This Week's DVD

The rental for this week is the first few episodes of the Canadian TV series, Poltergeist: The Legacy.

Not to be confused with the Poltergeist movies, the TV series was an exciting (to me, anyway :-) combination of the occult, archaeology, and Catholicism. Here's a little of what Wikipedia has to say ...

Poltergeist: The Legacy is a Canadian/American horror television series which ran from 1996 to 1999. It tells the story of the members of a secret society, the Legacy, and their efforts to protect humanity from occult dangers .... Founded in England in the 6th century, the Legacy was established to collect dangerous artifacts, investigate paranormal menaces, and gather information on the supernatural. As the organization grew, it established branches in many of the world's major cities. Known as "Legacy Houses", these are staffed by small teams of specialist members of the Legacy. The first house was built in London and is known as the "Ruling House." Each house is ruled by a "precept" who wears a signet ring engraved with a distinctive L. Other houses are mentioned and occasionally seen in the series, but most of the action centers on the San Francisco house. The physical house is a large castle-like mansion located on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. The house uses the philanthropic Luna Foundation as a front for its investigations ...


- Legacy House (actually Royal Roads University in British Columbia)

The two of the characters I liked the most ...

Dr. Derek Rayne ... Derek de Lint is a Dutch actor (A Soldier of Orange, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Straling Heaven). As Dr. Derek Rayne, he portrayed the leader of the San Francisco Legacy House on Angel Island (the mansion used in the series is the same one used as Dr. Xavier's school in the X-Mens movies). Derek had doctorates in Theology and anthropology, plus a psychic ability.


- Derek

Father Philip Callaghan .... Patrick Fitzgerald is an Irish actor (The Last of the Mohicans). His character of Fr. Callaghan was a Catholic priest from Belfast, Ireland, skilled in the study of languages, but who wasn't adverse to a little magic in the cause of Right.


- Philip

One of my favorite episodes of the series was The Twelfth Cave - a scroll's discovered in a cave near Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. It's brought to the Legacy House for examination in their lab. Carbon dating shows the scroll to be from around 11,000 B.C., which is odd as there was no known language then, and the tests on the composition of the scroll show it to be made of human skin, with human blood as the ink ... the scroll is a confession to murder, written by Cain, which brings a curse of madness and death to whoever possesses it :-)

It's not Shakespeare, but Poltergeist: The Legacy might be worth renting, for those interested in the occult.