Review – The Legend of Hell House

Normally I’m not all that big a fan of ghost stories, and the haunted house sub-genre generally amuses me even less than most. But for some reason lately I’ve been on a real spook-house kick, so this classic was a natural selection. Richard Matheson wrote both the source novel and the screenplay, so it should come as no surprise that the latter follows the former rather closely. Of course, the book had a lot more explicit sex and violence, but I suspect that’s mostly because in the early 1970s writers could get away with a lot of things that filmmakers couldn’t. Though I’m one of the world’s biggest fans of understated horror flicks that rely on script and atmosphere rather than flashy effects, I have to admit that I would have liked to have seen a little more of the stuff Matheson packed into the novel. The end is at least a little weak, and I didn’t think the graphic cat death served much of a purpose. That aside, this is a fine example of its era and milieu. Mildly amusing