Solid 1970s era chiller with the late, great George C. Scott (yes, Patton) in the featured role. Scott plays a grieving widower who thinks a change of scenery -- moving from NYC to Seattle -- will help his condition. Think, again. He has the bad fortune to get leased a creepy "Victorian" mansion that just, well, LOOKS haunted. The rest, as they say, is story and character development.
I love that this analog fright fest uses completely conventional SFX and heavily relies on atmosphere, sound effects and just simply the creepiness of the house itself to establish the scare factor here. Backstory is that a little boy may have been murdered in the house early in the Century and his spirit most definitely is NOT at rest.
Scott's performance is a slow burn revelation, as he devolves from self-assured piano playing intellectual to amateur Ghost Hunter. The story evolves from him just solo dealing with the Ghost to, eventually, a whole team of parapsychic researchers (he'll try anything at this point) and then eventually involves taking down a sitting US Senator.
Great stuff.
Now, the digital file on Amazon has some strange stuff going on with it. Either the print was not done correctly, and that causes some very strange delays or jitters in scenes with slow moving motion in them -- especially camera pans -- or that technique was actually intentional on the part of director Peter Medak and his DP. Not sure. It doesn't ruin the overall enjoyment of the film.
