Legacy of Blood

In traditional Agatha Christie style, family members gather at the home of their spinster relatives and their mentally challenged brother to find out who got what in the will and are killed off, one by bloody one.

Even at under 90 minutes, Legacy of Blood drags with seemingly endless scenes of people talking about nothing of importance intercut with a few instances of gore.

...and their husbands aren't particularly "unsavory" either. Who the heck wrote the description blurb for Legacy of Blood? It's a mediocre low budget flick but none of the sisters struck me as especially odious.

This film's value largely lies in it being a piece of sociological or historical interest. The story itself is pretty confusing for the first 20-30 minutes they don't even explain who all of these people are.

The time period is also a bit off. At one point Margaret is wearing a skirt short enough to suggest the 1930s at earliest, and the three sisters mostly dress like it's the 1920s or 30s. On the other hand, the sister Mary dresses like it's 1915 which could just be a quirk...except something happens later in the film to suggest that the film is ostensibly taking place around the turn of the 20th century.

Meh.

In 1968 director Andy Milligan released a very dreadful, Giallo-enthused splatter attempt called "The Ghastly Ones", filmed on a shoe-string budget and featuring some of the most diabolical camera-work and all-round film-making that one is ever likely to witness. Then, in 1971, Carl Monson releases a film called "Blood Legacy", by all accounts as much a stinker as Milligan. That film had a very similar plot to "The Ghastly Ones" - I have not seen it, but from what I know I reckon Milligan could have had a case here against director Carl Monson. It's an uncredited remake, really. To add to this madcap, in 1978, Milligan comes back and releases a film called "Legacy of Blood" (So we've "Blood Legacy"... and "Legacy of Blood", now?) - a scene-by-scene remake of "The Ghastly Ones". I don't know what was going on here between Monson and Milligan. There isn't much information online when I go looking, but it certainly is odd and can't be a coincidence. Anyway, you would imagine that Milligan giving it another lash could not be any worse than his original attempt, but by God Milligan achieves a rare feat here. He manages to make a bad film even worse. The dodgy camera-work is even worse second-time around, and I found it very hard to hear what people were saying due to the banjaxed sound. The lighting is diabolical and it's hard to make things out. I can't really comment on the gore or the killings because quite frankly I could hardly make out what was happening half of the time. It drags along at a tedious pace and there is no semblance of talent anywhere to be seen. I watched this very close together with "The Ghastly Ones", so inevitably the two are somewhat mixed in my mind when writing this. However, I did watch this remake first, and when I watched "Ghastly Ones" I felt that I was watching a somewhat better movie. So with that in mind, in conclusion, "Legacy of Blood" is an awful deterioration of an already rotting piece of celluloid.

What is it that makes directors want to remake their own films? Tod Browning did it with OUTSIDE THE LAW (once in 1921 and again in 1930) and London AFTER MIDNIGHT (the famous lost film of 1927 and the remake MARK OF THE VAMPIRE in 1935). Andy Milligan, Staten Island's own gore master, did it when he remade the 1969 movie THE GHASTLY ONES (1969) as LEGACY OF HORROR.

The plot was nothing new, three women gather to hear the Last Will of the father they barely knew. They are each promised a fortune if they and their husbands will stay for 3 days in an isolated house on a lonely island. Hardly have they settled in when a black hooded killer starts roaming the corridors decreasing the number of potential heiresses. Don't you just hate when that happens?

The killer is so obvious you'd have to be deaf and blind to miss him (oh wait, I said that in my review of THE GHASTLY ONES, didn't I? Well, it applies in this movie too!) but several people are brutally slain. Oh, speaking of that, Andy's gore effects have not changed a bit since the earlier film. If anything, in this remake they are even tamer! The man sawed in half is shown mostly in shadow, Andy's old "pitchfork to the throat" mainstay is suggested rather than shown, and the hand amputation goes by so fast you likely to wonder what happened. If you saw the original you already know who the killer is and what happens at the end so I won't go into it here.

Of course there are the usual Milligan-ism's; most notably the movie takes place shortly after the turn of the 20th century and yet we see a gardener working with a plastic rake. Sorely missed is Hal Borske as Colin, the halfwit servant. The fellow in this film tries hard but but I just don't see the sincerity in the role that Hal gave. Maggie Rogers was missed also.

Andy Milligan was a dear friend of mine and I will watch anything he did because it is fun. LEGACY OF HORROR, though, is not as much fun as THE GHASTLY ONES.

Legacy of Blood is pretty much your typical Andy Milligan film; poorly produced, badly acted and very boring. This film is something of a remake of Milligan's earlier film; the very boring, poorly acted and produced 'Video Nasty' Blood Rites, and does nothing to improve on its predecessor. The film has pretty much nothing in the way of credibility, and while rubbish like this can sometimes be enjoyable; that isn't an adjective I would use to describe this film. It actually took me three sittings to make it all the way through, as the first two times I switched it off before reaching the ten minute mark. The plot follows three women who travel to a secluded mansion with their husbands for a reading of a will left by the father they barely knew. They then start getting picked off by an anonymous killer. The film features a handful of nasty death scenes, but strangely for Milligan; they're all rather tame and we don't get to see much. Hitchcock said less is more, but in this case it really isn't as it just makes Legacy of Blood even more of a non-event. Overall, there's nothing to recommend this (or Blood Rites) for, and by missing it, you're missing nothing.