The Changeling (1980) on Netflix
After a car accident kills his wife and daughter, composer John Russell moves to Seattle and rents a mansion that has stood empty for twelve years. A loud banging sounds each morning.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.1/1045,158 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes85%
Trailer
Plot summary
John Russell is a composer in New York City. While he is vacationing upstate with his wife and daughter, the car gets stuck in snow; as he walks to a roadside phone booth to call for help, a truck is knocked off its path and strikes the two of them. Grieving, John moves to Seattle and rents a mansion through Claire Norman, an agent of a local historical society. She says the house has stood empty for twelve years. John means to write music there, but the place is not quiet. A loud banging comes every morning, and one night he finds every tap in the house running and sees a boy's figure in the bath.
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Cast
- Helen Burnsas Leah Harmon
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Changeling (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Changeling draws on playwright Russell Hunter's claim that in Denver's Henry Treat Rogers mansion he found a century-old journal about a disabled boy kept in isolation over a $70 million inheritance, and that a seance led him to human remains and a gold medallion.
- Doubt has been cast on Russell Hunter's story: the Denver Public Library holds no record of him living at the Henry Treat Rogers mansion, and historian Phil Goodstein said no Denver-area family had a $70 million fortune between the late 1800s and early 1900s.
- Peter Medak was the third director hired for The Changeling; Donald Cammell and Tony Richardson both withdrew over "creative differences". Medak had only a month to handle script re-writes and set construction.
- When no Vancouver exterior had the gothic quality the haunted mansion needed, art director Reuben Freed's team built a facade on the lot of an existing home in the city's Oakridge neighborhood and shot the interiors on sets at Panorama Film Studios.
- The Changeling took home eight awards at the first Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, and was also nominated for two Saturn Awards.
- Joshua Jackson made his first on-screen appearance in The Changeling, aged seven months, with his mother working on the film as an assistant director.
