Rolf Rudolph Deutsch is going die. But when Deutsch, a wealthy magazine and newspaper publisher, starts thinking seriously about his impending death, he offers to pay a physicist and two mediums, one physical and one mental, $100,000 each to establish the facts of life after death.
Dr. Lionel Barrett, the physicist, accompanied by the mediums, travel to the Belasco House in Maine, which has been abandoned and sealed since 1949 after a decade of drug addiction, alcoholism, and debauchery. For one night, Barrett and his colleagues investigate the Belasco House and learn exactly why the townfolks refer to it as the Hell House.
Horror Book Review Blog: Hell House
It was the summer of 1990-something, and school was out. I was in my youth, able to stay up late and break night like nobody’s business. In the dark ages, before the internet took the world by storm (at least in my household), long before Netflix and instant gratification, there was the television guide, otherwise known as TV Guide. The TV Guide was my holy Bible as it told me what was playing on the local cable box at the time or sometime in the near future, specifically, the current week. The movie, or movies, of the week, were usually no-brainers for me. If it had a scary title, then count me in. Again, this was before IMDB (The Internet Movie Database), but, thankfully, the TV Guide did provide a brief summary and synopsis of the program. One that captured my attention was a 1973 film entitled The Legend of Hell House. Showtime was slated to play the movie late that Thursday morning (1:30 AM), and I made sure to put it on my wall calendar and highlight the entry on the TV Guide – a reminder for me to tune in.
Thursday could not have come any faster. Everyone was fast asleep, and I had the entire living room all to myself. I grabbed a blanket, and a bucket of popcorn, turned off the lights, and braced myself for this ’70s haunted house flick. What happened was amazing! First, this movie scared the crap out of me, and to this day, I still consider The Legend of Hell House to be the definitive haunted house movie and a personal favorite of mine. A few years later, while I was in college, I picked up the book Hell House by Richard Matheson, which the film used as a basis.
Again, to give justice to the book and to be fair, I only opted to read this book at night just before I went to bed. I remember thinking at the time as I read that it was probably not such a good idea because it would, no doubt, keep me up at night. Hell House was one of the scariest books I have ever read, even though I knew what to expect, having already seen the film a few years before. I anticipated a night and day comparison from novel to screen adaptation, as is usually the case. Still, much to my surprise, the film is very similar to the source material save for a few scenes that fail to make the screen adaptation for fear of getting a different rating and a few other minor changes. Of course, the rating system was slightly different in 1972/3, and The Legend of Hell House garnered a PG rating. Proof that an R rating is not necessary to make a good horror film.
The novel and its screen adaptation both succeed in portraying an isolated and terrifying atmosphere in which the ghost of Belasco has no problems terrifying our protagonists, including a scholar and his wife and two mediums sensitive to the supernatural who stay in the said house to research/study the supposed haunting. As one can expect, the book fleshes out our characters more as we are given more insight into what they are thinking and feeling, which can be difficult to portray on film. However, I believe that director John Hough and the actors, including Roddy McDowell, did a fantastic job at bringing Matheson’s characters to life.
Hell House and the film The Legend of Hell House are frightening, and I would recommend reading and then watching the movie in that order. It is an excellent example of a book-to-screen adaptation that does not go too off the rails in the same manner as Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel, The Shining. If there is one gripe to Hell House (if I can even call it that), it’s that there are some similarities to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Although I have never read Jackson’s classic novel (yet), I have seen both the 1963 and the 1999 screen adaptations entitled The Haunting; the latter does not live up to its prior film predecessor and is not a must-see but, rather, a must avoid. Despite the similarities, the two films are different enough to be able to enjoy and be scared.
Hell House is a prime example of, again, what I consider to be the right way to write a haunted house novel. Matheson has, for me, set the bar that many have yet to surpass from my point of view. I am always looking for any haunted house books that come close to or even surpass Hell House. I had high hopes for David L. Goleman’s The Supernaturals, but, alas, it did not even come close to Hell House and was in a whole different spectrum – levels below. Hell House is a hell of a book that warrants a second reading from me sometime soon, but I may hold out and make it a must-read for this Halloween season.