A rich millionaire hires a team of four paranormal investigators to seek evidence of life after death in the infamous Belasco family mansion, also known as Hell House. While previous visitors to the house have all died, with exception of one Benjamin Fisher, the new team including Fisher himself, are all eager to communicate with any supernatural entities that may exist in the sprawling mansion. And despite their usually calm collected demeanors they eventually get what they ask for.
Science works best with dim red mood lighting...
The Legend of Hell House is one of the early versions of a whole line of similar haunted house movies. All with teams of scientists and/or psychics who feel the need to lock themselves up with evil spirits, knowing full well of the history of such places and the people who failed to survive them. It’s almost a take-off of the 1963 version of The Haunting which involves the very similar Hill House and a very similar evil spirit.
It looks like TSA confiscated another pair of fingernail clippers
In addition there are several famous scenes in this movie, one that is probably most memorable today from Scary Movie 2, which was essentially a spoof on all prior haunted house movies. The scene with the possessed cat which comically attacks Pamela Franklin who plays the psychic Florence Tanner and looks remarkably similar to Anna Faris, is by far one of the highlight WTF moments.
"Listen, when I said I was a free spirit, I didn't mean free to have sex with spirits... on second thought..."
In addition, the evil spirit of Hell House is not only capable of possessing cats, but is also a notorious sex fiend. In fact, early in the movie we learn of master Belasco’s vile acts of debauchery as demonstrated in the following quote:
Ann Barrett: What did he do to make this house so evil, Mr. Fischer?
Benjamin Fischer: Drug addiction, alcoholism, sadism, beastiality, mutilation, murder, vampirism, necrophilia, cannibalism, not to mention a gamut of sexual goodies. Shall I go on?
Roddy finally gets a shot at his dream job - Boob Inspector
And with this foreshadowing in mind, it eventually leads to Belasco’s ghost putting the moves on both women of the house. However, the main ghost on mortal scene comes when it somehow convinces Ms. Tanner to consensual sex in order to free himself from the confines of the home… oh man, what a horny scumbag. And for those who’ve seen Scary Movie 2, you’ll remember that this is also spoofed brilliantly by Tory Spelling.
"Well here's your problem. Someone let God out of the machine..."
While The Legend of Hell House is a must see for any fan of haunted house/paranormal movies, the ending was fairly lame considering that I don’t feel Belasco put up much of fight during the last stand-off, and was basically defeated with mere insults. I mean sheesh, if hurting a ghost’s feelings is all it takes to exorcise a haunted house, then we need to get someone like Bill O’Reilly in on the ghost hunting business.
Overall, on the quirky evil spirit scare’o-meter scale, I give The Legend of Hell House 6 out of 10 screams in the night.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
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Nice to see this HELL HOUSE get reviewed, as it seems to be forgotten. I’d probably give it a “7″; I think it’s a satisfying little horror film, less pretentious than THE HAUNTING. I agree that the ending is on the lame side.
Rick29,
While I haven’t seen the original “The Haunting” yet, I did see the remake which I imagine isn’t as good. But I think you are probably right in that Hell House often gets overshadowed by The Haunting and other haunted house movies like The Changeling. If only they had come up with a better ending then I think history would have been reversed and this Hell House would be the standard for haunted house movies.