In 1979, I was twelve years old (I know
I come off as a far older coot that I actually am! Ha!) It seemed as
if everywhere I looked, someone was reading a book called “The
Legacy.” Distinctive because of its cover with a deep blue
background and the head of a menacing-looking white cat, it was hard
to miss. This book was not a novel that later became a movie, but
rather the novelization of a screenplay for a movie that was soon to
be released. Universal Studios pressed to turn the tome into a
best-seller so that said fact could be extolled on the movie's
poster, lending the film a hint of faux literary cache.
The Legacy tells the tale of an
attractive female architect and designer (Katharine Ross) who is
summoned from her Los Angeles home for a well-paying job in England.
She's purportedly won the contract on the basis of her solid
reputation as a designer, though her own apartment is rather tough on
the eyes with its bold lime green concept (this was the late-'70s,
however.)
Her live-in boyfriend (Sam Elliott) is
reluctant to pick up and leave on the basis of the offer, but since
Ross has investigated that the advance check (for $50,000) is legit,
the pair decides to go forward and enjoy some of the English
countryside and local color in the bargain.
(There are those who believe her
heavily-green, plant-laden dwelling is intended to suggest The Garden
of Eden. Ross even offers Elliott a piece of fruit for breakfast at
the end of the scene. Note also the Eve-like hair with a flower in it.)
Light packers indeed, they tour the
area on a motorcycle with only a couple of small bags in their
possession. While they are riding around and enjoying themselves,
the credits for the film roll and a love theme “Another Side of Me”
plays (sung by Kiki Dee!)
Their enjoyment is tempered by a close
call with a Rolls-Royce limousine that sends them careening off the
road and into a leaf-strewn patch of ground. They are okay enough,
but the bike needs repair. The gentleman (John Standing) whose limo
sent them barrelling off the road convinces them to come to his
sprawling estate for a cup of tea while the motorcycle is seen to in
a small local garage.
Ross, perhaps wary all along of
Elliott's skill behind the wheel, went ahead and wore a whiplash
collar that day just in case!
Once inside the gates of the ancient
mansion grounds, Ross and Elliott are amazed to find a house chock
full of priceless antique furniture and art and a glistening indoor
swimming pool with the family crest emblazoned on the floor of it.
The ornate house is overflowing with objects, artifacts and furniture (not to mention cats, an omnipresent white one in particular.) Before they can believe that they are going to have tea there, they
are instead asked to bring their belongings up to “their room” by an
austere nurse (Margaret Tyzack.)
It seems the motorcycle is going to
need repairs that can't be completed until the next day, so the
couple tentatively decides to accept this (rather forced)
hospitality. Opting to “rest” for a while with a tumble in the
antique bed, they are eventually roused by the sound of a helicopter.
After landing on the grounds of the estate, a quartet of guests are
spilled out.
The elegantly-appointed guests (Charles
Gray, Lee Montague, Hildegard Neil and Marianne Broome) are an
international selection of folks who are tops in their chosen fields,
a group who seem connected only in that they all know and apparently
work for the man who owns the mansion.
After having taken notice of Broome,
the younger and more physically appealing of the newly-arrived
ladies, through the bedroom window, Elliott proceeds to the film's
most memorable and appealing set piece. We see him from the rear,
naked as a jaybird, trotting over to the enclosed shower for a quick
scrub down.
Elliott's body at this stage of his
career was like a work of art and no one who has ever seen this
sequence of The Legacy has ever forgotten it!
He stands in the stall (photographed at
one point through the nozzle!), enjoying the steamy, soapy shower
while Ross is in the bedroom, bundled up in a robe by the fire. Just
as she puts a small log on the flames to increase the temperature,
Elliott's shower suddenly becomes scalding hot, threatening to scorch
his amazing buns and heaven knows what else!
Unable to do anything with the faucet,
he is finally left with no choice but to burst his way through the
glass shower door, cutting his shoulder and sending shards of glass
flying. (The shot shown in the publicity picture above is not in the final
cut of the film. Elliott is only shown from the waist up, breaking
through the door.)
Ross heads downstairs to retrieve some
first aid supplies and comes upon Tyzack in the midst of instructing
a passel of aged, not particularly welcoming, servants as to how
things need to be over the course of the guests' visit. The
incredibly formal and severe, though not impolite, Tyzack gives Ross
the supplies and promises to have the bathroom seen to.
