George C. Scott is a composer still grieving for the wife and child he lost to an icy car accident (right in front of the poor chap), when he moves to Seattle, and rents a big ‘ol house. It’s not long before pianos start playing themselves and weird noises can be heard. Believing the house to be haunted, Scott and Trish Van Devere (a woman from the local Historical Society who rent him the house) investigate, even organising a séance. It appears that someone or something is trying to communicate with Scott. Eventually, the investigation leads way back to the early 1900s, and elderly rich man Melvyn Douglas seems somehow connected.
There aren’t many great ghost/haunted house stories out there but this Peter Medak flick is definitely one of them, joining “The Haunting” (1963), “The Innocents”, “The Entity”, and “The Shining”. General Patton isn’t the first guy you’d think of to cast as a tortured and haunted man, but Scott successfully plays against expectations. Normally forceful and masculine, he’s quite vulnerable here, and unlike anything you’ve seen from him before.
Medak doesn’t reinvent the wheel here, but this is good stuff, with a little more emphasis on drama and character than overt horror. That doesn’t mean it’s dull, in fact it’s quite tense and atmospheric. It takes a while to get going (despite a stunner of an opening scene), but once it does, hold on! The highlight is a bloody frightening scene involving a couple of mediums and impressive, roaming camerawork by John Coquillon (“Scream and Scream Again”, “Straw Dogs”, “Cross of Iron”). Most séance scenes in movies are dopey, but this is the exception to the rule. The following scene with Scott listening to a playback of the séance is also super-intense. For the most part, though, the film is trying to be creepy and atmospheric, rather than all-out terror. Also, the film proves that swinging chandeliers and a flaming staircase are just awesome. A possessed wheelchair? Not so much. Coquillon does an outstanding job with shot composition, with some dead trees shot in such a way that they look 3D, which is part of my problem with 3D. If your cinematography is worth his or her salt, it’ll look 3D anyway (just think about ‘Deep Focus’ cinematography, for instance). Coquillon also favours some unnervingly claustrophobic shot composition that had me on edge. There’s some really attractive, seemingly enveloping forestry on show too, not just the dead trees.
The visuals are further aided by a good, atmospheric piano score by Rick Wilkins, and a perfect usage of strange, slightly unidentifiable sounds- key to any haunting movie in my opinion. I’m not usually keen on ghost stories that go out of their way to investigate and explain the goings on, as it tends to take a bit of the fright out of things. “The Haunting” and “The Entity”, for instance, really only dabbled in such things towards the end, and “The Shining” was wonderfully, maddeningly ambiguous. However, this is definitely one of the better films of that sort.
OVERALL SUMMARY
If you’re in the mood for a good ghost story, this underrated little gem definitely fits the bill. You’d best keep the lights on, though!
