The Legacy (1978)

I found myself watching The Legacy (1978) again the other night.  Don't ask me why - it was on and, by coincidence, I'd been thinking about it lately, having seen the original trailer on a streaming channel, so it seemed like fate.  I actually remember the film being released in the UK.  Or, rather, I remember the John Coyne novelisation being published, which alerted me to the fact that a new British horror film had been released.  Which was a big deal in the late seventies.  By then, Hammer, Amicus and Tigon were pretty much done and most UK produced horror movies were of the independently produced, very low budget variety, which received only limited releases, were never reviewed by the 'respectable' press and generally passed by unnoticed.  Direct-to-Video releases were in their infancy and very few people had access to VCRs.  So a British horror movie getting a cinema release should have been a big deal.  But it didn't seem to be.  I don't recall it playing my local cinema, (not that it would have mattered, as I was too young for the certificate it was released under).  I have to say that what I knew about it at the time didn't really inspire me - while it was co-written by Jimmy Sangster, (who had scripted many of Hammer's classic movies), it didn't seem to feature any established horror stars (apart from Charles Gray in a supporting role), instead featuring a collection of British character actors and headlined by two American actors not associated with this sort of genre movie: Katherine Ross and Sam Elliot.  Moreover, it was directed by an unknown, Richard Marquand, whose first feature it was.  

I eventually caught up with The Legacy on TV, some years later.  I have to say that it left me with mixed feelings.  While it looks good, is decently directed and the cast do their best, it just never seems to come alive.  Not only is the script confused and meandering, but overall the film seriously lacks any pace or tension.  The scenario just isn't interesting enough, the set pieces underwhelming and the whole thing moves to a limp and anti-climactic conclusion.  It feels like a horror film made by committee, where it was decided that, in order to sell it to general audiences, certain archetypal elements had to be included: creepy old country house - check; cabal of wealthy Satanist - check; mysterious patriarch confined to locked room - check; centuries old portraits the spitting image of heroine - check; long haired cat trying to look creepy slinking around the place - check.  Which, of course, it was.  By the time The Legacy got made, the only way that anything other than low-budget productions could get off the ground in the UK was if they had some kind of international funding.  Which meant that they had to appeal to the widest possible audience - cinema audiences were in decline and genre offering like traditional horror films, which appealed to a niche audience, weren't considered commercially viable.  Hence, the US-backed The Legacy, doubtless inspired by the success of 1976's UK/US horror hit The Omen, had to have a more or less mainstream cast, fronted by recognisable 'name' actors and, to sell it to international audiences, had to emphasise its 'Britshness' as a selling point.  

Sangster's original script had, apparently, been set in contemporary Detroit and represented an attempt to get away from what he saw as the tired tropes of the traditional Gothic horror film - something the finished film instead tries to play on.  Which, ultimately, secured its downfall.  Even if it had been released five or six tears earlier, it still would have looked out of date - an example of the 'old dark house' sub-genre that, by the seventies, was considered only fit for parody, (Frankie Howerd's starring vehicle House in Nightmare Park, for example).  As it was, it found itself being released in the same year as Halloween, the film that effectively rendered old-school Gothic horror obsolete and ushered in the era of the 'slasher' movie.  As Sam Elliot himself noted in an interview a few years later, 'I wouldn't rush out to see it.  It is at least fifteen years out of date.'  Still, The Legacy does have some incidental pleasures - seeing Roger Daltry choke to death is always as pleasure, as is the sight of Eliot's moustache in its youthful prime.  It clearly did well enough that Richard Marquand was able to get a couple of far better directorial gigs (Eye of the Needle and Return of the Jedi) before his untimely death.  The one thing I always remembered from my first viewing of it was that it failed to hold my attention for its hundred minutes or so running time, (this excessive running time contributing to its slow pace) and I found my attention wandering long before the underwhelming ending.  Not surprisingly, the same thing happened on this latest viewing - the various supernatural deaths are long delayed and, frankly, just not that interesting, being indifferently staged and, by apparently coming out of nowhere and not advancing the plot, lacking in any tension or impact.  A fatal flaw for any horror movie.