"The Legend of Hell House" (1973) d/ John Hough

In the late sixties and early seventies,  lots of folks were tuned in on the far out, such as witchcraft, ghosts, the occult, and paranormal investigation. Tonight's movie, for example, is a classic haunted house movie, full of creepy atmosphere, shadows and whispers turning to screams at midnight, and spectral, otherworldly presences up to no good, indeed,  in the gothic locale of Blenheim Palace, with familiar genre faces like Roddy MacDowall and Pamela Franklin among the ranks of the mortals setting out to endure a week inside the estate investigating the malevolent spirits who call it home. What really elevates this one above it's standard plot, besides several gripping performances from the cast,  is an engaging screenplay full of tense moments by the one and only Richard Matheson, based upon his own novel, Hell House.


Keep your hundred grand, I'd live here for free.
Mr. Deutsch hires a team of experts to spend an entire week inside the fog-enshrouded Belasco House, which has come to be known as "Hell House", and "the Mt. Everest of haunted houses", thanks to the previous failed attempts to do the same that resulted in death, disfigurement, and loss of sanity in all takers save for one: Ben Fischer (Roddy MacDowall), a physical medium who's willing to give it another try for the hundred thousand dollars that Deutsch promises anyone who survives. Also along for the ride are a young spiritual medium named Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), and a haughty disbeliever of a psychologist named Dr. Barrett (Clive Revill), who plans to use the seven day experience to disprove the existence of life after death with a bulky machine that will negate rogue electromagnetic energy, which he surmises is the true culprit behind the house's phenomena, and finally, his sexually frustrated wife, Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), who's thumbing a ride to planet Orgasmo.


Somebody pack Dr. Barrett (Clive Revill) a bibbity, he's having a rough week.
Instantly, Florence believes she's made contact with the restless spirit of Belasco's illegitimate son, Daniel, and the medium is used during readings to manifest physical phenomena like objects moving on their own and as a lightning rod for materializing ethereal presences that float in the air around her hands and face. Fischer, who's seen it all before, remains tight lipped save for several desperate warnings to everybody to vacate the premises at once, while they're still able, as evidenced by the skeptical Barrett's getting beat down with every dangerous object in the room as it hurls at him, unexplainedly. While Mrs. B repeatedly throws herself at Ben, her husband hurls accusations at Florence, while malevolently misleading poltergeists serve her up the roughest invisi-rape this side of The Entity, while hurling huge, deadly crucifixes down upon her. After Barrett runs his machine, Ben declares the house is clean, but the psychologist succumbs directly to another psychic attack, leaving only the medium and the new widow to solve the mystery of the homicidal home before they're added to its legendary body count...


"...and the music was soothing, and they all started grooving...yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!"
Whether you're talking about genre classics like William Castle's House on Haunted Hill(1959), The Haunting (1963), or tonight's entry, or even later things like Rose Red (2002) or John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987), the haunted house premise remains pretty interchangeable. Experts risk life and limb to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts for a great reward. Like I mentioned earlier, it's Matheson's meaty dialog as acted out here by the late great MacDowall, who purveyed fear in his eyes like few actors before or since, in my opinion, and even Franklin, who's always had a beautiful scream for horror movies, I think, that really sets the production apart from the rest. Director Hough, no stranger to the genre himself (Twins of Evil, Escape to Witch Mountain, The Watcher in the Woods, The Incubus, to name just a few),  handles the eerie material well, as always. Hell House earns Three Wops, and comes very highly recommended. See it if you dare...


"I'm so excited that I'm experiencing great difficulty in trying to hide it," notes Emeric Belasco (Michael Gough).

"The Stranger Within" (1974) d/Lee Philips

Normally, the notion of a made-for-television horror movie from the seventies that was written by the late, great Richard Matheson and stars Barbara Eden, still well within the realm of "Jeannie"-level sexy,  and I'd be front row and center for the next hour and a half, glued to the screen like two-sided tape on a toupee. Except, in this particular case, the end result is a lot less stiffie-inducing than one might envision; light on terror, and heavy on unintentional laughs. In Matheson's defense (and I'll always defend my favorite writers, the list of which he is no doubt very high upon), he was probably creatively nudged in the direction of a Rosemary's Baby rip-off by the TV execs, and his material might have inspired a few chills had they cast someone other than Babs to pull it off here. Less miscast is David Doyle as a hypnotist, as his scenes in Charlie's Angels would always leave me in a deep sleep that only a vision of sopping wet Cheryl Ladd climbing out of a pool could snap me out of.


"Come down to dinner, sweetheart, I made your favorite... extra salty coffee grounds."
Despite her husband David (George Grizzard) having undergone a vasectomy three years earlier, Ann (Eden) is suddenly surprised to find herself pregnant and forced to detour her successful career as a painter. David juggles feelings of jealousy and mistrust before accepting that his wife has indeed been faithful to him the entire time, and it's then that her detour takes her down Oddball Blvd, as she finds herself obsessively pouring salt over her food, chugging hot coffee, speed-reading books on sociology, and wandering off into the cold night with barely a stitch on, leaving all of the windows wide open when she is home, slapping her next painting together only to mood-swing off the handle and lash out at David in unknown languages before apologetically cuddling up next to him a few moments later. You readers of the female persuasion are snickering to yourselves, right about now...


