#ben fischer

commission drawing, created by the amazing @thatdoodlebug 🤩😎

I figure that if Death can cry, maybe we all have a chance for redemption.

Ben Fischer at the beginning of Hell House: “We shouldn’t be provoking the ghost that lives here--you don’t know what he’s capable of.  Believe me, we’ll all be much safer if we just wait it out and not do anything reckless.”

The best damn thing about Roddy’s character in The Legend of Hell House is that Ben spends most of the movie as a very quiet, meek, emotionally repressed man advising his teammates not to provoke Belasco and protecting his fellow medium from various paranormal attacks (he’s like Florence’s big brother, and it’s the dearest thing).  But because Belasco can’t stand to not have all the attention for five minutes, people start dying, and Ben proceeds to go right the hell off.  And it is the most glorious thing--it’s like watching Bruce Banner turn into the Hulk.

And ☆ for Ben Fischer?

Roddy’s character, Ben, practically filled out the check list of “victim.”   He was quiet, sweet, wore glasses… He was sympathetic.  He was kind.  He felt like a perverbial dead character walking  He had been in the house before when he was younger and barely got out alive.  He was timid.  He was scared.  I was so sure he was going to die that I began to try to guess as to how he would die, not “if” but “how.”  At one point I remember telling Lorie “I hope it’s not a slow death.  I like him.”  I was that certain he would die. Guess who ended up the hero and walked out alive?   Not only was it a surprisingly good film with accurate depictions of paranormal research and views on theoretical physics, and the terminology used by parapsychologists (of the era) with conflicting (though plausible) theories but Roddy’s character became the hero!    Ben (Roddy) confronted the ghost of old Belasco and lived to tell the tale. I was pleasantly surprised that he had survived essentially being a walking check list for a horror movie character to be killed off, so much so that Hell House soon became one of my favorite haunted house stories.