channelling
and her unnerving, unhinged laughter following her carnal encounter with the
spirit.
Florence: I don’t know you people. Why are you here?
It does no good. Nothing changes. Nothing. Get out or I’ll hurt you. I can’t
help myself. God damn you, you filthy sons of bitches. God damn you. I don’t
want to hurt you but I must get out of this house. I must, before I kill you
all.
Anyone familiar with Orbital’s Middle of Nowhere album will recognise the first half of that quote, sampled on the track I Don’t Know You People. Florence’s is the film’s first death (although both come during the final act) and, even given her freak-out attempt to destroy the machine, it comes as a shock (“She had to destroy my beliefs, before they destroyed her”).
Ann: You… me… that girl… Lionel… all together…
naked… drunk… clutching… sweating… biting…
Ann brings with her the lustiest reaction to the house, beginning
with her discovery of an array of erotic literature and continuing with her
imagining of a copulating statue of Pan coming to life. It isn’t long before
she’s appearing to poor impassive Ben (twice) begging for some action. The
effectiveness of these scenes come largely from Hunnicutt’s bewitched playing,
but it’s unfortunate that her character is purely reactive; we know nothing of
her background or interests, she’s defined purely by Lionel and the sexual
yearnings he fails to satisfy. Hunnicutt is astutely cast, with the kind of Bond girl looks that belie her acting
skills and emphasise Lionel’s myopia and single-mindedness. Like Franklin, she
was never rewarded with the kinds of parts she deserved, but a decade later
made for a memorable Irene Adler opposite Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes.
Florence: Who the hell do you think you are, you bastard? You might have been hot stuff when you were fifteen, but now you’re shit!
And then there’s the wonderful Roddy McDowall. He’s an endlessly watchable actor, his ubiquity in American TV of the ‘60s and ‘70s standing as an unfair stigma against his charisma and talent. And he’s a shrewd choice for the unassuming hero, frequently typecast as untrustworthy and/or spineless and possessed of an enduringly fey asexuality that still lends him boyishness in his mid-40s. McDowall’s screen history informs us that he won’t survive the house. But it also makes the sight of Ann (and Florence) repeatedly offering herself to him, to an uncomprehending response, knowingly amusing.
Ben: The house tried to kill me. It almost succeeded.
Ben’s role initially is one of the ill-fated prophet of
doom. His warning to Florence proves accurate (“You’re the one who should leave this house. You’re the one who’s being
used, not me”). That he is withholding his abilities as protection suggests
that, when he inevitably opens himself up, something nasty awaits. Indeed,
there’s a scene where he does so (prior to the clearing) having been goaded by
Lionel who accuses him of taking the money and running; he screams in terror
and writhes in agony in front of a hearth.
McDowell has that rare ability to tread the border between seriousness and camp, and he straddles the divide in an enormously enjoyable fashion here. His salvo aimed to provoke Belasco at the climax, decrying him as a “funny little dried up bastard” and calling his mother a whore, as gusts of supernatural wind blowing him across the mansion’s church, is a scream. Elsewhere you hang on his every word as he recounts what happened in the house 20 years before. Outside of his latex-shrouded performances in the Planet of the Apes films, this would be his best role until he playing Peter Vincent in the late ‘80s Fright Night movies.
Ben: Drug addiction, alcoholism, sadism, bestiality, mutilation, murder, vampirism, necrophilia, cannibalism, not to mention a gamut of sexual goodies. Shall I go on?
Revisiting Hell House,
it’s a little surprising just how undefined the activities that went on in the
house remain. We learn that 27 bodies were found when it was opened up in 1929
(it was built in 1919), Belasco’s not among them. Matheson leaves most of the
details to the imagination. One might argue that the less is more approach
yields dividends, and Hough tends to this method; he frequently shows
characters’ reactions rather than what they see or experience. But there’s a
lingering feeling that we don’t learn enough of Belasco to allow us to
understand how he became such a demonic force, certainly not when we’re finally
informed of his rather unlikely motivating force. When Ann speaks of “all that debauchery and vice”, you can
be sure that a modern version wouldn’t miss the chance to leap into a
flashback, or show Ann in an ecstatic reverie as she perceives herself becoming
a part of those events. Most comments from those familiar with the novel attest
to its copious sex and violence; it’s more than possible that any filmmaker
remaking the movie, aside from relocating it to the novel’s New England
setting, would over-indulge those elements to the point of missing the wood for
the trees. And there are those who consider the book guilty of this anyway, that
it might have been better served by a little restraint. Apparently Matheson came
round to the film, recognising its merits rather than bemoaning how it fell
short of his novel (to be fair to him, he put the blame on his own choices
rather than Hough’s direction).
And a version more tonally in line with the source material unfortunately
wouldn’t change the ending, which sucks all the air out of the room. We learn
that motivating factor for Belasco’s monstrous behaviour (including his
penchant for crippling his victims) was his diminutive size. He wasn’t even
five foot tall and “so despised his own
shortness that he had both his legs cut off”, replacing them with
prostheses. Maybe it works better on the page, but the sight of horror veteran
Michael Gough playing a corpse, glass of wine in hand, is underwhelming even without his bizarre
pathology.
