The Legacy (1978) on Netflix
Maggie Walsh and Pete Danner are Los Angeles interior decorators. A retainer from a nameless British client takes them to England, where a crash brings an invitation to a country estate.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb5.8/103,855 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes24%
Trailer
Plot summary
A large retainer arrives from a client in Britain whom Maggie Walsh has never met, and she and her boyfriend Pete Danner, interior decorators in Los Angeles, use the pre-paid airfare to travel to England. On the road their car collides with a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, and the man riding in it, Jason Mountolive, asks them to Ravenhurst, his country estate, where a nurse named Adams receives them. Five other guests have been summoned as well, public figures with scandalous reputations, and they say their host is dying upstairs. Maggie had seen him looking strong only minutes before. Mountolive then calls her to his curtained bedside, and a hand reaches out to set a signet ring bearing the family crest on her finger. The ring will not come off, and the couple cannot leave the grounds.
Cast
- Marianne Broomeas Maria Gabrieli
- William Abneyas Butler
Show all 14 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Legacy (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Legacy is perhaps best remembered as the film where Katharine Ross, who plays Margaret Walsh, and Sam Elliott, who plays Pete Danner, first met; during production she was married to the Italian-American actor Gaetano Lisi, that marriage ended the following year, and the pair married in 1984.
- Jimmy Sangster originally wrote a supernatural script set in a run-down hospital in downtown Detroit, but much to his dismay it was altered to more closely resemble other Hammer movies, moving the story to an English country estate with stereotypical butlers, chauffeurs and curtseying maids.
- Editor Anne Coates recalled having lunch with Richard Marquand: "he sold the idea of the film, and I thought, God! this is a director who really knows what he is doing... But unfortunately when he actually got on the floor... he clearly didn't know what he was doing at all."
- John Coyne was asked to write a novelization in six weeks to promote the movie; reviews unanimously prefer the novelization over the movie, and the book was briefly a best-seller.
- Actors considered for the part of Karl included Harry Andrews, Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Donald Pleasence, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Anton Diffring, Patrick Troughton and Peter Vaughan.
