236) The Changeling (1980)

"Whatever has to be done, has to be done by me."

Director
Peter Medak

Cast
George C. Scott - John Russell
Trish Van Devere - Claire Norman
Melvyn Douglas - Sen. Joseph Carmichael
John Colicos = DeWitt
Jean Marsh - Joanna Russell

Michelle Martin - Kathy Russell

Madeleine Sherwood - Mrs. Norman

The last time I saw the 1980 supernatural horror/thriller movie "The Changeling" starring George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere stands out clearly in my memory. It was back in high school over 20-years ago. 

I went to a Catholic boys boarding school back then which also included a four-year Liberal Arts college. The school's headmaster, a priest we'll call "Fr. A," showed us dorm students this movie on a Saturday night. And the best part of the movie night which only happened three times with Fr. A during my four years of school, was that we got to watch it in the college reading room - a prestigious part of the campus that us peon high school boys were otherwise not allowed to step foot in. He ordered us pizza, soda, and we watched "The Changeling." Thanks, Father! 

It's a flick that has certainly stayed with me primarily because of that movie night with Fr. A in the college reading room. Plus, it has George C. Scott. 

I forgot the plot though since I first saw it. I remembered the general story, but that's about it. 

Still, it wasn't the kind of movie this kind of school would generally show. There's nothing wrong with the movie. It's just with the sensitivities of traditional Catholic parents being what they are, a paranormal thriller seems like the kind of flick that would cause a row. It's rated PG-13, if anyone is wondering. Fortunately, no one complained. Not that I know of, anyway. Honestly, so what if any did?

Anyways, I decided to stroll through movie watching memory lane and put on "The Changeling" thanks to my free subscription to the Fawesome Horror movies app. Afterall, since my high school days, I have much more of a fondness for George C. Scott. By the way, Fawesome is notorious for saturating their movies with tons of commercials, often the same few commercials, and all running on a loop for two and a half minutes per each commercial break. It's a frustrating app!
In this movie, Scott plays John Russell - a musical composer from New York City who, at the beginning of the story, loses his wife Joanna (Jean Marsh) and their young daughter Kathy (Michelle Martin) in a tragic car accident up along a snow-packed country road. 

The grieving widower leaves the city and moves to Seattle to embrace a quieter life while continuing to do what he loves most - composing music. He hopes this change of life will help ease the pain of loss even if just a little. 

There, he rents a gorgeous old Victorian mansion. 

However, the old house is already inhabited by a ghost which quickly makes its presence known. Little by little, the spirit tries to reveal to John the evil secrets that took place inside that house long before he ever moved in. 

John's curiosity is, of course, on alert as paranormal happenings keep occurring around him. Thunderous banging sounds come from somewhere up in the upper floors of the house. Doors slam on their own. Objects move on their own. It's a real scare show!

John discovers a secret door hidden in the back of a storage closet. Behind it he finds a sealed attic that clearly hasn't been seen or touched for years. 

George C. Scott in "The Changeling."

There's some web-covered furniture up there, along with an antiquated wheelchair and a music box that plays an unsettling tune. What's unsettling about it is that it's a tune he has been composing. 

When John has a vision of a young boy drowning in a bathtub, he starts drawing some dark conclusions. 

He enlists the help of Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere) from the local Historical Society to aid him in uncovering the house’s unsavory past.

They both find that a young boy named Joseph Carmichael lived there back in the early part of the century. 

John and Claire have a medium come to the house to conduct a seance where Joseph's voice is captured on audio. This is where traditional Catholic parents would lose their mind!

Joseph's rich and powerful father murdered him by drowning and then replaced him with an orphan so that the family fortune would remain. That imposter Joseph Carmichael grew up to be a U.S. Senator (Melvyn Douglas) and a patron of the historical society that owns that very same house. 

Now, John takes it upon himself to ensure that justice can be served for the late (and real) Joseph Carmichael so he can rest in peace, once and for all. 

The movie is more a paranormal thriller than a paranormal horror movie. It strikes me as such because of George C. Scott's performance. It's not a bad performance given what Scott has to work with, and surely with the direction he's given. In fact, he's great in the film. 

Scott never seems to act scared or terrified as he resides in a huge house with a restless ghost. Sure, his character is coping with an unbearable tragedy. 

