There are those who are so fond of horror movies that they'll accept almost anything as long as it provides the necessary creep factor. But I am not one of them, so I found The Legend of Hell House silly and dull, with an exceptionally preposterous ending. It's the usual haunted house nonsense, with a group of "researchers" who spend nights investigating the paranormal reported to be rife in the creepy old mansion. In this case there's Dr. Barrett (Clive Revill), a physicist who purports to believe that ghosts and such are natural phenomena -- something to do with electricity -- and brings along a machine that's supposed to neutralize them. His wife, Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), insists on joining him, and they're accompanied by two mediums, Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) and Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowall). Fischer has been there before, many years ago, in a similar exploration in which everyone was killed or maimed except him. It's a mark of the screenplay's ineptness that we never get a full explanation of why he decided to return, except that he and Barrett and Tanner have each been promised £100,000 if they can expel the spooks. None of the characters is particularly likable, so we don't have much invested in their survival. Neither the writer nor the director is skilled at building suspense, and the result is a marshaling of clichés unleavened by wit.
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