The Legacy (1978)

The Legacy (1978) is the classic “stranded couple accepts invitation to stay in creepy mansion” story, but with a witchcrafty, satanist twist. Maggie Walsh (Katharine Ross) and her boyfriend Pete Danner (Sam Elliott) are interior decorators from Los Angeles who travel across the pond to meet with a potential client in England. Once they arrive, they get into a country road accident with a reclusive multi-millionaire (John Standing) driving a vintage limousine. The millionaire invites Maggie and Pete to stay at Ravenhurst, his huge country estate which -- what a coincidence! -- happens to be the home they’ve traveled to England to decorate. Things then take a turn for the weird -- turns out the millionaire is dying, and he’s summoned Maggie and Pete and five other people, including a “million-dollar prostitute” and a “nation-killer,” to be the eventual beneficiaries of his estate. And then there’s witchcraft and satanism and murder and rings that permanently graft to your skin. Thankfully, amidst all the madness, there’s a brief vision of Elliot without his briefs, a prolonged preview of his perky posterior and bare back and chest that is totally superfluous yet totally necessary at the same time.