"The baby wants to know how 'disaster movies' became so popular..."
As time passes, the titular stranger within Ann's womb grows more demanding, forcing her to eat raw coffee grounds, making her body more adept to handle cold temperatures, and leading all involved parties, including maternity doctors (Nehemiah Persoff), hypnotists (Doyle), and best friends (Joyce Van Patten), to express growing concern over her far-out schitzy condition. Eventually, the unborn is forced to possess her spirit, talking through her, to spell it all out for the dense humans in his mother's life: he is not of this world. As David finally sees her finished painting, an alien landscape as Ann described to him under the will of the infant, she carries her newborn out to a waiting army of women with infants, and they descend in blank unison towards a light in the woods, and onward to worlds unknown...


Can't blink yourself outta this one, huh, Barb?
Pregnancy often brings on a slew of irrational behavior in both parents-to-be, even if the fetus is from the same star system. I've even had a few non-preggo girlfriends over the years who went Margot Kidder-in-the-bushes nuts on a pretty regular basis, so maybe I'm not the right guy to cast the judgmental stone here, but tiptoeing into the California woods at night in a lace negligee isn't scary. Hell, that's not even TV scary. On the other hand, Ms. Eden's erratic mood swings do make for a pretty entertaining look-see if you're in the right frame of mind, but I can't help thinking I'd rather be watching her blink Major Healy into the eye of a hurricane or something. Scale-wise, a single seems like a good fit here, so approach with caution.


Not something I'd be particularly overjoyed to see outside my front door in the morning...

R.I.P. Richard Matheson

02/20/26-06/24/13

"Dead of Night"(1977)d/Dan Curtis

I shouldn't have to tell you how rad it was being a kid in the 1970's with Dan Curtis(Dark Shadows,Night Stalker,Trilogy of Terror,Burnt Offerings,etc.) churning out ample made-for-television horror pics, but I think I just did anyway, so we've got that covered.This particular entry,sharing name only with another Curtis pilot from 1969 was a pilot for a proposed anthology series that aired in March of '77.Horror anthologies are a lot like lengths of chain,in that they're only as effective as the weakest link therein.Of course, when you've got horror author extraordinaire,Richard Matheson(who wrote the two standout stories here and penned the screenplay from a Jack Finney story for the other) sitting at the typewriter, chances are, you're gonna make out alright in the end.Though this is one of his lesser known pieces,it remains surprisingly effective for the most part,and is an enjoyable 75 minute ride of reminiscence to the days when horror was,indeed,king,even on the small screen,and Curtis was one of its biggest proponents.I vividly remember quite a few goosebumps this one sent under my footie pajamas back then.

Ed Begley Jr. plus 1926 Jordan Playboy divided by slip in the time continuum still equals not scary.
The first tale,"Second Chance",although an otherwise interesting story for sure,is the weakest of the three in knocking horri-balls outta the park.Ed Begley,Jr. restores a vintage 1926 Jordan Playboy to original showroom condition and while taking her for a leisurely spin,he drives right through a pesky slip in the time continuum and finds himself in 1926.While walking around his town some fifty years in the past,someone seemingly steals his car,forcing him to walk back to the present time.Gotta hate when that happens.His girlfriend's grandfather surprises him with the prospect of...a rusty 1926 Jordan Playboy in his garage that he can restore and have if he allows the old man one more ride in her.Are you shaking in your booties yet? Yeah,me neither. Next.
"No Such Thing as a Vampire" is an atmospheric gothic piece(Curtis' bread and butter,if ya didn't know)where we find Patrick Macnee as a wealthy nobleman whose wife is being drained nightly by an unseen bloodsucker.When he calls in a skeptical friend of the family for help,all is not as it seems in the spacious mansion,leading the viewer to an unexpectedly satisfying twist ending as only Matheson can deliver.Much,much better.

On Patrick's wife Horst set his aim,but Elisha had a different stake to claim.
The final story,"Bobby",is my favorite of the three and the one I have the fondest memories of,from watching as a wee mediterranean.Joan Hackett,who's lost her son in a drowning "accident",turns to the blackest of arts to restore life in her beloved child,whose body was never found.When she gets what she asks for,and her son appears on the doorstep,still soaking wet,she unwittingly sets a dark game of cat and mouse into play,where her son stalks her all over the house amidst a brutal thunderstorm.The lightning offsets the shadowy darkness of the huge estate,the tension building to a crescendo in unison with the violent storm outside as Bobby reveals a terrible secret.Her son killed himself rather than live with her,and not wanting to return to the land of the living,sent a demon instead!And not just any demon,we're talking the creepiest of demonic midgets here.If you're one of those people who get freaked out by little people in the first place,expect your skin to crawl right off the bone by the climax of this one.Cough,cough...Skittles.

Demonic midgets?Phew,that's just blowing the lid off the creepometer over here.
Although this pilot went the same way as Curtis' "The Norliss Tapes"(1973)(which we'll be dissecting shortly,little brothers),it packs enough thrills in the second two-thirds to merit at least a few viewings,for sure.Though we lost Curtis to a brain tumor three years ago,at the age of 78,his vast body of work for both the big and small screen remains at our disposal and will continue to terrify and entertain horror fans for decades to come.He'll always be a favorite director of mine,and this entry is a fine example of his handiwork.On the glorious scale du Wop,it merits a very satisfactory:

Ahem.You see that, Skittles?