Lumsdal
Good , But It Is Overrated By Some
Freaktana
A Major Disappointment
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
TheRedDeath30
This is one of those movies that few people have heard of and even fewer have seen. You'll find people that espouse this movie as being a long lost gem of 70s art horror, or those who saw it as a child and it hits a special nerve with them. For the average horror aficionado, though, I think you will find that this movie is very hit or miss, having some great highs, but a lot of lows, as well.A young, innocent virgin is a singer in a church, but also the child of a notorious gangster. At the beginning of the movie, the man kills his wife and her lover and goes into hiding in the countryside, where he reaches out to his daughter to come visit him. Eager to do right by her father, the young girl sets out on her own.What follows is a story that definitely plays on the ideas of sexual repression, lesbianism and the male fascination with underage girls, as every character in this movie seems to leer at our young heroine in sexual longing. The movie starts off rather slow and off, leaving you to wonder just what you are watching, but things start to pick up as her journey begins. The bus ride into the wilderness is fantastic, as a creepy ass driver makes wild faces, while regaling our heroine with stories of why she should fear these swamp marshes, which all leads to our first encounter with monsters. The creature design reminds me a lot of the zombie films of the time, such as CHILDREN SHOULDN"T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS or LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE. They are colorful monsters, with oddly heightened tones, rather than being rotting, undead shamblers. After being imprisoned for a time, we finally meet Lemora, a semi- masculine lady vampire (with a bad acting issue and even worse makeup), who can't quite seem to make up her mind how she feels about the young girl. Is she going to seduce her, love her, destroy her or eat her? It seems to go through all of the gamut. There are times that the bad production values of the movie threaten to destroy it entirely. None of the acting is great, by any stretch. The story meanders a bit here and there. The music has that bad early 70s LAST HOUSE vibe where everything is far too pretty and nice to fit into a horror film and much too indicative of its' time era to be anything but a 70s film. Certain scenes are almost laugh out loud, such as the dancing scene with the children.Still, the movie has just enough Gothic vibe to keep you engaged, playing with the idea of two rival breeds of vampires, the suave, intelligent brood of Lemora and the bestial monsters that live in the woods around the house and remind me a lot of the beasts in Moreau's island. This movie is not, at all, going to be for everyone. I love low budget horror. I love 70s horror. I love artsy horror. I found myself slowly drifting my attention away here and there, though, as the movie definitely requires an acquired taste for finding subtle strengths in low budget horror and appreciating theme when story is lacking.
Boba_Fett1138
This is a very likable and intriguing movie to watch but man, is it odd as well! To be frank, I couldn't really always follow the story but I also can't say I cared all too much about it. This is a movie that is all about its atmosphere and in that regard this is still a good and also certainly unique movie to watch.Nothing in this movie ever feels as if it's taking place in the real world. It has a surreal kind of feeling to it, all throughout and the movie feels more like a sort of dark fairy tale. It has an almost Alice in Wonderland-gone dark kind of vibe to it but not really the budget to pull it all off. It's still a low-key and cheap little movie with still plenty of good and original ideas in it though.I can see how people can be taken by its atmosphere and why some people consider this to be one great and scary horror movie! It has some real classic horror ingredients in it, which actually seem to be taken from the more old fashioned type of horror productions, from the 1930's. It wasn't exactly scary in my book but I still was very fond of the movie its atmosphere and oddness.The overall movie is still a bit too strange though, with all of its characters, storytelling and the story itself. A better, or more clear, main plot line would had helped this movie a lot. It would had given the movie more focus and a more clear point to it all.It's still a perfectly watchable movie but not really one everybody should rush out to see right now. Just watch it when you get the chance. Chances are you might end up really liking it, since it's still clearly something unique, even almost 40 years later now.6/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
eminges
As noted, there's a lot to like about Lemora. The cinematography in places is shockingly good, some of the night exteriors in particular. Robert Caramico, who shot it, was already a blooded professional, his first credit being Orgy of the Dead, and he went on to another dozen and a half movies before his untimely death. The low budget is apparent from time to time: note that at some point Caramico set up on a hillside overlooking a roadway at night, took the same shot half a dozen times of every vehicle used in the production passing by beneath, and then Blackburn scattered them throughout the picture. Anyway, the problem is the Big Finish, where vampires leap on churchgoers and vice versa. It sucks. It means nothing. You can watch the film a dozen times and it still makes no sense whatsoever. You want to know why a terrific little flick like Lemora isn't on everybody's top-ten list of cult masterpieces? The ending. Boo. Hiss. The little snapper at the finish, which you could see coming a mile away with its brights on, gives Cheryl Smith a chance to be a hot babe for about two minutes, after a marvelous, utterly believable performance as a simpering virgin 2/3 her real age. But boy that ending. As clear a failure of a scriptwriter's ability to produce as the ending of Blazing Saddles.
Woodyanders
Late, great 70's drive-in movie goddess Cheryl "Rainbeax" Smith gives a smashing, touching performance as Lila Lee, a passive, ingenuous church choir girl who's lured into a remote and dangerous part of the Georgia wilderness by artful, poised vampire countess Lemora (a strikingly hypnotic portrayal by Lesley Gilb) under the pretense that she will be reunited with her errant mobster father. In all actuality, Lemora wants to turn the fragile, dewy-eyed innocent Lila into a vampire and induct the severely uptight lass into a darkly amoral, but liberating nocturnal netherworld of wine, sex, song and dance. Writer/director Richard Blackburn (who later co-wrote "Eating Raoul") does an expert job with this extraordinary period horror film (it takes place in the late 1920's), deftly creating and maintaining a creepy, oddly credible and most colorfully surreal alternate reality in which the fine line between right and wrong, good and bad, and purity and wickedness is chillingly blurred. Moreover, Blackburn acquits himself fairly well in a sizable supporting role as a hypocritical bible-bangin' preacher who secretly harbors illicit carnal desires for the delectable, but underage Lila Lee. Tense, atmospheric and often genuinely frightening (the giggling gaggle of little vampire kids is especially scary), with a perfectly pungent'n'potent brooding Southern Gothic-style ambiance, a bold and provocative subtext which bravely tackles head on such daring adult themes as incest, pedophilia, lesbianism, repression and the awakening of one's sexuality with the onset of puberty, and a wonderfully wigged-out bit by unsung fright film ham Hy ("Nightmare in Blood," "Vamp") Pyke as a fidgety, ill-fated wacko bus driver, this bang-up bloodsucker gem wholly deserves its substantial cult reputation.
