English Dept.
The Legend of Hell House, or as I like to call it, Florence and the Machine, it's like a charming little Christmas movie. And it has an uncredited appearance by Michael Gough as Emeric Belasco, who effectively serves to pull Hell House into a lineage of Hammer and Amicus horror pictures that have brought us up to the point at which this was released. But this is, I think, very different from those films.
This was Britain's answer to Hitchcock's Psycho, and perhaps it had a more obviously sympathetic lead, but it was so intense for pallid English palettes that it torpedoed Michael Powell's career. And reactions to the film and the ensuing scandal caused it to be pulled from theaters after only five days.
I find it to be smart and literate, and I think it gives people a lot to chew on and discuss both in terms of what it presents narratively and visually, and what it proposes philosophically. It's filled with symbolism and foreshadowing, and it doesn't rely on the usual tricks of jump scares or gore to destabilize the viewer.