In contrast, I rather like the daffy pseudo-science explanation
whereby his soul resides within led-lined walls so as to shelter from the
intrusive device he foresaw would one day enter the house. Ben charitably
credits both Lionel and Florence with being half right in their theories. It
wasn’t a mindless force or multiple
hauntings; it was one (and Lionel was correct in terms of the efficacy of his
machine). I’ve seen it suggested that the cat shown at the end indicates that
Belasco’s spirit is still at large but, since we already saw a possessed cat
meet a messy end, I suspect it’s just there for aesthetic purposes (unless Belasco
possessed any feline in the surrounding area). For Matheson’s purposes,
electro-magnetic radiation is as verifiable in psychic phenomena as it is in
the physical world. It’s at least a plausible touch that the humans need to
leave the building when the machine is switched on.
Although the story of
this film is fictitious the events depicted involving psychic phenomena are not
only within the bounds of possibility, but could also well be true. (Tom Corbett
– Clairvoyant and Psychic Consultant to European Royalty)
The opening invitation, asking the audience to see the
events as plausible, looks like Matheson is straight-up taking the piss (Tom
Corbett is also the name of a ‘50s science fiction hero, a “space cadet”), but
as recently as 1996 he attested that all the happenings in the book were based
on actual occurrences. It’s always useful to be able to cite sources to justify
artistic licence because, as we have noted, the last thing Matheson really seems
to care about is his tale standing up to rigorous analysis; it’s all about the
appearance (which makes it a wonder he gave his legless antagonist a pass). Hence
he throws in occasionally quotations from the Bible, to add an air of ancient
attestation to the evil at work (“If
thine eye offend thee, pluck it out”).
If it weren’t that Hough’s direction
carries with it the artifice of Hammer, during the opening scenes we might have
been fooled into thinking this was a serious-minded exploration of strange
phenomena. The approach to recording and analysing evidence has that air (and
the scene where ectoplasm is produced has an irresistible matter-of-factness to
it), but unlike the ambiguity of The
Haunting, Hell House quickly
embraces the creative potential of the haunted house phenomenon. Anyone hoping
for something more considered would probably take as big a knock from what
transpires as those who expect The
Prestige to deliver the ultimate in stage sleight of hand. It would fair to
say that Matheson doesn’t need to convince anyone; he’s an author so telling a
good yarn comes first.
The common assumption seems to be that Matheson based
Belasco on Aleister Crowley, but I haven’t seen this substantiated. De Sade
certainly seems to be in there, but Matheson’s character could probably take in
any historical figure who took pride in depravity and debauchery. Crowley is
often associated with the number 23 (unfortunately a number now forever
entwined with Jim Carrey), and those interested in the subject can find the
background to its significance with a quick Google search. Or pick up Robert
Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger for a
thoroughly good read. Ever since reading about it, instances of 23 in movies
invariably catch my attention. If they weren’t so inexhaustible, I’d probably
document them; as it is, you’ll probably find one cropping up least once in any
given film. Here, the less than spectacular 8.23am appears on one of the
subtitles; more markedly, Belasco’s date of birth is 23 March 1879 (in the real
world, production began on 23 October 1972 and the German Blu-ray release was
23 March 2012).
Hough and Matheson don’t waste their time getting to the
meat; Hell House comes in at a little
over 90 minutes. Stylstically too, Hough’s approach tends to the
straightforward. He favours low angles, employing a wide-angle lens to increase
the sense of exaggeration and heightened reality (particularly effective with
the exterior shots). Establishing long shots are sometimes used to promote the
sense of the team being watched by an unseen force. Hough is also fond of
composing close-ups with his actors either side of the frame; he stages an
entire conversation between Lionel and Ben this way, and the effect is striking
and intimate. Hough’s steady approach means that the occasional flourish (a
corridor spinning as Florence runs along it; Florence in a trance, a chiaroscuro
effect picking out her eyes; copulating shadows on a bedroom ceiling) stands
out. On the downside, he’s unable to lift the standard poltergeist effects
out-of-the-ordinary. Hough would go on to direct a number of live-action Disney
movies during the ‘70s and early ‘80s but his career never really took off.
The Legend of Hell
House is best viewed as an engaging, spirited product of its time. Any
comparisons with its more illustrious horror bedfellows of 1973 will find it wanting,
but it has an energy undimmed by the passing years. It never falls victim to
the repetitions and sometime tedium of many of the later Hammer films, and even
offers the occasional surprise in terms of character fates and nuances. Hell House more than deserves its place
amongst the more celebrated haunted house movies.
Spookily enough, the news of Richard Matheson’s passing has
been announced as I complete this review; I can feel the ectoplasm leaking from
my fingertips as I type. The Guardian obituary dismisses the film as “lacklustre” but I’d urge you to make
your own thorough investigation.
