A Return Trip to Hell House

Pamela Franklin as Florence Tanner in THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE.

Last night, thinking about the recently deceased Richard Matheson, I decided to watch John Hough's THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973) for the first time in many, many years. The only film produced by former AIP magnate James H. Nicholson after his split with Samuel Z. Arkoff, it was based on Matheson's novel HELL HOUSE, which I haven't read but is reputed to be much stronger and harsher than the PG film adaptation. Something tells me I may have reviewed it on laserdisc for VIDEO WATCHDOG back in our first decade, but my last lasting memory of seeing the film was at a preview screening in 1973. Despite a disappointing finale, there was much about the film that impressed me then, not least of all Alan Hume's almost ogreishly beautiful and odd cinematography, which makes the outside of Hell House look like Xanadu while the interiors could pass for the contents of Charles Foster Kane's snow globe after it broke and spilled all the confetti out.

The movie, as a whole, no longer works for me, but it retains a firm grip on its historical value. First and foremost, we have no better time capsule of what the mainstream horror genre was prior to the release of THE EXORCIST, which would shake the world at the end of the same year. There are some impressive premonitions of William Friedkin's film here: we get rattling tables instead of beds, loud sounds, people speaking profane words in demonic voices, evil spirits infesting a bed, images of young flesh torn by diabolic unseen hands, the sense of a girl's innocence imperilled. That innocence is projected by British actress Pamela Franklin, who had already relocated to America by this time but returned to England for this, her final British film; indeed, it would be her penultimate motion picture, followed by Bert I. Gordon's THE FOOD OF THE GODS (1976). She continued to work in American television until 1981, when she retired into private life to raise a family. Franklin was inspired casting for this film because her role here as mental medium Florence Tanner complements her debut performance as the similarly named Flora in Jack Clayton's THE INNOCENTS (1961). Both Flora and Florence are goaded by unseen presences stronger than themselves to points where their innocence is overcome, even soiled, by evil. Florence is an adult, of course, but Clive Revill's Dr. Barrett makes some reference to her as being "almost a child" (Franklin was 22 or 23 at the time of filming) and there is also something about the way she presents herself that seems priestly, not quite of this world because she's too sensitive to it and very likely untouched by men.

The film's four principals -- the others are Revill, Roddy McDowall and Gayle Hunnicutt -- all give fine performances, but Franklin alone succeeds in giving her role both as much as was written and more than was written. McDowall's physical medium Benjamin Fischer seems too self-controlled to be the man left emotionally shattered by his last visit to Hell House; Revill's Barrett is antagonistic in a way that seems natural rather than supernaturally influenced; and we don't get to know Hunnicutt's Ann Barrett well enough in her natural state before the supernatural begins to interfere with her. Florence Tanner is also the first of the characters to die -- this is no spoiler, since the DVD uses her corpse as its cover illustration -- and, once she goes, there is really not much left to the film except its disappointing parts.

John Hough received a lot of attention for his direction of this and Hammer's TWINS OF EVIL, but I really think what many people applauded as good direction in those days was good cinematography. Both films certainly look splendid, TWINS being photographed by Ken Russell's great cameraman Dick Bush. In terms of literal direction, LEGEND is a story too briskly told; it feels much too tightly cut, which cuts off the air it needed to breathe and to brood. Every change of scene signals a new date and time code at the bottom of the screen, which most viewers, I'm sure, tune out after awhile -- but it lends itself anyway to underlining every new event as important when it isn't always.

Richard Matheson also scripted this film and chose not to credit it to his pseudonym Logan Swanson, so he must have been sufficiently pleased with the outcome of working within the production's perimeters. In some ways, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE signalled the end of the British horror cinema, at least the end of its Golden Age. (THE WICKER MAN, another contender, came out later but seems almost sui generis.) Granted, there was still some cheap tinsel to come in the wake of THE EXORCIST (THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, THE DEVIL WITHIN HER, TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER, etc), but LEGEND, for all its unevenness, shows us what what great about British horror at its best; it presents us with the handiwork of some of the finest actors, technicians and locations that flourished in Britain from the late '50s through the early '70s. It's elegant and earnest, yet doomed by its own refined reticence to belong to another time when it had the right story and team to spearhead a new one.