Blood Legacy

I caught this on a Brentwood 10 movie compilation. The first thing I noticed was how bad everyone's hair looked. The only guy I recognized was John Russell. I said to myself, "That's the guy from Lawman!" He played Frank the chauffeur and was probably the only sane person in the whole film and was evidently a badass. Some wacky, wacky stuff going on here. The butler, Ygor, looked just like Mel Brooks. He was nuts. The beautiful young daughter, she was nuts. The greasy haired brother, he was nuts, too. All these people had to stay in their dad's/employer's house for a week to get his dough. That was the late, great John Carradine. He had died and evidently hated everybody. Well, naturally, the bodies start to pile up. This movie kept me interested. I was not expecting Citizen Kane. It dealt with some hot button issues for the time it was made. Overall not too shabby. I mean, you gotta take in to account the budget, state of the art of cinema at the time, things like that. Only the ending left me scratching my head. Were there multiple killers or what? Give it a shot.

I bought LEGACY OF BLOOD aka. BLOOD LEGACY (1971) as part of a 100 movie Horror pack and was somewhat looking forward to it because I am a fan of ultra-low-budget B-movie Horror, and because it has B-movie legend David Carradine in it. I began watching it several times late at night and must confess that it took me several takes to watch the movie all the way through, because i fell asleep several times.

After the death Christopher Dean (David Carradine), a sinister and rich old man, his family and servants gather in his mansion to hear his will. To their surprise, the crazy old man has ordered that only after spending a week in his mansion they will be allowed to share his inheritance. They all reluctantly accept and move on to stay at the mansion. Then, one by one gets killed... Or, actually, every now and then one gets killed, with endless periods of nonsensical dialogue and tedious sequences in-between. LEGACY OF BLOOD has some fun aspects, such as rather explicit gore-scenes and super-demented characters such as a super-masochistic House servant or a demented veteran (played by John Russell of LAWMAN and PALE RIDER) who collects corpse parts as macabre souvenirs. But overall, the movie is incredibly boring for about 80 per cent of the time. Watching it for David Carradine alone will turn out a waste of time, as he has less than 5 minutes of screen time.

This film might be be better if it was only an hour long, but a large part of its 90 minutes are very boring. Hardcore Trash-lovers such as myself might still find it enjoyable for some truly demented characters and weird scenes. All others avoid.

This film is known as "Will to Die" or "Legacy of Blood" (1971). The movie really does have a great cast but the story is just so-so. The film seems to have potential for a good horror movie but it just didn't quite make it to that status. I will say it's worth a watch for fans of B-horror films - even for a one time viewing.

The story has John Carradine as Christopher Dean. Dean is a father who has died and "haunts" the estate. He leaves a will -- whom among his ungrateful children will inherit the estate? Who will die? There is a catch and twist ending.

I'd recommend this film to those that like John Carradine and like just so-so B-horror films... you might get a kick of the movie.

5/10

The Quick Pitch: An old man dies, leaving his fortune to his children and servants. The only catch is that they must remain on his estate for a week (or was it just one night - who cares?). If anyone dies, their share is split amongst the survivors.

I really hate everything about this movie. Legacy of Blood (or whatever other name it's known by) is one of those instances when I question why I watch this stuff. It's all just so predictable and boring. Predictable: Guessing the killer's identity is no challenge at all. Boring: So much talking about nothing that it's a chore to sit through. When something does happen, like a murder, it's all so clumsy with what might be the worst effects of their kind ever put on screen. There are some decent actors here, but they're given nothing to work with. Did anyone involved with making Legacy of Blood really think they were doing something good? If they did, it doesn't show. I can't remember seeing a more joyless movie in my life. What a wretched experience!

1/10

After their father's death, a group of relatives forced to stay in his mansion to earn their inheritance fall prey to a grisly killer intent on killing them all off one-by-one and forcing them to try to survive.

Overall, this was a pretty disappointing and below-average slasher effort. One of the few things it manages to get right is the rather impressive set used for the house, containing all the trappings of a prototypical Gothic mansion from several years earlier and being used to great effect in this. The sprawling grounds are afforded quite luxurious details as there's no end to the massive rooms, intricate furniture arrangements and secret passages that run throughout here, all while still looking like the kind of modern-style mansion that would be used in this particular setting. As well, this also manages to make for a pretty enjoyable time here when it comes to the wild psychedelically-inspired flashbacks throughout here showing the various family members being physically or verbally abused by their deceased father which amounts to them witnessing his transgressions on their younger selves while he beats them with a whip in brightly-lit surroundings which drives them to the point of madness. Along with the fun finale where the killer's revealed, that's all that's good here as this one has too many other problems to really matter here. The biggest factor that works against this one is the fact that there's just nothing of big interest that happens here since this one seems to move about so slowly. This one takes an eternity to get going as the entire first half is spent with the bickering relatives and how their stay is going to be entirely unpleasant, leaving the killing to come along at such an agonizing pace that hardly anyone notices they're gone since they're all off doing whatever fancies them. This makes for an incredibly unappealing amount of time spent away from the killings, not that there's much more impressive material there anyway. The stalking as a whole is rather lazy and uninspired all capped off with really cheap special effects that are supposedly salacious but hardly worthwhile since their cheapness and obvious fake-ness tends to give away the result every time which when coupled with the extreme boredom here makes for a wholly unimpressive effort.

Today's Rating/R: Graphic Violence and Language.