‘For the sake of your sanity, pray it isn’t true!’
The Legend of Hell Home is a 1973 British supernatural horror movie directed by John Hough (Twins of Evil; Incubus; American Gothic) from a screenplay by writer Richard Matheson (The Satan Rides Out; I Am Legend; The Unimaginable Shrinking Man), primarily based on his personal novel Hell Home.
The film stars Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill, and Gayle Hunnicutt. The position of Belasco was performed by an uncredited Michael Gough.
The Legend of Hell Home is one in every of solely two productions of James H. Nicholson after his departure from American Worldwide Footage (AIP) – an organization he had run, together with Samuel Z. Arkoff, since 1954. Matheson’s screenplay drastically decreased among the extra excessive parts of the novel. Within the unique novel, the home was positioned in Maine, in the US, and the investigative workforce consists of People.
The moody, largely digital soundtrack rating was composed by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson of Electrophon Ltd, with uncredited additions by Dudley Simpson.
Plot:
A bunch of psychic investigators metal their nerves and make prepared to go to Hell Home, an outdated haunted mansion that has already seen off one workforce of researchers. Coming into its foreboding partitions, they decide to disclose the home’s secrets and techniques – however they should broach the very limits of insanity earlier than they achieve this…
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Evaluations:
“The Legend of Hill Home is all the higher then for its incongruity; it doesn’t fairly sit with the extra staid strains of Hammer nor the exploitation increase about to blossom (and if The Exorcist isn’t exploitation, it positive as hell was marketed as such). As a substitute, it merely stands as top-of-the-line haunted home movies of its period, unencumbered by traits passing and coming.” Every day Useless
“With nice environment and a forged of solely 4 principal gamers, this can be a advantageous instance of well-executed horror completed with the naked necessities. The forged is great, and though McDowall tends to be hammy at instances, it’s nonetheless a worthy credit score to his fantasy résumé.” DVD Drive-In
“The Legend of Hell Home is commonly considered an excellent, not nice movie, and which will in the end, be as a result of it has the braveness of its convictions. Stands by its thesis, and doesn’t succumb to the viewers want to be blown away. How uncommon, and the way great.” John Kenneth Muir, Horror Movies of the Nineteen Seventies
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” …regardless of some atmospheric sequences, the movie doesn’t overcome the script’s failure to determine the required battle between science and occultism, relying as an alternative on a mechanical succession of spectacularly staged shocks.” The Aurum Movie Encyclopedia: Horror
“This acclaimed British manufacturing is a terrific, albeit imperfect, haunted home movie. Chief among the many appeals is the threatening environment, which rises and thickens inside minutes of the opening. Heavy use of close-ups, with few establishing pictures, creates a really feel of claustrophobia … To me, solely The Haunting is superior.” David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers
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“This unusually atmospheric movie (within the league of The Haunting) is tense all through beneath John Hough’s course, with a number of twists of plot. It isn’t the harrowing expertise of Matheson’s excellent guide, however it comes as shut as a film can.” John Stanley, Creature Options
“The topic of ghosts is approached in an affordable, rational method, and it serves to each fascinate and decrease our guard as viewers — issues are much less horrifying once we suppose we perceive them. It’s right here, although, the place the movie and director John Hough (Twins of Evil) unleash their biggest trick but by terrifying and educating us anew.” Movie College Rejects
“Trivialising the theme, saddled with some horrible dialogue, needlessly tricked out with loads of countdown-style dates, it flounders into innocuous routine. Pamela Franklin, nevertheless, offers a convincing because the ‘psychological medium’.” David Pirie, The Time Out Movie Information
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“It’s not the originality that makes it right here, as we’ve seen these techniques in numerous different films. It’s the lethal critical conviction with which the actors and director strategy their process that makes these scenes plausible and, subsequently, suitably horrifying. The cautious pacing permits us the posh of savoring every small and well-placed horrifying second, leisurely making ready us for the horrors to come back.” Couch Gothic
“The anticlimax is helped by the intelligent casting of Michael Gough, whose display screen picture from Horrors of the Black Museum to The Corpse corresponds precisely with what we’re advised of Belasco. The movie is entertaining, generally conceptually daring, however its cool, scientific detective story mitigates in opposition to irrational worry.” Kim Newman, Nightmare Films
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“This unnerving mixture of old style haunted home methods with fashionable scientific jargon and (comparatively gentle) intercourse and violence makes for a memorable, atmospheric expertise. The set-up might be nothing new to viewers of The Haunting, however Matheson’s story weaves in some uncommon instructions and positively layers on the chills, culminating in a memorably odd finale.” Mondo Digital
“Hough does a creditable job in sustaining viewer consideration throughout the working time, regardless of the script throwing in a number of moments of ridiculousness.” John Hamilton, X-Cert: The British Unbiased Horror Movie: 1971 – 1983
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“As soon as the group’s inside the home – a marvellously well-realized place – director Hough creates a darkish, threatening atmopshere. By requirements of the time set by The Exorcist, the motion is relatively inoffensive, however that is top-drawer, well-acted stuff. The digital rating by Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire provides quite a bit.” Mike Mayo, The Horror Present Information
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“Crisply directed by John Hough, though with a propensity to overuse his digital camera and lenses, that is nonetheless the outdated haunted home horror film with a advantageous gloss and wonderful particular results. It’s all very eerie within the custom and solely labours when it begins to clarify the psychic phenomena in layman’s phrases. Till then it’s fairly chilling with some very creditable tense moments.” Alan Frank, The Horror Movie Handbook
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“One of the absorbing, goose-fleshing and mind-pleasing ghost breaker yarns on movie.” Judith Crist, 1977
“Whereas director John Hough does a advantageous job with the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night elements of the fabric, he fails to breathe any life into Richard Matheson’s woefully underdeveloped screenplay.” TV Information
” …the movie stays at coronary heart totally plodding and unimaginative. Hell Home itself is nearly startingly clichéd and the performances by no means persuade, making the consequence stilted and completely unpersuasive. To be honest to the filmmakers although, Matheson’s script itself was lower than his normal excessive commonplace.” David Pirie, A New Heritage of Horror
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