Still, all the paranormal activity just rouses his curiosity enough to dig deeper and deeper into the house. That would be a logical reaction, but so would fear and trepidation. 

This lack of fear from the main character steals the fear from the audience. If John isn't scared, why should the audience be scared? 

In one scene, Scott's character yells at the ghost in exhausted frustration as it manifests its anger at him after John's first attempt to make contact with Sen. Joseph Carmichael which ends in failure and humiliation. He hurls some obscenities at the ghost, which slams all the doors in the house one after the other as soon as he returns home. 

"What is it you want," John shouts. 

He stares up the huge staircase anticipating some kind of response. 

"What do you want from me? I've done everything I can do!" His voice echoes back from the bowels of the house as if to taunt him for his defeat. "There's nothing more to do!" Is he living with an angry ghost or a spoiled brat? 

I think Scott, playing Ebenezer Scrooge, conveys a lot more fear when he encounters the ghost of Jacob Marley in the 1984 version of "A Christmas Carol" than he does in this move. 

Still, Scott is fantastic in this movie for what he's going for. It's that his performance doesn't go as far as it very well could and should have. In other words, I don't think Scott was used to his full potential. He is one of the most talented actors in Hollywood history.

That's not to say there's no emotion in the movie. There is! John is trying to cope with loss, after all. And now he's found himself trying to unravel and expose an old secret no one was ever meant to know about, all revealed to him by a child's ghost. 

There's an unsettling atmosphere in "The Changeling" that's certainly haunting. The story doesn't rely on jump scares or in-your-face effects. It's all about the atmosphere, tension, plot and paranormal happenings.

Trish Van Devere as Claire.

It's a much more genuine or authentic haunted house story than others I've seen.  

The movie tries to scare, but what terror the movie possesses emerges naturally, unfolding with an eerie authenticity. 

The story is sinisterly engrossing and a haunting study in suspense. Its key scene is a seance in which the spirit of the young Joseph Carmichael speaks through a medium via psychography, or automatic writing. It's not an activity I would recommend nor endorse as it's a straight path towards losing one's soul and mind. 

Still, it's when the story grows the most intense. After this scene, John listens to the reel recordings of this seance and hears the voice of a child whispering above the medium's voice. 

"The Changeling" has an appealing classic atmosphere of a haunted house story. It manages to take the audience along with a steady increase of tension and foreboding. Grief, pain and loss are strong themes in this story. "The Changeling" tells a story not just about a haunted house, but a tale of isolation. It could have used much more for the sake of fear it's trying to depict. In this regard, I think the movie falls short. 

But I love that old fashioned atmosphere, increasing intensity and crawling fear. That sense of isolation is a strong ingredient in a paranormal horror flick, or most other horror subgenres. It's seen in paranormal movies such as "The Others" (2001) with Nicole Kidman, which is all about a grieving mother in a mysterious house. It's effectively used in "Lake Mungo" (2008) which is a really understated eerie film that deals with family tragedy and a haunting. And it's utilized in "The Innocents" (1961) which is a classic gothic film which pairs isolation with repression and the sense of a lost child. 
Familiar terrors, when well told, still have the power to grab the full attention of audiences. 

However, the story soon catches itself and veers the atmosphere towards a mystery than a ghost story, only to bring it back to that paranormal feel similar to a campfire ghost story. 

It's not terrible. It's just not as scary as I wanted it to be. 

Director Peter Medak directed a string of British comedies prior to directing "The Changeling" such as "A Day in the Death of Joe Egg" (1972) with Alan Bates and Janet Suzman, "The Ruling Class"  (1972) with Peter O'Toole, "Ghost in the Noonday Sun" (1974) with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, and "The Odd Job" (1978) with Monty Python veteran Graham Chapman. So, this seems like a change of pace for Medak. Evidently, the story is based on real events experienced by playwright and composer Russell Hunter. Look it up! 

Regarding "The Changeling" Medak said, "I'd like to make a civilized sort of picture, that people would still go and see. A friend of mine said that I should make 'Hamlet on roller skates." 1

It's worth noting that George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere were married at the time up until Scott's death in 1999. 

Despite the flaws, "The Changeling" somehow manages to earn the status of "underrated classic." 

 

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1 Michael J. Weldon, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (New York: Ballantine Books, 1983), [115].