Legend of Hell House, The (1973) d. John Hough (UK)
In the pantheon of top-notch haunted house movies, this fine, moody offering ranks just below Robert Wise’s outstanding The Haunting, to which it owes a great debt. The familiar premise concerns a team of spiritual sleuths – a scientist, his wife, and two mediums – assigned to investigate Belasco House (aka “Hell House”) to prove (or disprove) the notion of life after death. However, unlike the ambiguity of Shirley Jackson’s story or the subsequent 1963 film version, Richard Matheson’s screenplay (adapted from his 1971 novel Hell House) elects to make the existence of the malevolent presence within the so-called “Mount Everest of haunted houses” undeniably explicit. According to Matheson, his personal dictate was “I’m going to do a haunted house story where you damn well know it’s haunted and there’s no question in your mind.”
