Legacy of Blood

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.

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.

What is it that makes directors want to remake their own films? Tod Browning did it with OUTSIDE THE LAW (once in 1921 and again in 1930) and London AFTER MIDNIGHT (the famous lost film of 1927 and the remake MARK OF THE VAMPIRE in 1935). Andy Milligan, Staten Island's own gore master, did it when he remade the 1969 movie THE GHASTLY ONES (1969) as LEGACY OF HORROR.

The plot was nothing new, three women gather to hear the Last Will of the father they barely knew. They are each promised a fortune if they and their husbands will stay for 3 days in an isolated house on a lonely island. Hardly have they settled in when a black hooded killer starts roaming the corridors decreasing the number of potential heiresses. Don't you just hate when that happens?

The killer is so obvious you'd have to be deaf and blind to miss him (oh wait, I said that in my review of THE GHASTLY ONES, didn't I? Well, it applies in this movie too!) but several people are brutally slain. Oh, speaking of that, Andy's gore effects have not changed a bit since the earlier film. If anything, in this remake they are even tamer! The man sawed in half is shown mostly in shadow, Andy's old "pitchfork to the throat" mainstay is suggested rather than shown, and the hand amputation goes by so fast you likely to wonder what happened. If you saw the original you already know who the killer is and what happens at the end so I won't go into it here.

Of course there are the usual Milligan-ism's; most notably the movie takes place shortly after the turn of the 20th century and yet we see a gardener working with a plastic rake. Sorely missed is Hal Borske as Colin, the halfwit servant. The fellow in this film tries hard but but I just don't see the sincerity in the role that Hal gave. Maggie Rogers was missed also.

Andy Milligan was a dear friend of mine and I will watch anything he did because it is fun. LEGACY OF HORROR, though, is not as much fun as THE GHASTLY ONES.

In traditional Agatha Christie style, family members gather at the home of their spinster relatives and their mentally challenged brother to find out who got what in the will and are killed off, one by bloody one.

Even at under 90 minutes, Legacy of Blood drags with seemingly endless scenes of people talking about nothing of importance intercut with a few instances of gore.

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