Next it is time for cocktails and so
the guests (minus their host Standing) converge and begin to chat one
another up. Elliott, out of place and bored by most of the goings
on, follows after the limo driver to ask about his bike, but loses him. He then proceeds to the swimming pool where the lithe and blonde Broome
is having a languorous swim. He's unaccountably flirty with her
despite being in the company of Ross (who he's just bedded a short
while beforehand!)
Ross and Elliott leave Broome to finish
her swim before it's time for dinner and meet still another newcomer
and final guest, a rock music hell-raiser (played by real life rock
star Roger Daltrey of The Who.)
We see Broome cavorting in the water
for a while, but then as she attempts to come up for air after one
lengthy swirl near the bottom, she is prevented from piercing the
surface by some unseen force. This is another one of the movie's
more memorable sequences as most viewers can only imagine the horror
of being nearly out of breath from swimming and the not being able to
break through the water and take in some air!
During the last remnants of the
cocktail hour, Tyzack enters and makes it known that there has been
an accident. The guests file into the pool area and find Broome
floating face down in the pool, the victim, they believe, of a diving
accident. No one seems particularly devastated or affected by this
other than Ross and Elliott, who are by now more than ready to depart
the grounds, the sooner the better!
Having barely gotten a chance to
process this happening, Ross is summoned to an upstairs meeting
between the mansion's owner and the remaining four other guests.
(Elliott is excluded from participating.) She enters the dimly-lit,
mechanism-filled room in which a sterilized chamber featuring long
white curtains holds her host. The remaining guests are seated in a
row while she is called to the bedside by a wheezing, barely audible
voice.
Cautiously approaching the drapery, she
follows the creaky, ghastly voice and attempts to find a break in the
material that she can pull back. Suddenly, a craggy, wrinkled,
discolored hand with talon-like nails reaches through and grabs her
arm while another slips a ring on her finger. The ring is of the
family crest that is featured throughout the home and each of the
other house guests wears one exactly like it.
She tries everything conceivable other
than chopping off her finger to remove the ring, but it is
practically fused to her hand. Now inconsolable, she wants to leave
immediately. The next morning, Tyzack informs the couple that the
police want to interview them about Broome's demise, but neither of
them recall having seen or heard any police on the grounds.
Elliott says he will not wait for the
police to return, but that they can find him in town. He heads
outside to tell the chauffeur that he and Ross must be taken to town
at once. His conversation is interrupted by an arrow shot from Gray,
who is practicing the crossbow with Montague.
Gray insinuates that it was an
accident, but Elliott isn't convinced. He goes inside to retrieve
Ross, but once they head out the door, the driver has stormed off in
a cloud of dust, leaving them stranded again.
Elliott and Ross decide to sneak out to
the stable and abscond with two horses. They take one that's ready
to go and quickly saddle up another only to be attacked by a trio of
groomsmen who don't want to let them go.
They manage to escape and
take off across the countryside on horseback. Eventually, the come
to the near-deserted little village where Elliott's motorcycle was left for repair
and when they go to see if it's there, they find it dismantled!
Just then, they spy the chauffeur
visiting a home across the street and while he is inside briefly,
they take off in the car. Momentarily forgetting that they are in
England, Ross darts into the right-hand side, which is where the
steering wheel is located!
They drive and drive and drive, but
never seem to get anywhere. No matter what road they choose, they
always wind up back at the mansion they've been trying to escape
from. Even when a frustrated Elliott takes over the wheel, they get
nowhere. Finally, a tearful Ross consigns herself to the fact that
she has to stay and face whatever is in store for her, so they go
back inside. (The music, by the way, in this "escape" sequence is a wretched disco-ish version of the love theme!)
No one acts as if anything unusual has
happened. Neil comes to Ross' room with an armful of dresses and
says that she may pick one out to wear to dinner that night. She goes on to explain some of the immense power that is available to Ross from their host if she will only accept it. Then dinner is served and Ross appears in a long, square-necked gown with
her hair piled up (while Elliott makes do with his casual clothes.)
As they are all partaking from the
incredible spread of food that the staff has laid out, Ross helps
Daltrey to some ham, which doesn't seem to agree with him. He begins
choking, eventually failing to catch his breath at all. Elliott
sweeps him up and sprawls him onto the table where an icily
methodical Tyback prepares to offer Daltrey a tracheotomy using one
of the menacing-looking knives from the estate's silver service!
This doesn't work out at all, resulting
in yet another death. The irony, though, is that they discover a
chicken bone caught in Daltrey's throat when, in fact, he'd had no
chicken, only a bite of ham and some pate!
