Before the dynamic dvd release by the folks over at Synapse a few years back, tonight's review was a long standing lost vampiric cult classic of the early seventies that many hadn't seen nary a frame of since the late night television circuit of the same era(that was my experience, anyway!).It enjoyed regular truncated screenings under various re-titlings(Lemora-The Lady Dracula was one I remember distinctly) on the platform of a highly popular local horror host,WNEP's Uncle Ted's Ghoul School, where the late Ted Raub in a signature red fez told corny jokes and did magic tricks on a threadbare dungeon set and showed B horror movies every Friday night for years(1974-1982 to be exact).He was no Dr. Shock or Zacherle by anybody's standards, but I got to enjoy those two hosts growing up as well(Shock on WPHL and Zach on WWOR and WPIX),so it all worked out in the end.Now, about the movie itself...
To say Lemora was a low budget feature is like saying that snorting bath salts for kicks might make you hallucinate about multiple strangers living in your walls and conspiring to kill you(or so I hear on the local news, anyway) .With it's visible dimestore fangs and ghoul makeups(reminiscent of Ormsby's work in CSPWDT,I've gotta say), it's practically budgetless.Lead actress Lesley Gilb graces the screen for most of the running time like Sigourney Weaver's blink-resistant older sister who would have done well to get some acting lessons under her belt(one brutally embarrassing and amateurish line delivery that me and the boys are still quoting between laughs comes to mind),and no one could accuse exploitation vet Hy Pike(in his first major role,howabboudat!) of being much more than a budget hunk of ham, but the entire cast seems pretty game with the material they're given.Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith is appropriately innocent and adorable as always, though her eighteen year old curves must have been pretty hard to cover up while portraying a thirteen year old character(she has more than one nipple slip in this production, originally rated PG!Those were the days.) With that obviousness out of the way, let me go on to say that Blackburn's period vampire fairy tale oozes heavy duty atmosphere in every color-drenched frame, in the same way a movie like Suspiria does, rising above its budgetary constrictions on more than one occasion, ultimately making for a decent seventies horror-exploitative experience.
"Would you like a chocolate...or some inappropriate sexual innuendo with that bus ticket?"
Career do-badder Alvin Lee(who's just blasted his adulterous wife and her latest bedroom conquest to high heaven), while on the run from the authorities haphazardly finds himself a prisoner to Lemora(Lesley Gilb),a vampire who surrounds herself with a posse of hooded confederates and several gleeful dead children, ultimately ending up on the silk-clad nosferatu's personal wine list.Lemora glimpses a picture of Alvin's angelic teenaged daughter,Lila(Cheryl Smith), a sweetheart who's been living with the local reverend(director Blackburn himself) and singing hymns during his religious services, as distanced from her father's life of evil criminality as she could be.Lemora writes a letter to Lila urging that she come right away to hear her dying father's confessions and apologies as per his wishes.The irreproachable child stows away in the car of a couple for a ride to the bus station,with the driver making offcolor remarks about the girl's upright nature and joking about her ostensible sexual relations with the reverend.At the station, the ticket vendor comes on to her before offering her candy with sexual connotations attached.She boards a rickety antique bus,the only one of the night bound for Astaroth(nice name),when the capricious driver(Hy Pike)warns her of the surrounding countryside during the midnight hours;roamed by multitudes of beastmen overcome by an inborn need to shed human blood, who drag him off screaming in front of the girl's very eyes when the bus breaks down.
"Astaroth...that's gotta be six or seven branch shadows past the windows away from here."
Lila gets herself locked in a small room, and harrassed by a cackling,toothless old hag who preys on her fears until Lemora is content to let the young abductee into her home.Lemora offers her a change of clothes,an endless flow of obsequious banter, and finally presses her to join the vampire and her merry band of cherubic corpses in a chalice full o' blood.When Lila gets dizzy from the plasma cocktail, Lemora spins her wildly in a maypole dance to a victrola recording, bathes her in a copper pot, then tickles her.Maybe Lila would have been better off with some of the perverts from earlier in the movie.Just sayin'.The reverend, lost without his delicate, young flower, sets out in his car to find her, just as she attempts a daring midnight escape from her pale captor in purple nailpolish, whose eyes rarely nictitate.There's a beastman v. vampire rowdydow that momentarily aids the pubescent church singer in her skedaddle, with her own escaped father fighting for the beastie cause, but Lemora ends up on top, as she always has.Lila takes part in a weird silk-based(where are these dust bowl bloodsuckers getting these elaborate silk outfits anyway?) vampire ritual according to Lemora's wishes as the reverend appears on the scene.Lila(wearing silk,natch)jumps into the holy man's arms and smothers him with kisses to his initial dissapproval, but he soon gives in and starts making out with the child(!), who rears back and displays her nifty new pointy eye teeth, just before she goes in for a drink.Credits,anyone?
Lilah(Rainbeaux Smith),naked and crammed into an uncomfortable tub,and still looking less uncomfortable than Lemora(Lesley Gilb) does.
The late cult goddess Cheryl Smith appeared in countless horror and exploitation flicks in the seventies and eighties:Caged Heat,Swinging Cheerleaders,Massacre at Central High,Incredible Melting Man,Laserblast,Cinderella,Up in Smoke,and Vice Squad,to name just a few, before succumbing at 47 to complications from her long battle with heroin addiction in 2002.She's still one of my very favorite actresses,and will probably always be.Sadly, Lesley Gilb herself was killed in a car accident two years ago.Director Blackburn only ever directed an episode of tv's Tales From the Darkside apart from tonight's review, but to his credit, co-wrote and produced the Paul Bartel cult classic "Eating Raoul",as well as scoring a cameo within.The venerable Pike appeared in cult favorites such as Dolemite,Spawn of the Slithis,Vamp,Hack O'Lantern,and even Blade Runner before he passed away in 2006.Wow, this update paragraph is turning out to be a real drag with all this death already, isn't it?Let's wrap it up before I do a screaming header out the bedroom window myself.Seek this out and give it a look, I think you'll find a lot to like about it, despite its visible flaws.Two wops.
I suppose those could pass as fangs.Yeah, I'm feeling charitable.
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