Based on a "true" story, the film and house itself have drawn the curiosity of casual interest to devotee's of paranormal research and phenomena. Most people who have even the slightest interest in the story know that it's about George and Kathy Lutz who bought a house at 112 Ocean, 14 months after Ronald DeFeo, Jr killed 6 members of his family within it's confines. The story goes that within a few days of moving in the family began to experience strange phenomena and claimed that a spirit within the house was terrorizing them. By the 23rd day they fled the house.
The Lutz family was the subject of many television interviews, books, and critique. They stand by their belief that it was supernatural, but as the scientific method says, if you can't disprove it, that does not mean it's impossible, merely improbable. Personally, my money is on stress, hysteria, and good old fashioned denial, but we're not here to discuss fact and fiction, we're here to talk about a film.
Before I get TOO negative (yeah, it's coming) I'd like to say that Margot Kidder and James Brolin (Josh Brolin's father) both deliver convincing performances as Kathy and George Lutz. You really get the sense that they're being shaken to pieces by the film, although there is one Brolin moment that's almost reminiscent to the infamous "You're tearing me apart Lisa!" line from the awful pile of cinematic shit that is known as The Room, which nearly made me burst out loud with laughter. Rod Steiger delivers a wonderfully emotional performance as Father Delaney. It's reported that he was so unnerved and disgusted by a scene in which he had to be surrounded and slightly covered by flies that he found himself unable to eat for some time after and lost 30 pounds.
This film makes use of a gamete of gags to instill fear and suspense in the viewer, via the score, sound design, and visual gags. A room full of flies, blood leaking out of a wall, explosive lightning, etc. You name it, they do it, only skipping out on walking corpses. While some of these gags are great, for the most part it played a little tame for me. The movie clocks in at about 118 minutes including ending credits and unfortunately that hurts it. It was cut together more like a diary of the bizarre events that took place rather than building suspense. Each day where something of import takes place is preceded by a super title: Day <insert number here>. This merely breaks the story apart when it starts to get juicy. The climax delivers as one would expect, but is unnecessarily drawn out for no real reason that I could see except to say, "Hey look, blood! Woah why does she look so old! Hey wait, we can't leave the dog behind!" Pardon the deliberate ambiguity, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who may decide to watch it anyway following this review.
It's not that the film is bad, it's just not really good either. It falls in that "meh" category that requires someone to be legitimately interested in, or full blown obsessed with the paranormal. Me, I prefer the idea's of humans wielding supernatural power upon each other rather than the idea that their spirits would have any cause to linger in the physical plane. Perhaps I need to see a few more to really make up my mind, but so far The Legend of Hell House is the only film of this sub-genre that I could really enjoy watching again.
2 out of 5 skulls.
You rated this gem way too low.
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