Julie Darling

There have been plenty of movies about evil children over the years, but Julie Darling distinguishes itself by being more perverse than most.

Isabelle Mejias plays cherubic teen Julie, who only has eyes for daddy (Anthony Franciosa), but isn't as innocent as she pretends to be. Her wicked streak is evident in the relish she takes in feeding live rats to her pet snake, her joy at shooting birds while hunting with her father, and the cruel pranks she plays on her long suffering mother Irene (Cindy Girling). Julie takes her callousness to a whole new level when delivery man Weston (Paul Hubbard) tries to rape her mother: even though she trains the sights of her gun on the man, Julie doesn't pull the trigger, her deliberate inaction resulting in the death of her mum, who hits her head on the stone floor during the struggle.

With her mum gone, Julie has dear daddy all to herself, or so she thinks: the girl is shocked to learn that her father has a mistress, Susan (sexy cult star Sybil Danning), and now, with his wife dead, he is free to marry her. Worse still, Susan has an irritating young son who is stealing daddy's attention. After Julie wakes to hear a noisy sex session between her pops and his sexy new spouse (during which it becomes very clear that the girl harbours incestuous desires for her father), she hatches a plot to get rid of her new stepmother.

Mejias (actually 21 at time of filming, but looking younger) puts in a commanding performance as the conniving minx, utterly convincing as a cold-hearted psychopath. Franciosa is less credible, especially when doting on stepson Dennis (Benjamin Schmoll), and Danning does what she does best: look sexy and remove her clothes (other gratuitous nudity comes courtesy of Girling, who takes a bubble bath, and Mejias, who is topless during her jaw-droppingly twisted Oedipal fantasy sex scene with Franciosa).

Director Paul Nicholas does a great job in keeping the suspense levels high, constantly surprising the viewer with Julie's lack of empathy: not only does the evil brat blackmail Weston into killing Susan ("And you can rape her all you want before you kill her"), but she also orchestrates the murder of her best friend Michelle. The brutal, bloody climax sees Susan beaten and thrown through a window, Weston stabbed in the crotch with a broken bottle (nasty!) before being blasted by Julie with a shotgun, and Susan proving that she wasn't lying when she said she would do anything to protect those she loves.

What a very disturbing film. I began by thinking "What a brat!" Now, I knew she was not a nice little girl, but her incredibly disturbed being didn't enter my mind. She has such a a fixation on her father like no other film I've seen. There are very disturbing scenes. This actress's face is so angelic, and yet the coldest of hearts beats behind it. This is a pretty explicit film with lots of very graphic scenes. There is real violence here. I guess it's really based on total psychosis, because our little heroin is bound to do anything to latch on to her daddy.

As a film there is a great deal of suspense. This happens because only we know this child. She also has had weapons training and is quite the hunter. Talk about arming the enemy. The father never has a clue. Gosh, in addition to losing his first wife, isn't it odd that his new stepson gets put in an old refrigerator. The young rapist/murderer, however, doesn't hold a candle to Julie, which is pretty amazing.

Isabelle Mejias has the ultimate Daddy fixation, and Stepmothers who get in her way become expendable. The object of her attention, Anthony Franciosa, seems oblivious, clueless, or both, to his Daughter's unnatural behavior. The methods employed by Mejias to torment Stepmothers borders on sadism. While the script is sometimes clever, it also has a brutal amount of time wasted on small talk not relevant to the story. Sybil Danning and Isabelle Mejias give good performances, while Anthony Franciosa is so boring, you will almost cringe. "Julie Darling" is an effective thriller that could have benefited from some script tightening, however the extremely satisfying ending totally redeems any minor faults the film might have. - MERK

I was searching through lists of 80s horror/slasher movies because I am a big fan of that era's horror/slasher genre. Every now and then I like to watch those movies, especially one's that I've never seen. I found this and streamed it online and I thought it was pretty good.

Although lower budget, it is suspenseful and the little girl in it is pretty disturbed! It's almost a mix of a drama/horror/thriller movie all rolled into one. Acting is OK, especially the little girl's part. She is fairly convincing in her role as a spoiled, jealous, and downright evil kid. She seems to have a strong attachment to her father and doesn't like when others steal the attention away, let's just say! Some may find this movie dull and too low budget, but if you're a big 80s horror/slasher fan, I think you'll like it enough. It does have that made-for-TV feel a little, but it keeps you interested. It isn't necessarily the most believable plot, but how many movies are, right?! Interesting ending by the way, I think you'll like it. 6/10

This movie is marketed as a Sybil Danning vehicle even though the erstwhile German-American sex symbol is really only in the last half of the movie, and the really memorable performance is by the unknown Isabella Mejia as a disturbed teenage girl whose infatuation with her father (Antonio Franciosa from "Tenebra")leads her to allow an intruder to rape and murder her own mother. She then blackmails the same guy into trying to do the same to her new stepmother (Sybil Danning). The disturbed girl at one point even locks her young step-brother in an old fridge in the middle of a junkyard.

I saw this film almost back-to-back with another, much more terrible Sybil Danning-starrer "They're Playing with Fire". But while that film was a horrid hybrid of a dumb 80's teen sex comedy and an idiotic 90's erotic thriller (featuring Sybil in the sack with the annoying kid from "Private Lessons", and the once great Andrew Prine flushing his career right down the toilet), this film does the burgeoning erotic thriller genre proud (or as proud as you can do that crappy genre). It has a real, if not necessarily highly believable, plot and pretty decent acting. Other reviewers have compared it to "The Bad Seed", but it is actually better than that stagey, melodramatic flick (which ends with the villain literally being struck down by lightning). I'd put it somewhere between that one and a truly deserving classic like "Pretty Poison" (with Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins).

This movie is certainly no classic, but it doesn't really deserve its current obscure status either. It's probably Danning's best (American)movie. Those who watch it just to see her take her clothes off for the zillionth time won't be disappointed of course, but I think they'll also be pleasantly surprised with the rest of the movie.