This great ghost story starred one of the best actors of the era, George C. Scott, who had won an Academy Award in 1970 for Patton. It co-starred his then wife Trish Van Devere.

Directed by Peter Medak, The Changeling is a perfect exercise in subtlety...hardly any blood, but extremely scary!

John Russell (George C. Scott), is driving through Upstate New York with his wife Joanna (Jean Marsh), and their daughter Kathy (Michelle Martin). Their car stalls in the snow.

John gets out and goes to a pay phone to call for assistance. As Joanna and Kathy are playing on the road, a high speed pick up truck is coming towards them. It slams into the two, killing them instantly.

John is a noted composer and pianist, but this tragedy forces him to move out of his luxury Manhattan apartment. There are too many reminders of the family he's lost. He moves to Seattle to teach at the school he graduated from and decides the best thing to do is to rent a house. A friend of his recommends he find his home through the Historical Preservation Society.

He meets Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere) outside of a huge estate. The house hasn't been lived in for the last twelve years. John accepts the offer and moves in. One afternoon, after he has left his music room, a note plays by itself on the piano.

The music class he teaches at the college is a great success. It's packed with students. John also finds time to attend a fundraiser for the local symphony orchestra. There, he listens to a speech by Senator Joe Carmichael (Melvyn Douglas) who's also a member of the Preservation Society.

Back at home, he is awakened by loud banging noises. He is also increasingly haunted by memories of his family. One night, he hears something upstairs. Walking up the top floor, he goes into a bathroom where he sees a bathtub filling up with water. When he moves closer to it, he sees the image of a little boy submerged in it.

At the Preservation Society's office, he tries to find out from Claire if there's been any trouble in the house. She says there hasn't been, but a secretary tells John that the house isn't fit for humans. Later at the house, as he's standing outside, a piece of glass falls from a window in the attic.

Going upstairs, he sees that the door to the attic is closed off. He breaks the lock and enters it. There he finds the room covered in cobwebs, and among other things, a music box and a child's wheelchair.

With Claire's help, he finds out that in 1909, a man named Walter Barnard lived in the house. He had a daughter named Cora, who was killed when she was hit by a coal cart. More strange things happen, such as a child's toy ball bouncing down the staircase by itself. Convinced there's a paranormal presense in the house, John invites a medium named Leah Harmon (Helen Burns) over.

During a seance, she tries to communicate with the Barnard girl. In a trance, the medium is writing words down on pieces of paper. But the name that comes up is not Cora. It's the name of a boy: Joseph. When asked if he died in the house, a glass flies across the room and smashes against the wall.

Later, when John plays the tape back of the seance, he can hear the dead boy's responses. In a flashback, we see what the boy was trying to communicate. He was drowned in the bathtub by his father.

In doing research, John and Claire find out that Richard and Emily Carmichael lived in the house before the Barnards, from 1899 to 1906. The Carmichaels had a child named Joseph, who was crippled.

Because the boy would probably die young, the family stood to lose a huge inheritance from Richard's father, and the wealth would go to charity. Pretending to take the son to Europe for therapy, John and Claire figure out that the father actually murdered him. He then replaced the child with a boy from the local orphanage.

The fake son stayed in Europe until after World War I. "Cured," he came back to America when he was 18, and no one knew that he was actually a replacement for the dead son. That son grew up to be Senator Joe Carmichael.

Another clue that came up in the tape of the seance was the word "well," so John concludes it must be the spot where Joseph's body was buried.

He finds that a well nearby now has a house built over it. The woman that lives there initially denies John the right to dig up the floor in one of the bedrooms, but changes her mind when her daughter has nightmares of a dead boy coming up out of it. John and Claire do indeed find the bones of a child, and when John goes back for a second visit, he finds a medallion with the name Joseph Patrick Carmichael inscribed on it.

After he confronts the senator with his find, a police officer is sent to the house to retrieve the medallion. John refuses, and the officer mysteriously dies in a car accident as he leaves.

The Senator then agrees to speak with John. He is confronted with the evidence that the reason he is wealthy and in power is due to the murder of an innocent boy some 70 years before. He is a "changeling."

The senator vehemently denies the accusation. Back at the house, Claire shows up but John isn't there. Suddenly a dusty old wheelchair begins chasing her until it crashes at the bottom of the staircase.

John shows up just in time, but the house is falling apart. The walls are rattling and a fire is set. He has a vision of the senator climbing the stairs to his death.

John and Claire make it safely outside and the entire house goes up in flames. At that moment, Senator Carmichael suffers a fatal heartattack. Little Joseph has finally been avenged and all that remains is his wheelchair.

Jason: A very strong haunted house movie. This is made extremely enjoyable by the great, understated acting of the cast. Scott is exceptional as the new owner of the troubled mansion and Van Devere is a good supporting cast member.

The images of the boy drowning, the creepy hallways of the spacious house, the darkened attic: all these are masterfully done. The camerawork, too, is unique here, making the viewer feel as if they are on Scott's journey throughout the house and its history. This is solid horror moviemaking.

Hunter: 1979 isn't really that long ago, but it feels like a lifetime in terms of the style of American moviemaking. If only filmmakers now would use their imagination the way the people who made The Changeling had done.

With the exception of Poltergeist, which is sometimes over the top, yet intelligent, no ghost movie since has delivered the same great chills that some scenes in this film do. Period.