During a conversation between Ross and
Gray in the mansion's library, Ross is confronted with a
look-alike painting of the house's former owner from many year's
prior. (She happens to have selected the one dress of Neil's that most closely echoes the one in the painting, right down to the necklace!)
Afterwards, Gray is standing near the fire when suddenly it erupts.
Flames jut out and engulf him, burning him to death until just a
quivering stack of charred bones is left (while the carpet and the
rest of the room remain as they were.)
Tyzack later informs Elliott that Gray
“had to leave on business” but Elliott discovers that the car is
still in the garage, not having delivered Gray anyplace. He then
sees a servant take a bag of charred, steaming matter and toss it on
the ground near a grate. Elliott is horrified to determine from the
ring on one of the bones that it is Gray's remains! Before he can do
anything more, a gaggle of vicious dogs begin to chase him away.
After doing all they can to gnaw on him, they return to the pile of
bones and proceed to eat away the evidence.
Ross has come upon some newspaper
clippings that describe how the other guests all committed some sort
of crime which they got away with. The deaths thus far echo the
original crimes of the victims. Now Elliott and Ross are frantic to
get away, but feel they must warn Neil and Montague of the danger,
too. They ask Neil to pack her things and leave with them in the
car, but cannot locate Montague. It turns out he's in full-on panic
mode, believing them to be the killers, and has decided to take them out with a shotgun from the roof.
Neil never makes it downstairs because
there's a special sort of demise waiting for her as well. Then
Montague makes his presence known with a few shotgun blasts as Ross
and Elliott are headed to the car. Elliott has to try to fend off
his assailant with a crossbow, the only weapon at hand, while shotgun
pellets dot his every spot on the ground.
A beleaguered, injured Elliott climbs
up the stairs of the mansion, fending off Tyzack in the process, and
heading into the equipment-packed bedroom of mansion owner Standing.
In a fury, he breaks through the glass enclosure and begins trashing
the place. (Fun as this is, I can't help but prefer his previous
door-smashing, when he was au naturel...)
The whole thing comes to an end in a
surprising (and some might say lunatic) twist, which generally
doesn't jibe with the events heretofore witnessed. Some viewers,
however, claim that this ending was insinuated throughout to those
with keen eyes. In any case, even if the ending makes sense for
Ross' character, it certainly doesn't match up with Elliott's very
well!
For so many years, people have
associated Katharine Ross with Sam Elliott, one could be forgiven for
thinking that they were a couple when they made this film. In truth,
it was during the making of this movie that their romantic
relationship first began to develop. He'd had a bit role (his debut)
in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) in which she costarred,
but they didn't meet at that time. The Legacy marked their first
introduction and though she was still married to her fourth husband,
that union was coming to an end. She and Elliott have been together
ever since, marrying in 1984 when their first child was soon to be
born.
After having worked on TV and in movies
like Shenandoah (her debut in 1965) and The Singing Nun (1966), Ross
shot to fame (and an Oscar nomination) with The Graduate (1967.) The
Academy Award went to Estelle Parsons for Bonnie and Clyde, though
she picked up a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer. Finicky
about the size of her parts (she turned down both Bullitt, 1968, and
Airport, 1970, both of which went to Jacqueline Bisset and were huge
successes), she lost momentum until starring in 1975's The Stepford
Wives.
This photo below is of her examining the script of The Legacy for the first time. Just kidding!
Her other two 1978 films were potential
career-killers. The Betsy didn't do her too much harm, but The Swarm
was an artistic and financial flop. From 1980 on, her career leaned
more towards television (she's seen here with Elliott in the 1981
TV-movie Murder in Texas.) She was part of the star-laden cast of
The Colbys from 1985-1987, but was more focused on her new baby girl
than performing. Since that series' cancellation, appearances have
been less and less. Now seventy-three, she and her daughter by
Elliott were involved in a bizarre incident in 2011 in which the
daughter allegedly attacked Ross with a pair of scissors, requiring a
restraining order!
Elliott has his own tribute in The
Underworld here, so I won't go on about him again. The Legacy is
somewhat similar in concept to his earlier movie Frogs (1972) in
which he was an outsider among a group of wealthy malcontents who are
killed off one by one. (Similarly, Ross' role in Stepford had her as
the sole female surrounded by mysterious-acting people.) Unlike his
wife, Elliott remains pretty active in TV and movies. He is now
sixty-nine.
