The Best Haunted House Movie From The '80s Is Streaming For Free

There are exceptions, but, in general, the best time to start watching horror movies is when you are very young and believe deep down in your easily terrified heart that the supernatural is real. Dark corners, creepy basements, and unoccupied attics are where evil spirits lurk. When your parents tell you an unexplained creak or bump in the middle of the night is simply the house "settling," you know better. When your dog or cat inexplicably stares down an unlit hallway, you trust that they're face-to-face with a ghost.

This was my childhood, and I am so very grateful to have sometimes gone to bed dreading the appearance of a poltergeist or Michael Meyers or, worst of all, the hearse driver from "Burnt Offerings." And this fear was often amplified during the day, when you'd be watching a syndicated sitcom that, during a commercial break, would blindside you with an advertisement for a new horror film. In 1980, there wasn't a spot that induced sleepless nights like the one for Peter Medak's "The Changeling."

At a time when slasher movies were beginning to assert their gore-soaked dominance in the horror movie space, "The Changeling" took a more elegant approach. Based on writer Russell Hunter's alleged (and disputed) real-life supernatural encounter, the film stars "Patton" Oscar winner George C. Scott as a composer who, grieving the death of his wife and child, moves into a long-unoccupied Seattle mansion (rented out by the city's historical society), where he's whupped upside the head by a surfeit of supernatural phenomena. There's no blood and no masked killer; there's just the presence of a spirit that, for one reason or another, is unsettled, and it's trying to convey its anguish to Scott's character. But while "The Changeling" functions quite well as a mystery, it is first and foremost a frightfest.

Medak, a Hungarian-born director best known at the time for his cult-classic film adaptation of Peter Barnes' satiric play "The Ruling Class," landed "The Changeling" gig after filmmakers Donald Cammell and Tony Richardson departed the production. He's a versatile, intuitive craftsman who can knock out a grounded, top-notch episode of "The Wire," then turn around and commit to the phantasmagorical madness of "Species II" (an A+ piece of sci-fi/horror schlock). "The Changeling" lands somewhere in between these two works, but, shot for shot, you can sense his excitement.

Scott was coming off a hyper-intense performance as a Calvinist father who finds out his daughter has become an adult film actor in Paul Schrader's "Hardcore," when he made "The Changeling," and he goes just about as hard in Medak's movie. He's serene when he's composing music at the piano, but when doors start slamming shut, a seance goes wrong, and a rubber ball bounces ominously down the stairs, he goes buck wild. It's a masterful performance from an inveterate grandstander who, more often than not, got away with grandstanding murder.

Martin Scorsese declared "The Changeling" to be one of the scariest movies ever made, and, y'know, I'll agree with one of our greatest living filmmakers. When Melvyn Douglas gets involved, I think the unnerving supernatural element gets a tad undercut, but Medak crescendos the film to a terrifying, fiery climax. Let "The Changeling" into your life, and enjoy recurring nightmares that you will never, ever shake.

You can stream "The Changeling" for free on Pluto TV right now.