Attractive young American architect Margaret Walsh (Katharine Ross) is given an advance cheque for $50,000 for a job in London. Together with her boyfriend Pete (Sam Elliot, looking a whole lot like a '70s porn-star), she travels to England several days early to enjoy the countryside, where the couple's motorbike is involved in a near collision with the limousine of millionaire Jason Mountolive (John Standing). The couple are invited to stay at Jason's luxurious mansion while their vehicle is being repaired; there, they are joined by five other guests, who, one-by-one, meet gruesome supernatural fates.
Occult horror was all the rage in the '70s and director Richard Marquand's The Legacy can clearly be seen to be jumping on the bandwagon, taking obvious inspiration from films such as The Omen and Suspiria, with a collection of creatively mounted death scenes being its major selling point ('cos logic sure isn't!). The inventive demises include a swimmer trapped under the surface of a pool, The Who's Roger Daltrey having a messy and fatal tracheotomy after choking on a bone, Charles Gray being incinerated and fed to some dogs, and a woman impaled by flying shards of mirror glass.
After these elaborate death scenes, lots of comparatively mundane old, dark house nonsense, and some not particularly exciting action, it is eventually revealed that Margaret is to inherit the fatally ill Mountolive's legacy, an unlimited Satanic power that she is finally willing to accept. Her boyfriend Pete appears to have quickly come to terms with the situation as well, the film ending with the happy couple discussing what to do with their newfound demonic potential, fabulous wealth and team of loyal acolytes.