Gray was known for playing
aristocratic, often sneeringly villainous, parts. Having begun in
television and movies in the late-1950s, he proceeded to a busy
career containing a couple of iconic parts. He played the dastardly
Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and in 1975
portrayed the criminologist in the cult smash The Rocky Horror
Picture Show. (He claimed never to have met the rest of the cast nor
ever even seen the movie) Gray died of throat cancer in 2000 at the
age of seventy-one, having worked right up to that time.
Montague has been working in films
since the early-1950s, often portraying tough or insidious
characters, though his role here is generally good-natured and
passive until desperation sets in. Among his many credits are Billy
Budd (1962), How I Won the War (1967) with Michael Crawford and John
Lennon and Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972) for Franco Zeffirelli,
though he still acts occasionally today at age eighty-six.
Neil acted on stage and in TV and
movies, often in Shakespearean parts. Her first TV role was
Calpurnia in a 1963 rendition of Julius Caesar. In 1972, Charlton
Heston selected her for his film Anthony and Cleopatra, which was not
well received at all, though Heston continued to praise her work.
Other films include A Touch of Class (1975) and The Mirror Crack'd
(1980), in which she was featured in the film-within-the film. In
1978, she married prolific character actor Brian Blessed and they
remain together today, working occasionally. She is seventy-four.
Broome, whose chief contribution to the
film is a lengthy swim in the pool, was a real-life Olympic swimmer!
She was British, but was raised in Malaysia, and swam for them in
1976. Four years after those Canadian Olympics, she returned to
Canada where she took up painting for a living. Now closing in on
sixty, The Legacy was the last role in her brief career as an
actress.
After considerable success in The Who,
Daltrey began to branch out into acting when the album Tommy was made
into a film, in which he played the title role. His part in The
Legacy echoes that of another singer who played an obnoxious musician
who chokes to death during cocktails: Fabian in Ten Little Indians
(1965.) He has dabbled in acting from time to time, but music has
remained his chief interest. He is currently sixty-nine.
Standing's role in this film is
limited, but he tries to make the most out of it. A busy character
actor, one of Britain's most respected talents, he has appeared in
countless roles on stage, TV and movies such as The Eagle has Landed
(1976), The Elephant Man (1980), Chaplin (1992) and V for Vendetta
(2005.) He is seventy-nine at present and still acts today.
As the mysterious, crisply menacing
nursemaid, Tyzack is my favorite performer in The Legacy. With this
creepy, starchy part, she joins others of a similar ilk who I have
always adored such as Dame Judith Anderson in Rebecca (1940) and
Elizabeth Ashley in Coma (1978.) A sterling stage actress (who won a
Tony in 1990 for Lettice and Lovage), she popped up in landmark
miniseries such as The Forsyte Saga (1967) and I, Claudius (1976)
along with movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) and A
Clockwork Orange (1971.) She even worked for Woody Allen in Match
Point in 2005. Cancer claimed her in 2011 at the age of seventy-nine
and she worked semi-regularly up until then.
Love theme songstress Kiki Dee enjoyed
a forty-year career in music with hits like “I've Got the Music in
Me” and “Don't Go Breakin' My Heart” (a duet with Elton John.)
She is currently sixty-six.
The Legacy was a hit, raking in four
times its cost. At the time, Satanic and supernatural based films
were enjoying a wave of popularity from The Possession of Joel
Delaney (1972) to The Omen (1976) to Damien: The Omen II (1978) to
Burnt Offerings (1976) and so on. The plot is positively riddled
with lapses in logic and sensibility, but so long as one doesn't
dwell on it too much, it is entertaining thanks to a strong cast,
creative direction and a palpable, creepy atmosphere.
Speaking of direction, the man in
charge of this film was Richard Marquand. A BBC documentarian, this
was his first fictional feature film. Later, he directed Eye of the
Needle (1981), which led to his selection as the director of Return
of the Jedi (1983.) Another massive hit came with 1985's Jagged
Edge. Sadly, he died in 1987 of a stroke at only age forty-nine.
Often on this site, I have groused
about the way some foreign release posters feature more arresting
photography or artwork than the U.S. version. This shot at left from
a Japanese booklet adds the stars' faces to the familiar cat/hand
artwork and I like it, especially Sam's eyes.
However, this one here is hysterically
“off,” featuring a sight that is never represented in the movie.
Were I Margaret Tyzack and still alive today, I would make this my
Facebook profile picture without hesitation!
