Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973)

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973), written and directed by Richard Blackburn.

There is a type of horror movie I'm sure you've seen: independently made, shoestring budget, amateur acting, bad sound recording, cringe-worthy dialogue.

This is one of those. And yet, I stuck with it. Cheap is sometimes effective, and atmosphere: who knows where it comes from? People sometimes spend millions and produce nothing more interesting. This one has that persistent nightmare sensation of displacement from reality, and moments of nice composition.

Pure Lila Lee is a devout girl, a singer in her church choir. Wanting to find her father, a killer on the run, she embarks on bad-dream escapades to get to him. She hides in a car going to town. She wanders the nighttime streets, witnessing depravities and being leered at by degenerates. She takes a special bus into a nightmare region where ghouls lurk in the woods, finally arriving at the house of the vampiric Lemora. Many weird happenings -- she drinks blood and eats raw meat while being prepared for her "ceremony". Then much running, hiding in coffins, and fighting between the ghouls and vampire-witches.

Was it all a dream or fantasy? A parallel reality? A cheap film excuse for an ending?

The wikipedia article has notes on the production. It's been popular in France. The director says he was inspired by classic fantasy: Lovecraft and Machen.

The Netflix DVD (Synapse Films) has a 30th anniversary commentary track by the director, producer, and actress who plays Lemora. They have some fun and don't pretend it's a great film, and give insight into low budget filmmaking. The print used for the DVD is said to be much better than the one used for TV broadcasts. It also has the script as a pdf file.

This version is 85 minutes, 5 minutes longer than the theatrical cut. I've read that reports of a 113 minute cut are wrong: no such thing.