For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Day 1 prompt is Haunted House. We watched the movie, The Changling, on Amazon Prime.
Storyline
It was the perfect family vacation for composer John Russell and his family when a freak automobile accident claims the lives of his wife and daughter. Consumed by grief, John, at the request of friends, rents an old turn of the century house. Mammoth in size, the house seems all the room that John needs to write music and reflect. He does not realize that he is not alone in the house. He shares it with the spirit of a child who has homed in on John’s despair and uses him to uncover decades of silence and deceit. With the help of Claire Norman, the one who aided John in procuring the house, they race to find the answers and soon learn that a devious and very powerful man guards them.
Our Thoughts on The Changling (1980)
In this sadly forgotten horror film, George C. Scott plays a music composer who has just moved to Seattle, WA to escape the painful memories of his wife and daughter who were killed in a car crash. He rents an old and secluded mansion from the historical society as a place to live. Soon after he moves into the house, strange occurrences begin.
This is one of those horror movies that can be scary without being bloody and gory. It simply relies on atmosphere and frightening, but subtle images to deliver its chills, and it works. Anyway, I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoys a good scary ghost story.
5 out of 10
Trivia
The house seen in the movie in real life doesn’t and never actually did exist. The film-makers could not find a suitable mansion to use for the film so at a cost of around $200,000, the production had a Victorian gothic mansion facade attached to the front of a much more modern dwelling in a Vancouver street. This construction was used for the filming of all the exteriors of the movie’s Carmichael Mansion. The interiors of the haunted house were an elaborate group of interconnecting sets built inside a film studio in Vancouver.
Director Martin Scorsese included this movie on his Top 11 Scariest Horror Films of all time list.
George C. Scott learned how to play the piece of classical music that he plays on piano for the college students.
Actors Trish Van Devere and George C. Scott were married to each other in real life. Publicity for this picture stated they had worked together seven times in their (then) eight years of marriage. They had been together in six movies (one for television) and one stage play.
