Will to Die

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.

"Blood Legacy" is one of the most boring and tedious movies I have seen in a long time. It's one of the rare movies that had me almost dropping off to sleep while watching it. Is there anything positive to say about it? Well, despite a low budget, it doesn't look particularly cheap, and director Carl Monson does occasionally makes a striking visual. But for the vast majority of the time, the movie feels extremely flat. There's no feeling of tension or horror at any time, even when the body count starts to pile up. It doesn't help that the movie unfolds at a really slow pace; there's only one murder in the first half of the movie, for one thing. By the way, if you are a fan of John Carradine, you should know that all of his scenes combined add up to less than five minutes of the total running time.

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.

I bought LEGACY OF BLOOD aka. BLOOD LEGACY (1971) as part of a 100 movie Horror pack and was somewhat looking forward to it because I am a fan of ultra-low-budget B-movie Horror, and because it has B-movie legend David Carradine in it. I began watching it several times late at night and must confess that it took me several takes to watch the movie all the way through, because i fell asleep several times.

After the death Christopher Dean (David Carradine), a sinister and rich old man, his family and servants gather in his mansion to hear his will. To their surprise, the crazy old man has ordered that only after spending a week in his mansion they will be allowed to share his inheritance. They all reluctantly accept and move on to stay at the mansion. Then, one by one gets killed... Or, actually, every now and then one gets killed, with endless periods of nonsensical dialogue and tedious sequences in-between. LEGACY OF BLOOD has some fun aspects, such as rather explicit gore-scenes and super-demented characters such as a super-masochistic House servant or a demented veteran (played by John Russell of LAWMAN and PALE RIDER) who collects corpse parts as macabre souvenirs. But overall, the movie is incredibly boring for about 80 per cent of the time. Watching it for David Carradine alone will turn out a waste of time, as he has less than 5 minutes of screen time.

This film might be be better if it was only an hour long, but a large part of its 90 minutes are very boring. Hardcore Trash-lovers such as myself might still find it enjoyable for some truly demented characters and weird scenes. All others avoid.

Talented cast is all that saves this turkey from the mincer, as John Carradine plays a recently deceased father whose family and servants are set to gain a sizable inheritance, if they can spend one week together in the family mansion. Carradine had nothing but scorn for his selfish offspring and has twisted the terms of the will to increase the proportions paid to each, should any die. A recipe for murderous abandon, which is exactly what prevails over the course of one, frenzied night.

The film itself is pure hokum, absurd and spectacularly poor in almost every dimension. The cast is what makes it vaguely watchable. Aside from horror maestro Carradine, Jeff Morrow, John Russell, Faith Domergue, Dick Davalos, Merry Anders, John Smith, Norman Bartold, Buck Kartalian and Rodolfo Acosta feature, a talented cast that will appeal to many film buffs. Glamorous Brooke Mills in an early role, has a sizable part as the youngest offspring, mentally precarious and under the watchful eye of treating psychiatrist Smith, who may or may not be connected with the crimes that begin depleting the dysfunctional progeny.

While the twist ending suggests that it's done tongue-in-cheek, it's difficult to detect that tone throughout the film, which labours through one, dark night to a blood-splattered conclusion, far less satisfying than one could have imagined. But still, there's the substantial cast of some distinction, and performances that belie the limited content (Morrow, Domergue and Russell in particular give dedicated performances). If you can see the potential in the cast, then this one will be worth a look.