The Legacy is a 1978 horror film directed by Richard Marquand, in his directorial debut, and starring Katharine Ross, Sam Elliott, Roger Daltrey, John Standing, and Margaret Tyzack. It follows an American couple who are summoned to a British mansion while visiting England for a work obligation, where they stumble upon its family's curse.
A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, The Legacy was released in the United Kingdom in September 1978, and one year later in the United States.
Plot[]
Maggie Walsh and her boyfriend Pete Danner are interior decorators from Los Angeles. Maggie receives a large financial retainer from an anonymous client in Britain for an unspecified piece of work. They are reluctant to abandon their current client in California, but are released when that client dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances. Using their pre-paid airfare, they travel to England; soon after, they are involved in a traffic collision with a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. The passenger and owner, Jason Mountolive, invites them to his rambling country estate, Ravenhurst, where they are greeted by Nurse Adams.
They find that Mountolive has also invited the five potential heirs to his financial estate, all public figures with notorious reputations. The other guests explain that they have been summoned because Jason is dying, "wasting away" above the stairs. Maggie is astonished to hear this because Jason seemed vigorous just minutes earlier.
Shortly afterward one of the guests, Maria Gabrieli, despite being an excellent swimmer, becomes trapped under the surface of Jason's indoor pool and drowns.
Mountolive receives his guests in his bedroom, a sterile chrome and glass environment where he lies connected to a life support system. His bed is shrouded by white curtains that obscure his appearance. He calls Maggie to the bedside, where a monstrous hand reaches out of the curtains and places a signet ring on her finger with the Mountolive family crest upon it. The other guests already wear identical rings. Maggie tries to remove the ring, but it cannot be taken from her finger. Maggie and Pete find they are unable to leave the Ravenhurst grounds.
The other guests begin to die by mysterious and gruesome means. Clive Jackson gets a chicken bone lodged in his throat during dinner (although he was not eating chicken at the time) and perishes during a botched tracheotomy. Karl Liebnecht is incinerated by a massive burst of flame from a fireplace that leaves the rest of the room untouched. A mirror in Barbara Kirstenburg's bedroom explodes, piercing her with glass shards, then restores itself without a crack. Jacques Grandier suspects Maggie and Pete of engineering these inexplicable deaths, and makes his way onto the roof with a shotgun. After taking a few shots at Pete, the weapon jams and explodes in his face, knocking him off the roof to his death.
Maggie and Pete find a collection of newspaper clippings. These reveal that each of their fellow guests had been accused of serious crimes or implicated in major scandals, yet always escaped punishment or censure thanks to Mountolive's intervention. Mountolive's ancestors were Lady Margaret Walsingham (whose portrait Maggie closely resembles) and the Lord of Mountolive; both families included notorious practitioners of black magic and witchcraft. Lady Margaret and her husband were burned at the stake for heresy. Maggie realises that she is Jason's great-granddaughter, and that the retainer was a ruse to lure her to Ravenhurst before Mountolive dies so he could appoint her as his sixth potential heir.
As the last remaining heir to Mountolive's legacy, Maggie stands to inherit the vast Walsingham-Mountolive financial empire. She confronts Mountolive. With his last breath, he confesses that he sacrificed the other heirs to the Devil in order to pass on his sinister powers to her. He instructs her to choose six heirs of her own, who will likewise be sacrificed when the time comes so that the lone survivor will also inherit the powers bestowed by Satan.
Pete forces his way into the room and tries to prevent the transfer of power by sabotaging Mountolive's life-support system. He is too late; Maggie has accepted her legacy and is now "Lady Margaret". The household staff declares their allegiance to her. Maggie selects Pete as her first beneficiary. She gives him a signet ring which immediately attaches itself to his finger.