The Changeling
It was a cold winter morning which will last forever in the memory of John Russell though the horror was over in a moment, November 27th, as their car broke down on Hollyburn Ridge, he crossing the road to call for recovery and watching helplessly as another car skidded on the ice, causing an approaching truck to swerve directly into his wife Joanna and their daughter Kathy as they played in the snow.
His life existing in grey drizzle and fog, the bare floorboards of his New York apartment echo differently without furnishings or family, empty of everything but memories and the last packing boxes, functioning by habit as he prepares to move to Seattle to take up a new position at the university supported by friends who suggest the Historical Preservation Society may be able to find a suitable residence.
Claire Norman guiding him to the mansion on Chessman Park, unoccupied for twelve years, the musicologist and composer is a man haunted by loss and grief, but also by something within the house, woken every morning at precisely six by thirty seconds of repeated banging travelling through the water pipes, his search guided to a secret attic bedroom, boarded up and decayed, where he finds the schoolbooks of a child and a music box.
Directed by Peter Medak from a screenplay by William Gray and Diana Maddox from a story by the playwright Russell Hunter, ostensibly based upon his own experiences at Cheeseman Park in Denver, Colorado in the sixties though there is little evidence to support this, The Changeling was shot largely in Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia from December 1978 to February 1979 and released in March the following year.
With only establishing shots of Seattle and New York, the interior of the Chessman House was a vast and elaborately designed, constructed and furnished set, while the exterior was nothing more than a façade built on location when nothing suitable could be found but utterly convincing in its towering menace which conceals dark secrets in the dusty upper rooms beyond the grand staircase and chandeliers.
Starring Exorcist III’s George C Scott as John Russell alongside his wife and frequent co-star Trish Van Devere as Claire Norman, both of whom won Genie awards for their roles, their performances carry the film, starting as a gentle but welcome companionship finding themselves tied together by the strange occurrences, her resources and contacts allowing him to research the history of the house, finding fragments of a story and hints of evidence which only amplify the phenomena.
The centrepiece of The Changeling a séance conducted by Leah and Albert Harmon (Helen Burns and Eric Christmas), it is terrifying not because of any threat but because of the overwhelming power channelled by the medium, the desperate need of the initially playful presence to urgently communicate, the belief sold by Rick Wilkins’ atmospheric score and Madeleine Sherwood as Claire’s supportive but overwhelmed and fearful mother, a contrast to Ruth Springford’s Minnie Huxley, Claire’s sour associate at the Society.
The characters rational but confronted by the inexplicable, John himself doubting until he hears a whispered voice which resolves his conviction, with The Old Dark House’s Melvyn Douglas, Doctor Who’s Jean Marsh, Space: 1999’s Barry Morse and Battlestar Galactica’s John Colicos The Changeling stands alongside The Haunting and Ghost Story as an understated horror of what is heard and felt rather than seen, intelligent adults coping as best they can with the tragedies of present and past which refuse to be silenced or denied.
The Changeling is available on Shudder now
