Legacy of Blood

Andy Milligan has something of a twisted reputation among bad film buffs as producing inept low-budget gore. This flick is a slightly more competent remake of an earlier film Milligan conceived called THE GHASTLY ONES. The plots both films share is this: a trio of sisters, along with their husbands, travel to the family mansion for the reading of the late father's will. The sisters stand to inherit a substantial fortune, but someone plans to kill them before they can stay the prescribed weekend in the house, and various gory murders ensue. Milligan tried both with period settings, 1905 for the first and circa 1920 for the latter, and the remake fares better in terms of accurate period detail. Also, Milligan takes more care to develop the characters and their relationships with each other. Also, the two sisters who care for the mansion and their retarded brother are given more development, most noticably in the brother, originally a rabbit-eating geek in the first, is portrayed as a sad waste of human potential in the second. The sight of this simpleton crouching in his squalid basement room, punching a teddy bear over and over while babbling, "Stupid, stupid" is more chilling than any disemboweling. While not a great film, it stands head and shoulders above it's predecessor. And nobody hacks up a single mannequin this time around.

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.

I could order Milligan's celebrated The Ghastly Ones over the internet for twenty dollars. Or, I could find his hated and chopped up remake, Legacy of Horror, in the bargain bin for two dollars. The latter worked for me, and while it made me badly want to see the original, I still enjoyed Legacy of Horror.

It's got some of Milligan's outrageously gay acting characters. Almost all the characters are pretty flamboyant making the production come off as a bit silly, but over-the-top is how it's meant to be. The story is strong, even if some of the sub-plots go nowhere. I'd have loved it if it were not so obviously missing spots of gore. I'm surprised that something released by Gorgon video would be ever censored.

I will say this film is just "OK". Not the world's worst horror film - I've seen far worse than this film. But I have seen much better horror films from the 1970s. That leaves this one in the middle.

Basically we have a rich uncle that dies and he leaves a will. His 3 nieces and their husbands show up for the reading of the will. All of them that want a part of the inheritance must stay in the house for 3 days - isolated from the rest of the world. One by one they are bumped off by an unknown killer. Who is the killer? While you might easily guess who the killer is in this stereo-typical plot - the film is good for some Z-grade giggles.

The movie is worth about 4 stars to me but I did get a kick out of watching the film and John Carradine is in the movie so it gets a couple of extra stars from me.

6/10

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.