I love this classic British horror film from 1978. It has a slight feel of a latter day Hammer House production - even though it isn't. It stars Katherine Ross as 'Maggie Walsh' and Sam Elliott as 'Pete Danner' as a young American couple who travel over here on the mysterious invite of a job offer for her in London. They are driving through the countryside, when they have to swerve to avoid a car which belongs to a gentleman (John Standing) who offers to put them up in his stately home while their bike is getting fixed. And to their surprise, they have been expected.
This for it's day had a lot of well known actors in it, including the three mentioned above plus Charles Gray, Lee Montague and the rock star/actor Roger Daltrey. These actors play characters who are also expected - as part of the Legacy.
Well that's the gist of it, but what I really love about this quintessentially English style film is the elaborate, inventive and gruesome ways that the guests die by - one by one. From drowning under an invisible shield covering the swimming pool, to swallowing a chicken bone, to standing too close to the fire and the fire then jumping out and burning a guest alive, and then the charred remains being fed to the dogs in the courtyard late at night. Plus a mirror cracking and the shards of glass being hurled into one of the guests, and then the blood seeping through the floorboards onto the chandelier in the room below, where the blood trickles off the chandelier into a wine glass on a table - a nice touch. And finally, a rooftop shootout which backfires - quite literally. Alright, I may have given far too much away, but let's face it anyone who orders this, will probably have seen this before anyway.
Although this is a serious horror flick, I can't help feeling that this film has it's tongue firmly in it's cheek - because of all the deliciously hammy acting and stylish ways of dying. I couldn't take that Roger Daltrey choking scene seriously. Plus when they nick the car and try to escape and keep ending up on the same stretch of road back to the house - genius!