Saturday, 5 January 2019

The Legacy


(Richard Marquand/1978/UK & USA)

A wilfully ludicrous horror about a satanic pact bequeathed through generations via a convoluted ritual, which is just one of many things in The Legacy that doesn’t quite gel. However, the amount of narrative loop the looping lends an unintended comedy to the film and makes it an entertaining diversion. There is a sequence of death scenes, each more risible than the last, leading to the ‘big reveal’; as vacuous and airy as the plot holes on show.  The scene of Sam Elliot and Katherine Ross driving down country lanes and ending back at the house they wish to get away from, a common horror trope of geographical misdirection, also verges on Carry On horror territory. All in all The Legacy is a great example of accidental entertainment; it gets about as close to being spooky and chilling as Wylie Coyote does to catching the Roadrunner.

(2.5/5)

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