The early ’70s were a fertile breeding ground for the TV “Movie of the Week”—cheaply made, hastily written, and broadcast in prime time to audiences who had nowhere else to turn in a world with only three channels. Out of this swamp crawled Haunts of the Very Rich (1972), a horror-thriller with a title that promises biting satire but delivers the cinematic equivalent of a beige wallpaper sample.
Imagine The Twilight Zone stretched to feature length, stripped of wit, and padded with commercials for dish soap. That’s this movie.
Welcome to Paradise, Population: Dead Inside
The set-up has promise: a group of affluent tourists are flown to a mysterious tropical resort called “The Portals of Eden,” run by the enigmatic Seacrist (Moses Gunn, giving dignity to dialogue unworthy of him). They are pampered for one night, then wake to find the staff gone, food and water dwindling, and communications dead. It quickly dawns on them that they may, in fact, be in Hell.
So far, so good—The Decameron by way of Gilligan’s Island. Unfortunately, the execution plays like a community theater production of Lost Horizon, staged in a retirement home where everyone forgot their lines.
The Cast: A Who’s Who of “Oh, I Remember Them!”
The ensemble cast reads like a list of celebrities your grandmother might recognize during a rerun marathon:
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Lloyd Bridges as Dave, a businessman with a heart condition and all the charisma of soggy toast.
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Cloris Leachman as Ellen, gamely trying to inject life into material that treats her like a rejected soap-opera character.
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Edward Asner as Al, an alcoholic who may or may not have drunk himself to death—an ironic role given Asner’s usual air of gravelly authority.
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Anne Francis, Tony Bill, and Donna Mills as jet-setters whose personalities could be summarized on a cocktail napkin.
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Robert Reed—yes, Mike Brady himself—cast against type as a minister, proving once again that even spiritual figures can bore audiences to tears.
It’s the kind of cast that screams “star-studded,” but in reality, it’s a bunch of names trapped in a tropical waiting room, forced to recite dialogue that would embarrass a fortune cookie.
Hell is Other People… and Endless Monologues
The supposed tension comes from the guests gradually realizing they’re dead. Each character recounts their “brush with mortality”—a heart attack here, a car accident there, some shady pills, even a drowned reverend. Instead of dramatic revelation, these confessions play like insurance adjuster case studies.
They are in Hell, all right—an eternity of exposition, whispered accusations, and soggy existential dread. Sartre famously said, “Hell is other people.” Haunts of the Very Rich clarifies: Hell is other people talking endlessly about how they maybe, possibly died.
Hope, Dangling on a Fishing Line
To torment the guests further, the script throws in “false hope” like a sadistic cruise director. A seaplane arrives, its pilot promising rescue—except one guest recognizes him as a singer who supposedly died in a crash. Another plane appears, but vanishes without a sound. Every time the survivors believe they’ll escape, the rug is yanked out.
It’s meant to be a chilling metaphor for Hell: an endless cycle of hope and despair. But instead it plays like an extended prank. The audience is not horrified—we’re just annoyed. Imagine Charlie Brown trying to kick the football for two hours, while Lucy is played by a grinning demon in white linen.
The Big Twist: Welcome to Hell, Please Enjoy Your Stay
By the time the characters accept they’re in Hell, the audience has long since accepted that they’re in purgatory too—forced to endure endless tropical stock shots, limp dialogue, and heavy-handed moralizing. Dave’s dead wife shows up, Ellen weeps, Reverend Brady (sorry, Reverend Fellows) prays, and the whole thing collapses into metaphysical mush.
The final shot is less a revelation than a resignation: Yes, they’re in Hell. Yes, so are we. Now roll credits and let the local news come on.
Production Value: Miami Vice Without the Vice
Shot around Miami and at the Vizcaya mansion, the film looks decent at first glance. But tropical vistas cannot disguise the fact that this is TV-movie Hell: flat lighting, endless medium shots, and editing so slack you could knit with it. Even the storm that kicks off their isolation feels like it was borrowed from a weather reel.
You know you’re in trouble when the most suspenseful element of the production is whether the boom mic will dip into the frame.
Why It Fails
Haunts of the Very Rich fails because it mistakes premise for story. “The rich are in Hell” could be sharp satire, biting social commentary, or even dark comedy. Instead, it’s played as straight melodrama, with all the suspense of a vacation slideshow narrated by your least favorite uncle.
It tries to terrify with theology but forgets that television audiences prefer actual scares—or at least a coherent twist. By the time the credits roll, you don’t care if the characters are in Hell, Heaven, or the Miami Marriott. You just want them to stop talking.
The Accidental Humor
Like all bad TV horror, the film has moments of unintentional hilarity. Characters stare wide-eyed at phantom seaplanes, pontificate about death in polyester leisure suits, and scream at nothing in particular. Lloyd Bridges looks perpetually confused, as if wondering why no one gave him a scuba tank. Edward Asner drinks so convincingly that you wonder if he was raiding the craft services table between takes. And poor Cloris Leachman—Oscar winner, comedic genius—wanders through the script like a woman who knows she’s better than this but is cashing the check anyway.
Final Verdict: A Hotel in Hell With No Room Service
Haunts of the Very Rich could have been an incisive takedown of wealth, privilege, and the emptiness of material life. Instead, it’s a tepid morality play dressed in a Hawaiian shirt. The premise promises The Devil’s Carnival; the result is more like Fantasy Island without Ricardo Montalbán—or the fun.
If you’re in the mood for true TV horror, watch Duel or Trilogy of Terror. If you want satire on the rich damned for their sins, read Dante. But if you insist on watching Haunts of the Very Rich, know this: the true horror isn’t the fate of the characters. It’s that you wasted 90 minutes of your own life in Hell right alongside them.
In other words, the title didn’t lie. The haunts are very rich indeed—but the viewing experience is dirt poor.
