Mindless and silly but
entertaining in a guilty-pleasure sort of way, this good-looking horror flick
features one of those inane plots about an otherwise ordinary person whose
lineage designates her the inheritor of a fearsome supernatural power.
Katharine Ross, lovely and lightweight as always, plays Margaret, an American
summoned to England under the pretense of a lucrative commission for
interior-design work. She brings along her sensitive-stud boyfriend, Pete (Sam
Elliott), and soon after their arrival in the UK, the couple encounters
trouble. Riding a rented motorcycle, they’re run off the road by the town car
of Jason Mountolive (John Standing), a super-wealthy English gentleman. He invites
them back to his sprawling estate, where it soon becomes clear Margaret was
expected—she’s a distant relative of Mountolive, and he’s the person behind her
mysterious job offer. In classic horror-movie fashion, Margaret ignores obvious
warning signs and sticks around to see what happens.
What happens, of course,
is a serious of bizarre deaths involving the various loathsome relatives
Mountolive summons to his estate. Eventually, we realize that the Mountolives
are witches, and Margaret is expected to take her place as the clan’s new
Satan-worshipping matriarch. Unfortunately, one of the other potential heirs is
trying to take out the competition, so Margaret and Pete must dodge a few nasty
attempts on their lives. Based on a story by Jimmy Sangster, a veteran of the
Hammer Films assembly line, The Legacy
gets goofier with each passing scene, to the point that the ending plays more
like accidental humor than intentional horror.
Still, some of the deaths are
enjoyably gruesome, like the one in which flame leaps from a fireplace to cook
a victim. Director Richard Marquand (Return
of the Jedi) makes good use of regal locations, while the British
supporting players (including Rocky
Horror Picture Show narrator Charles Gray and rock singer Roger Daltrey, of
the Who) are lively. And though neither gives a strong performance, Elliott and
Ross display believable attraction: They got together offscreen after making
this movie, and they’ve been a couple ever since.
The Legacy:
FUNKY
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