After hearing about this one for years, I decided to finally give it a go and I really regret that choice. The time spent waiting for something interesting to happen in this movie could have been better spent doing more exciting things like balancing my checkbook or getting a rectal exam.
The Legend of Hell House starts out promisingly enough, if not almost exactly like the much better and scarier The Haunting. A group of people involved in the paranormal go to the mansion where they have a few days to figure out if there really is life after death and if the grisly stories about the residents of the home are true. With them, they have the survivor of the last massacre that took place there and he seems ready to crack at any second. Apparently, the original owner of the house was quite a hedonist and sadist who got off on all kinds of sexual craziness. Soon, the group (mostly the women) become possessed by randy spirits who - I don't know - want to have sex with everyone.
For a film with so much atmosphere and moody cinematography, there's not a lot of threat lingering around for much of the run time. It's excusable for the first 30 minutes when it's trying to establish said atmosphere and the plight of the characters, but it never builds to anything very exciting.
You're better off watching The Haunting, The Innocents, The Sentinel, Burnt Offerings, or many better haunted house films.
The Legend of Hell House starts out promisingly enough, if not almost exactly like the much better and scarier The Haunting. A group of people involved in the paranormal go to the mansion where they have a few days to figure out if there really is life after death and if the grisly stories about the residents of the home are true. With them, they have the survivor of the last massacre that took place there and he seems ready to crack at any second. Apparently, the original owner of the house was quite a hedonist and sadist who got off on all kinds of sexual craziness. Soon, the group (mostly the women) become possessed by randy spirits who - I don't know - want to have sex with everyone.
For a film with so much atmosphere and moody cinematography, there's not a lot of threat lingering around for much of the run time. It's excusable for the first 30 minutes when it's trying to establish said atmosphere and the plight of the characters, but it never builds to anything very exciting.
You're better off watching The Haunting, The Innocents, The Sentinel, Burnt Offerings, or many better haunted house films.