Will to Die

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.

"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.

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.

The Quick Pitch: An old man dies, leaving his fortune to his children and servants. The only catch is that they must remain on his estate for a week (or was it just one night - who cares?). If anyone dies, their share is split amongst the survivors.

I really hate everything about this movie. Legacy of Blood (or whatever other name it's known by) is one of those instances when I question why I watch this stuff. It's all just so predictable and boring. Predictable: Guessing the killer's identity is no challenge at all. Boring: So much talking about nothing that it's a chore to sit through. When something does happen, like a murder, it's all so clumsy with what might be the worst effects of their kind ever put on screen. There are some decent actors here, but they're given nothing to work with. Did anyone involved with making Legacy of Blood really think they were doing something good? If they did, it doesn't show. I can't remember seeing a more joyless movie in my life. What a wretched experience!

1/10