Conjuring Dread: The Ghostly Legacy Of THE CHANGELING
The enormous success of The Exorcist in 1973 was a game-changer in Hollywood. Record breaking box office and the prestige of ten Oscar nominations meant that some of the most respected actors were drawn into the horror genre – on purpose rather than out of desperation. In 1976, one of Hollywood’s most venerated players Gregory Peck chanced his arm on such a move by headlining The Omen and was repaid with one of the biggest hits of the year. By the end of the decade Kirk Douglas (The Fury) and even Charlton Heston (The Awakening) were at it.
Enter George C Scott, Academy Award winning star and one of the most acclaimed actors of his age, who signed up to headline The ChangelingThe Shining in 1980.
The Changeling was not a huge success upon its release but it was not for the want of acclaim and positive reviews. Over the years, with suitably slow-burning patience, it has built up a devoted club of admirers (including Martin Scorsese who owns a 35mm print) and its influence on films such as The Ring and Annabelle have seen it reclaimed by many as the grandfather of the hugely popular Conjuring Universe.
“That house is not fit to live in. It doesn’t want people.”
Celebrated composer John Russell (Scott) is left traumatised by the death of his wife and daughter in a traffic accident. He returns to teaching and as a means of helping himself recover, rents an old house recommended to him by the local historical society. The solitude helps him regain his musical mojo and soon he is composing again.
However, it gradually becomes clear that the banging on the pipes and the randomly self-slamming doors are nothing to do with shoddy plumbing and carpentry. Apparitions and ghostly voices lead Russell to uncover a sinister mystery involving a local senator (Melvyn Douglas) and an unthinkable crime committed decades ago that won’t stay buried.
The Changeling’s weak box office returns in 1980 might be attributable to its maturity and craftsmanship that set it at odds against the extreme violence and rough tawdriness of the massively popular slasher pictures like Friday The 13th, which were dominating the horror scene at the time.
It many ways the film is built around George C Scott. His stately presence anchors the whole thing in a real, relatable world and an actor with his talent is an extraordinary asset to a film in which the audience is asked to believe the unbelievable. His character is a broken man and his quest to solve the mystery at the heart of the haunting becomes an obsessive attempt to piece himself back together.
While The Amityville Horror deployed a box of tricks to bludgeon its audience into submission (including bleeding walls, a vomiting nun and Rod Steiger covered in flies), The Changeling slowly, covertly ratchets up an atmosphere of dread. In this way it owes its greatest debt to the unseen terrors of The Haunting rather than the brutal excesses of popular 1970s horror.
Peter Medak directs with the confidence of a storyteller who knows he’s sitting on a great yarn. Peckinpah’s regular cinematographer John Coquillon paints the film in natural, deceptively unthreatening light; his prowling Steadicam suggesting a spectral presence floating through the house in place of any hoary special effects.
Scares come not in jump-shocks but in whispers. A seance scene – which Spielberg lovingly referenced in Poltergeist – is paid off not by any pyrotechnics but by a disembodied child’s voice caught on a sound recording. A solitary ball bouncing down a flight of stairs proved unsettling enough to resurface in Nick Murphy’s Charlton Hestonless The Awakening.
Laying The Ghost To Rest.
The debt owed to The Changeling by the ever-expanding Conjuring Universe has been acknowledged by James Wan and his fellow filmmakers whose teen years were haunted by repeated showings on late night TV back in the 1980s. Inevitably, things look likely to come full circle with a remake, with names such as James Watkins (The Woman in Black) and Guillermo Del Toro mentioned in dispatches – Del Toro once hugged a surprised Peter Medak at an awards ceremony for making one of his favourite films.
For Medak, the film was a lifeline back to a career that he thought might have slipped through his fingers after his terrible experience directing Ghost in The Noonday Sun in 1973 (a nightmare he revisits in his latest film, The Ghost of Peter Sellers). Even with admired hits like The Ruling Class, The Krays and Romeo Is Bleeding under his belt, The Changeling is likely to remain Medak’s most treasured work.
The new BluRay from Severin Films is the perfect way to blow the dust off this missing classic and introduce yourself. The 4K transfer is crisp and glacial and the sound design, so integral to the film’s under-the-skin chills, is pin-drop sharp. The disc is loaded with fascinating extras and a jovial commentary with the director.
Why did Joseph die? Why is he still here? Why don’t you find out? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
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