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Up the ancient stairs, behind the locked door, something lives, something evil,
from which no one has ever returned.
The Rolf family takes a vacation from the city (the specific city is not
identified in the film) at a large Victorian mansion in the California
countryside. The family consists of wife and husband Marian (Karen Black) and Ben (Oliver Reed), their young son
David (Lee
Montgomery), and their elderly aunt Elizabeth (Bette Davis). The owners of the house are the
Allardyce siblings, brother Arnold and sister Roz, played by actors Burgess Meredith and
Eileen Heckart,
respectively. The Allardyces appear at the beginning of the film when they
inform their new tenants of a particularly odd requirement for their rental: the
Allardyce's elderly mother continues to live in her upstairs room and the Rolfs
are required to provide her with food during their stay. The siblings explain
that the old woman is obsessed with privacy and will probably not interact with
them, so the food is to be left outside her door.
As it turns out, this task falls to the mother who quickly succumbs to the
allure of the ornate Victorian house and its period decor. Various "accidents"
occur during the summer, including the suspicious death of the renters' Aunt
Elizabeth. As the film progresses, Ben becomes increasingly depressed and
anxious while Marian becomes increasingly obsessed with the house, the old woman
in the attic, and all of the Victorian artifacts. It gradually becomes clear
that Marian is somehow being possessed or controlled by the house and
that a malevolent force is slowly consuming the whole family.
At the climax of
the movie, the house kills Ben and David, Marian "becomes" the old woman in the
attic. The film ends with the house fully rejuvenated and glistening like new.
The Allardyce siblings, who have not been seen since the beginning of the film,
return and marvel at the house's beauty. We also notice that pictures of the
family have been added to a large table covered with portrait-photographs going
back centuries, implying that the house's regeneration process is as old as the
house itself and that the Rolfs were simply the latest victims.
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