"The Legacy" is a confused and clichéd but still entertaining film.
**SPOILERS**
Receiving a job offer, architects Margaret Walsh, (Katharine Ross) and Pete Danner, (Sam Elliot) travel to England to find out more only for Jason Mountolive, (John Standing) to run them off the road. Offering his house to them while their ride is fixed, they accept and head over to his giant mansion in the countryside to rest and relax. Shortly afterward, several more guests, Clive Jackson, (Roger Daltrey) Karl Liebnecht, (Charles Gray) Maria Gabrieli, (Marianne Broome) Barbara Kirstenburg, (Hildegarde Neil) and Jacques Grandier, (Lee Montague) arrive at the mansion for a meeting together with Jason for some secret business. While they wander around the house, the other guests are mysteriously killed off by a supernatural force, and after visiting the secret head of the group, she feels she's the next target. When they uncover that they wanted them there to pass on the ownership of a deadly legacy, they try to leave the mansion before it gives way to them.
The Good News: This wasn't all that bad of a film with a lot to like about it. What really elevates it is the clean, elegant handling and the surprisingly classy photography. Shots come reflected off piano lids or the gleaming polish of a Rolls as it glides through the countryside, white cats sit on marble staircases, blood drips from a white plastered roof into a wineglass. This manages to make the film a lot creepier than it should be. There's a really beautiful atmosphere in here that is quite wonderfully executed that gives it a touch of class. The creepiest, though, is a sequence in the middle where they try to escape from the house and go down several different roads in different directions, only for them all to wind up back at the house. This has been done before, but here it manages to work wonderfully. It's also got one of the creepiest, most foreboding locations that is not a large Gothic Castle. The interiors are dressed with a plush luxuriance that generates a perpetual brooding sinisterness with people lurking in the background, eavesdropping from balconies or through hushed conversations heard only from a distance due to the design of the hallways. By making the film's central premise one that is a mystery coupled with a murder movie, this here really manages it's greatest feat, which is to make the convoluted and confusing narrative completely watchable. There's very little given to indicate what is going on until too late, and by then there's a real sense of grandeur due to it having pulled off the mystery so well. Mixing it with the murder mystery as well is a great move, as if the mystery fails, the murders prove entertaining, except in here, both manage to work. The deaths in here are quite impressive, including one drowning in a pool that won't let them escape to due an invisible force on the surface, being impaled from the flying shards of an exploding window, having a gun explode in their face, being pushed down a flight of stairs while meowing like a cat and the most violent one, where a character is caught near an exploding fireplace and is engulfed in flames, wandering around the room endlessly on fire. It's a great site to see, as it's quite bloody and graphic for a film as classy as this one is playing to be. This one does have some really good moments.
The Bad News: Despite getting a lot right, there is still some problems. One of the main ones is that it really regurgitates the clichés of the genre in a story that has some of the greatest internal logic and credibility threshold problems of any genre film. The general feeling is that the film is just not completely comfortable with the blending done here, resulting in shoddy work. There is, for instance, little explained about the Satanic pact or the heroines's reincarnation storyline, other than the minimum necessary to set up a variety of novelty killings in an old mansion. We are not even sure why the various Satanic acolytes are being killed off. This is quite damaging, especially since most of the film is set up for an explanation at the end yet nothing happens. To have the survivors become totally accepting of the destructive powers inherited to them is another big confusion mark, since it means that the entire film could've been avoided with a simple question at the beginning and it all could've been avoided. That in itself lowers the film a bit, but this is still a pretty good film.
The Final Verdict: Some confusing and infuriating moments aside, the things it does right are pretty good, leaving it in the middle ground but still entertaining enough. There's worse ones out there, so give it a shot if you enjoy the big classy horror films or want something new.
Rated R: Violence, some Language and Brief Nudity
**SPOILERS**
Receiving a job offer, architects Margaret Walsh, (Katharine Ross) and Pete Danner, (Sam Elliot) travel to England to find out more only for Jason Mountolive, (John Standing) to run them off the road. Offering his house to them while their ride is fixed, they accept and head over to his giant mansion in the countryside to rest and relax. Shortly afterward, several more guests, Clive Jackson, (Roger Daltrey) Karl Liebnecht, (Charles Gray) Maria Gabrieli, (Marianne Broome) Barbara Kirstenburg, (Hildegarde Neil) and Jacques Grandier, (Lee Montague) arrive at the mansion for a meeting together with Jason for some secret business. While they wander around the house, the other guests are mysteriously killed off by a supernatural force, and after visiting the secret head of the group, she feels she's the next target. When they uncover that they wanted them there to pass on the ownership of a deadly legacy, they try to leave the mansion before it gives way to them.
The Good News: This wasn't all that bad of a film with a lot to like about it. What really elevates it is the clean, elegant handling and the surprisingly classy photography. Shots come reflected off piano lids or the gleaming polish of a Rolls as it glides through the countryside, white cats sit on marble staircases, blood drips from a white plastered roof into a wineglass. This manages to make the film a lot creepier than it should be. There's a really beautiful atmosphere in here that is quite wonderfully executed that gives it a touch of class. The creepiest, though, is a sequence in the middle where they try to escape from the house and go down several different roads in different directions, only for them all to wind up back at the house. This has been done before, but here it manages to work wonderfully. It's also got one of the creepiest, most foreboding locations that is not a large Gothic Castle. The interiors are dressed with a plush luxuriance that generates a perpetual brooding sinisterness with people lurking in the background, eavesdropping from balconies or through hushed conversations heard only from a distance due to the design of the hallways. By making the film's central premise one that is a mystery coupled with a murder movie, this here really manages it's greatest feat, which is to make the convoluted and confusing narrative completely watchable. There's very little given to indicate what is going on until too late, and by then there's a real sense of grandeur due to it having pulled off the mystery so well. Mixing it with the murder mystery as well is a great move, as if the mystery fails, the murders prove entertaining, except in here, both manage to work. The deaths in here are quite impressive, including one drowning in a pool that won't let them escape to due an invisible force on the surface, being impaled from the flying shards of an exploding window, having a gun explode in their face, being pushed down a flight of stairs while meowing like a cat and the most violent one, where a character is caught near an exploding fireplace and is engulfed in flames, wandering around the room endlessly on fire. It's a great site to see, as it's quite bloody and graphic for a film as classy as this one is playing to be. This one does have some really good moments.
The Bad News: Despite getting a lot right, there is still some problems. One of the main ones is that it really regurgitates the clichés of the genre in a story that has some of the greatest internal logic and credibility threshold problems of any genre film. The general feeling is that the film is just not completely comfortable with the blending done here, resulting in shoddy work. There is, for instance, little explained about the Satanic pact or the heroines's reincarnation storyline, other than the minimum necessary to set up a variety of novelty killings in an old mansion. We are not even sure why the various Satanic acolytes are being killed off. This is quite damaging, especially since most of the film is set up for an explanation at the end yet nothing happens. To have the survivors become totally accepting of the destructive powers inherited to them is another big confusion mark, since it means that the entire film could've been avoided with a simple question at the beginning and it all could've been avoided. That in itself lowers the film a bit, but this is still a pretty good film.
The Final Verdict: Some confusing and infuriating moments aside, the things it does right are pretty good, leaving it in the middle ground but still entertaining enough. There's worse ones out there, so give it a shot if you enjoy the big classy horror films or want something new.
Rated R: Violence, some Language and Brief Nudity