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A psychologist (Richard Crenna, looking great with a beard) and his doctor wife (smoke-show Joanna Pettet) purchase a dilapidated but beautiful old mansion to refurbish and open up as a clinic. They have their friends and associates come out to help them fix the place up (among them one of my favorite genre actors Andrew Prine) and, of course, all of their lives are on the line thanks to something old and very evil already calling the place home. Once Crenna opens up a hidden cellar buried under loose earth in the basement, the group starts dying and they get trapped in the building. The opening supernatural murder of the drunk and spooked caretaker lets us know that this house ain’t fucking around. During the initial walkthrough, where we get some history of the place, Dr. Carol believes she sees a ghost wandering around. Some of the ceiling falls and the landlord lets them know that there’s a few folks in the town who would like the place left abandoned because tearing it down is impossible with its historical landmark status. They buy it at a steal and get to work. Carol keeps thinking she’s seeing things (an excellent moving statue bit use to scare the hell out of me) and it doesn’t take long for fatal “accidents” to begin chipping away at the cast. There’s a malignant presence in the basement and as much as Mr. Crenna dismisses his wife’s claims of a paranormal force at work, eventually he’s going to come face to face with something his scientific brain can barely comprehend. I have a soft spot for this film thanks to those video store days of picking out random rentals and just hoping for the best. Cheesy special effects only endear it to me more and ya can’t beat Victor Buono having a blast in the last act reveal of the Devil himself.
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