Blood Legacy

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

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.

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.

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.