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.

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.

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.

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

...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.