Blood Legacy

I caught this on a Brentwood 10 movie compilation. The first thing I noticed was how bad everyone's hair looked. The only guy I recognized was John Russell. I said to myself, "That's the guy from Lawman!" He played Frank the chauffeur and was probably the only sane person in the whole film and was evidently a badass. Some wacky, wacky stuff going on here. The butler, Ygor, looked just like Mel Brooks. He was nuts. The beautiful young daughter, she was nuts. The greasy haired brother, he was nuts, too. All these people had to stay in their dad's/employer's house for a week to get his dough. That was the late, great John Carradine. He had died and evidently hated everybody. Well, naturally, the bodies start to pile up. This movie kept me interested. I was not expecting Citizen Kane. It dealt with some hot button issues for the time it was made. Overall not too shabby. I mean, you gotta take in to account the budget, state of the art of cinema at the time, things like that. Only the ending left me scratching my head. Were there multiple killers or what? Give it a shot.

Ridiculous horror film about a wealthy man (John Carradine) dying and leaving everything to his four children, and his servants to be divided up equally. One condition--they must spend one week in his estate to get the money. And if any of them die, the others get more. Guess what happens next....

I saw a brand new print of this film on cable. The colors were bright and vivid and the house itself looks beautiful. That's about all the good things I can say about it.

Let's list just some of the problems this film has: the killer is screamingly obvious; the servants are called Igor and Elga--come on!; some of the sound recording was so bad I couldn't make out the dialogue (no great loss I'm sure); the gore was sparse and very poorly done; the other murders were simply boring, stupid or impossible and this movie contains some truly abominable acting--so bad you just stare at the screen in disbelief. Even pro Jeff Morrow was terrible! The only fairly good acting was from trouper Faith Domergue (who deserved better than this) and John Carradine (who looks painfully old and frail here). I do have to admit though--the closing line in this movie is a gem!

Why this was renamed "Legacy of Blood" is beyond me--there's another 1978 horror film with that name!

Whatever its name is, it's a bad movie. To be avoided at all costs.

That's right, the easiest place to find this stinker is Elvira's Movie Macabre. The top-heavy hostess offers her share of commentary on "Blood Legacy" (also called "Legacy of Blood"). The plot - to the extent that there is one - is that a patriarch has died and his offspring gather at the estate for the inheritance, but then someone starts killing everyone off. Unfortunately, it's one of the slowest movies that I've ever seen. I bet that the reason why it's most readily available from Elvira's Movie Macabre is because no one wants to release it as its own movie. That's right, there are some movies only worth watching when presented by the Mistress of the Dark, or by "Mystery Science Theater 3000" or by Joe Bob Briggs.

It's so weird to think that John Carradine starred in some of the all-time classics, such as "The Grapes of Wrath", but mostly starred in these sorts of movies.

A mega-wealthy man dies and leaves his money to his four heirs to divide. The only catch is that they must spend a whole week in the house. Also, to add some suspense, the will states that if none of the heirs live, then the money is to be divided between the three servants. Well, naturally we know that everyone is going to try to kill everyone in this rather typical storyline. What is not so typical is the level of incompetence used to achieve this goal. Now, unlike the other reviewers, I was able to sit through the whole film in one showing. And as bad films go, and make no mistake here.....this is a BAD film, you could do worse(try sitting through The Wizard of Mars in one sitting for a test of real endurance!) The murders are atrociously executed(both literally and figuratively). The editing leaves much to desire as we see...for seconds only...a head on a turkey platter...some piranhas devouring something, and so on. The acting is ridiculous despite the cast. The film not only has the Grand-master of Bad Horror films, John Carradine(very VERY briefly), but also Merry Anders(her last film), Rodolfo Acosta(his last film), and Jeff Morrow and Faith Domergue from This Island earth fame! Not to mention that guy that played Julius in The Planet of the Apes! You know what kind of film you have when two of the servants names are Igor and Elga, and that Igor has a fetish/need to be whipped by a cane every so often. The other servant, Frank the driver, has a lamp made of the skin from a German he killed during the war. They say good help IS hard to find! The ending is suppose to be comical I think, but more of a relief as you no longer have to see the messy proceedings anymore.

After their father's death, a group of relatives forced to stay in his mansion to earn their inheritance fall prey to a grisly killer intent on killing them all off one-by-one and forcing them to try to survive.

Overall, this was a pretty disappointing and below-average slasher effort. One of the few things it manages to get right is the rather impressive set used for the house, containing all the trappings of a prototypical Gothic mansion from several years earlier and being used to great effect in this. The sprawling grounds are afforded quite luxurious details as there's no end to the massive rooms, intricate furniture arrangements and secret passages that run throughout here, all while still looking like the kind of modern-style mansion that would be used in this particular setting. As well, this also manages to make for a pretty enjoyable time here when it comes to the wild psychedelically-inspired flashbacks throughout here showing the various family members being physically or verbally abused by their deceased father which amounts to them witnessing his transgressions on their younger selves while he beats them with a whip in brightly-lit surroundings which drives them to the point of madness. Along with the fun finale where the killer's revealed, that's all that's good here as this one has too many other problems to really matter here. The biggest factor that works against this one is the fact that there's just nothing of big interest that happens here since this one seems to move about so slowly. This one takes an eternity to get going as the entire first half is spent with the bickering relatives and how their stay is going to be entirely unpleasant, leaving the killing to come along at such an agonizing pace that hardly anyone notices they're gone since they're all off doing whatever fancies them. This makes for an incredibly unappealing amount of time spent away from the killings, not that there's much more impressive material there anyway. The stalking as a whole is rather lazy and uninspired all capped off with really cheap special effects that are supposedly salacious but hardly worthwhile since their cheapness and obvious fake-ness tends to give away the result every time which when coupled with the extreme boredom here makes for a wholly unimpressive effort.

Today's Rating/R: Graphic Violence and Language.