Wonderful character development!

Sorry, this movie sucks

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Maggie Walsh (Katherine Ross, The Stepford Wives and The Swarm) and Pete Danner (a really young Sam Elliott, Mask and The Big Lebowski) get a strange call for their interior decorating business. They are to go to England for an anonymous client, but they have misgivings about leaving Los Angeles. Those go away when the client dies, leaving behind pre-paid airfare.They're in England for all of a spot of tea when they are almost killed by a limousine carrying Jason Mountolive, who takes them to his gigantic home called Ravenhurst.I love this description of the people Maggie and Pete meet at Ravenhurst — "A millionaire, a million-dollar prostitute, a star-maker, a nation-killer, a woman whose lusts are as cold as graveyard snow." They're all the beneficiaries of his estate, there to decide who will get what when the old man dies.Maggie is shocked, because as far as she knows, Mountolive was just alive. Everyone is summoned to his bedroom, filled with sterile walls and a life support system. You can't see the old man any longer — but a gnarled hand reaches out and gives Maggie the Mountolive ring — one she can't take off and one everyone else is already wearing.All manner of accidents and deaths befall the cast members. Pete is nearly killed by a scalding shower (and if you like Sam Elliot, your pulse will be inflamed by this scene). Maria, a swimmer, drowns. Clive (Roger Daltry from The Who), a music mogul, dies from a combination of choking and a gory tracheotomy. Karl (Charles Gray, Diamonds Are Forever, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Devil Rides Out) dies in an awesome scene when a spark from a fireplace ignites him, sending him curled up and burnt black. Barbara is killed by an exploding mirror. And Jacques tries to kill Maggie and Pete, thinking they are behind it all, but his gun blows up in his face and he falls to his death.A series of clippings reveals that each of the guests had been implicated in a scandal or crime, but Mountolive saved them. He comes from a long line of devil worshippers. In fact, his parents were burned at the stake!Maggie is Mountolive's great-granddaughter, so she meets with the dying man, who reveals that he killed the others as a sacrifice to Satan so that she can get his powers. Then, she will have six heirs when her time is up. Pete tries to stop her, but it is too late. The staff have all bowed to her and she is now the new owner of Ravenhurst and all of the powers that come with it.She gives Pete a ring that bonds itself to his finger as her first heir and tells him that it's time to do anything she wants.Director Richard Marquand (Return of the Jedi) alternates here between breezy romance, ala Hart to Hart, and gory spectacle. It's a strange blend but it's rather enjoyable.Plus, it has an opening song, "Another Side of Me" (performed by Kiki Dee) that is so late 70's, it should give you cocaine while you listen to it.Read more at bit.ly/2z6FXtS

I enjoy this film very very much. As a teen I can remember this being on constantly on BBC2 Friday nights. By today's standards of course it's tame as a horror, but look beyond that and it's actually a really clever, very well acted movie. The story itself is very dark, any film that involved the Devil would be. I love the village scenes, when Maggie and Pete try to escape in the car but are trapped and always end up back at the house, it's so clever. Elements of And then there were none, as one by one the gathered guests start to die. I can remember having a few bad dreams about the mirror scene (I was only about 9 or 10.) I particularly liked Katherine Ross, there was a soft sincerity about her, I also really liked Margaret Tyzack's cat nurse. 8/10 it's a very good film, it creaks in parts, but on the whole it ticks the boxes well.

The first time I ever saw this one, I must have been barely in my mid-teens. And I didn't like it very much (hey, I preferred my horror filled with slimy monsters and lots of blood & gore back then). But some things about this movie stuck with me over the years (especially the infamous 'tracheatomy-scene' did, amongst other things). And I just knew that was a good thing. So you could say I was ready for a more "mature viewing" of this movie. And yes, it's actually pretty good! I didn't mind it was a bit slow during the first half, because it builds up a good atmosphere wrapped in a fine mystery. Some people in their user-comments called it a "haunted house movie", but that couldn't possibly be further from the truth, as far as I'm concerned. It's a film about the supernatural, yes, but the only 'haunted house'-related thing it does have, is indeed one big, creepy looking mansion on an isolated location on UK grounds. Margaret Walsh (played by a beautiful looking Katharine Ross) is summoned to the UK for an architect-assignment. Her friend Pete (Sam Elliot) accompanies her. Circumstances lead her to the aforementioned mansion, where she is obliged to stay the weekend. Then 5 other guests arrive and they all seem to know why they are there, but Margaret doesn't. It's up to her and Pete to find out, because it doesn't take long before the guests start dying one by one. And something inside the mansion isn't willing to let her go... That's really all you need to know before going into this movie. The death-scenes aren't particularly gory, but they were sort of original at the time (1978), and there's even a catch to them... Very happy I did finally re-watch this film, as I seem to have slightly misjudged it in my teen-days.

Really not a lot of horror going on in this one, however from what I see of other reviews this was just supposed to be a horror remake of a crime classic and it shows. There is one truly scary scene in this film and it involves the young lady in the pool, but other than that scene this film falls into a long line of horror movies from the 70's and early 80's that had potential, but were defeated by to much talking and not enough horror. This one starts out with a young lady and her boyfriend (I think it was her boyfriend) having some sort of accident where they end up being invited to some mansion where a whole crowd of people are assembling in the hopes of being named the successor to some guy who is dying upstairs. Funny, this very guy is the one who invited the young lady and the gentlemen to his home and he seemed just fine when he invited them. So on to the house where people, other than the pool victim, die in rather uninteresting ways and a new heir is on their way to being chosen. At one point the girl and guy try to get out of the situation, but the town seems to have a hold on them or something, you can not get away from this situation all that easily. Near the end though there is very little horror to write home about and the crossbow scene just punches that point home that this movie just is not really a horror movie at all