The Legacy was made in 1978 by director Richard Marquand (the man who helmed Return Of The Jedi) from a screenplay penned at least in part by none other than Jimmy Sangster, whose ties to many of the Hammer Films horror classics should need no introduction to anyone with even a passing interest in the genre. In many ways, despite the fact that it was made in the late seventies, the film feels like a bit of a throwback to some of the older horror pictures that Sangster had a hand in.

The story follows architect Maggie Walsh (Katharine Ross), an American who travels to England with her boyfriend Pete Danner (Sam Elliott), also an architect, to take a job with a mysterious but evidently very wealthy client (he gave them a hefty advance). Shortly after their arrival they head out into the countryside on their motorcycle and are run off the road by Harry (Ian Hogg), a chauffeur employed by a man named Jason Mountolive (John Standing). With their bike a wreck, Mountolive takes them back to Ravenhurst, his massive old estate, to get things sorted for them.

As luck would have it, Maggie and Pete have arrived just before a plethora of guests start to show up: a hotel magnet named Jacques Grandier (Lee Montague), a wealthy publisher named Barbara (Hildegarde Neil), a famous swimmer named Maria Gabrieli (Marianne Broome), a notorious former soldier who once had ties to Hitler named Karl Liebknecht (Charles Gray) and a younger man named Clive Jackson (Roger Daltry) who makes quite a nice life for himself as a musician. Maggie and Pete explore the huge old house and they mingle a bit. In doing so they can't help but notice that some of the people in the house are acting… odd. At the same time, they learn that Mountolive is, sadly, not long for this world. His guests have shown up because in some way or another, he's helped them get to where they are today. What Maggie and Pete don't know is how or why they've wound up here on this very same day. As the story progresses, the accident no longer seems to have been random but instead quite deliberate. When Maria winds up dead, our couple decides it's time to split before things get even more bizarre, but that's not going to happen no matter how hard they try, not when sinister black magic beings to play a hand in the night's events.

Kind of a mix between classic horror pictures done in the vein of The Old Dark House but definitely given a late seventies occult horror slant (not surprising given how popular occult themed pictures were at the time), The Legacy is a bit scattershot. It milks clichés from both influences pretty blatantly and at times it bites off more than it can chew, cramming in Biblical references that don't wind up meaning a whole lot and introducing characters without a whole lot of reason outside of providing some victims, but despite its flaws the movie is definitely worth checking out even when it deals in a whole lot of different elements that we've seen done plenty of times before.

What makes it worth seeing? Well, it's not the characters or the performances really. Elliott is fun to see here but he spends most of his time playing the stereotypical American ‘fish out of water' character. Katharine Ross is pretty to look at and does fine with the material but her work here isn't all that memorable. Charles Gray is pretty great though and Roger Daltry is at least fun to watch. The rest of the cast are fine, but again, nobody here will floor you. Where the movie succeeds is with its atmosphere. The old house where most of the picture takes place has a natural eeriness to it that the filmmakers do a very good job of exploiting. Additionally, while it takes a bit of time to get there, the murder set pieces featured in the film are not only creative, but they're visually very impressive. Every death here is completely over the top, but shot so well and with such style that you won't forget them or ever feel like they're out of place. The movie will also probably surprise you with its ending. Where the early parts of the picture feel predictable and overwrought, the finish is actually quite clever as, without spoiling things, it subverts our predetermined notion of what good and evil really are.

Video:

The Legacy arrives on Blu-ray in a new AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer taken from the inter-positive and it looks very good. Framed at 1.78.1 there are some scenes that use a soft focus style and during those scenes detail is understandably a bit less than perfect but outside of those scenes it's typically very strong. Colors look great and the image is in nice shape, so there aren't really any problems with print damage, just the occasional speck here and there. Skin tones look nice and natural and black levels are nice and deep but the darker scenes are free of crush. There are no problems with any noticeable compression artifacts nor is there any obvious edge enhancement or noise reduction. This is quite a strong image.