Blood Legacy

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.

A mega-wealthy man dies and leaves his money to his four heirs to divide. The only catch is that they must spend a whole week in the house. Also, to add some suspense, the will states that if none of the heirs live, then the money is to be divided between the three servants. Well, naturally we know that everyone is going to try to kill everyone in this rather typical storyline. What is not so typical is the level of incompetence used to achieve this goal. Now, unlike the other reviewers, I was able to sit through the whole film in one showing. And as bad films go, and make no mistake here.....this is a BAD film, you could do worse(try sitting through The Wizard of Mars in one sitting for a test of real endurance!) The murders are atrociously executed(both literally and figuratively). The editing leaves much to desire as we see...for seconds only...a head on a turkey platter...some piranhas devouring something, and so on. The acting is ridiculous despite the cast. The film not only has the Grand-master of Bad Horror films, John Carradine(very VERY briefly), but also Merry Anders(her last film), Rodolfo Acosta(his last film), and Jeff Morrow and Faith Domergue from This Island earth fame! Not to mention that guy that played Julius in The Planet of the Apes! You know what kind of film you have when two of the servants names are Igor and Elga, and that Igor has a fetish/need to be whipped by a cane every so often. The other servant, Frank the driver, has a lamp made of the skin from a German he killed during the war. They say good help IS hard to find! The ending is suppose to be comical I think, but more of a relief as you no longer have to see the messy proceedings anymore.

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

That's right, the easiest place to find this stinker is Elvira's Movie Macabre. The top-heavy hostess offers her share of commentary on "Blood Legacy" (also called "Legacy of Blood"). The plot - to the extent that there is one - is that a patriarch has died and his offspring gather at the estate for the inheritance, but then someone starts killing everyone off. Unfortunately, it's one of the slowest movies that I've ever seen. I bet that the reason why it's most readily available from Elvira's Movie Macabre is because no one wants to release it as its own movie. That's right, there are some movies only worth watching when presented by the Mistress of the Dark, or by "Mystery Science Theater 3000" or by Joe Bob Briggs.

It's so weird to think that John Carradine starred in some of the all-time classics, such as "The Grapes of Wrath", but mostly starred in these sorts of movies.

"Blood Legacy" is one of the most boring and tedious movies I have seen in a long time. It's one of the rare movies that had me almost dropping off to sleep while watching it. Is there anything positive to say about it? Well, despite a low budget, it doesn't look particularly cheap, and director Carl Monson does occasionally makes a striking visual. But for the vast majority of the time, the movie feels extremely flat. There's no feeling of tension or horror at any time, even when the body count starts to pile up. It doesn't help that the movie unfolds at a really slow pace; there's only one murder in the first half of the movie, for one thing. By the way, if you are a fan of John Carradine, you should know that all of his scenes combined add up to less than five minutes of the total running time.