Change Your Image
ChrisSFrench
Reviews
Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973)
Haunting and Sadly Poetic Vampire Classic
Modern audiences may be a little put off by this movie at first glance - just on account of its fairly low production values - but it's definitely superior to most films of its kind, although it's such a unique oddity it's hard to compare it with anything else. Lemora plays more like a dark fairy tale than a horror movie and I actually found it to be thoughtful and moving when I watched it through to the end. Atmosphere, a great story, and a likable and sympathetic protagonist are what make this movie work.
Lemora has got a southern Gothic setting, and it takes place in the 1930's, which gives the film something of the feel of the weird fiction pulp magazines that were prevalent during that time. However, in contrast to most of those tales, the main character in Lemora is a thirteen-year old girl, which gives the movie a sexual/lost innocence subtext in addition to the 'ancient horror' themes that are typical of that tradition.
Lila Lee is an angelic-looking church singer, who we learn is also the daughter of a murdering gangster. Upon receiving a letter from her estranged father (who is now apparently very ill), she sets out on a journey to reunite with him. Every male character she encounters comes across as a leering predator, with the exception of her guardian, the Reverend, who is a good man struggling with his desires to possess the young girl.
Once she leaves for Asteroth, there is no turning back for Lila, as it becomes more and more clear that no matter what should befall her on her journey, she will never be the same singing angel that she once was. And her future looks pretty grim. Stranded in a horrific swampland, she is pursued by its gruesome inhabitants - men who have degenerated into a pack of diseased and squealing brutes - into the domain of a mysterious vampire and her group of immortal warlocks. Cheryl Smith was perfect for this as Lila - her looks and expression throughout conveying Lila's fear and confusion and innocent faith and her longing for someone she can trust; if you can't believe in her, or Leslie Glib as the dark title character, the movie fails, but they pull it off wonderfully. I found the score and songs that were used in Lemora to be strangely moving and the sound effects were often genuinely creepy.
From what I've read, this movie got into some trouble with the church upon it's release and I think it was placed on a list of banned films or something. But, I think that the theme of Lemora would have to be badly misconstrued for it to be seen as offensive in the way that its detractors would probably suggest. There is really nothing polemical or anti-Christian about it that I could see; and the movie treats its devout characters with affection and understanding as they struggle with themselves and the darkness that surrounds them. The ending, while not upbeat, is consistent and honest and makes you feel something. And leaves you thinking.
I own the great-looking DVD of Lemora, and the Synapse company did a terrific job with this movie. It was released in late 2004, with a dedication to the memory of Cheryl Smith, who passed away in 2002. I remember seeing her name (appearing as Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith) in association with a lot of drive-in type horror movies and teen sex comedies, but for years she was just a semi-familiar name to me. But within the last couple years I happened to see Caged Heat and Laserblast again, and came away thinking that there was something unique about this actress. Her presence was always natural and uncontrived, with a sad vulnerability in her eyes and a dreaminess about her that seemed to come from some place beyond this earth.
I was a young child in the 70s when these movies, like Lemora, were released. The adult content of many of the drive-in films of that era obviously kept me from seeing them when they first came out, but I enjoy going back and watching them now, and I've always found the feel and style of that pre-blockbuster period to be oddly creative and interesting. But it also may be that I feel a lot of nostalgia for those naive and carefree times in my own life, when I would have had a small boy's crush on a blonde-haired starlet like Cheryl Smith. I'm not sure I remember seeing any of Cheryl's movies when I was young, but in some way I associate her with a lot of the joy and fascination of those times. I imagine that many other people do too.
Event Horizon (1997)
pulp horror in space
I first saw Event Horizon on video cassette in the late 90s and I recently watched it again on DVD. You might find this movie in the sci-fi section of your video store, but it's really a horror story set in space.
Captain Miller and his crew are sent to investigate the mysterious reappearance of the Event Horizon, a spaceship that, a few years ago, disappeared near Neptune. That vessel was equipped with a special hyperspace drive that enabled it to travel faster than the speed of light by warping space and time. All of this is explained to the crew by Dr Weir, the inventor of this technology, who is now a member of Capt Miller's search party. Something went wrong with the Event Horizon, he says, causing the ship to vanish for seven years.
I really loved the early parts of this movie when the search party was exploring the haunted ship. The visuals of the interior of the Event Horizon are impressive. There are lots of shadowy rooms and decks connected by dim, echoing corridors. At the core of the ship there is a huge rotating ring-encircled sphere that is the source of the ship's power and it's effectively cyclopean and sinister-looking; all this made me wish I had watched this one on the big screen. Later on, one of the characters offers the conjecture that the ship may have become a living thing. This is the kind of stuff that has always excited my imagination. Sure enough, as the story moves along, genuinely creepy horrors of all kinds begin to manifest themselves.
The script contains a pot-pouri of ideas from other movies and it has plenty of flaws. Members of the crew are forced to confront ghosts and mind-manufactured frights that are reminiscent of Solaris or Galaxy of Terror. One of the characters morphs into something like one of the cenobytes from Hellraiser and starts making Pinhead-like proclamations. The captain orders his crew not to go near the suspicious core of the ship, and yet everyone seems to wander in its vicinity again and again. The last reel has some continuity errors of time and place: a couple times I was wondering how that guy could possibly end up at that place at that time. And after an interesting build-up, the story seemed to crumble; the frantic sequence of events at the end felt like a poorly contrived attempt to wrap the whole thing up.
Still, when the closing credits rolled, I found that overall I liked my experience of this film. I thought this movie did successfully create a kind of evil-from-the-void Lovecraftian feel, where the cold and vast depths of outer and inner space are full of incomprehensible horrors. There were a lot of unanswered questions and I wasn't able to figure out what the ship's motivation was, but I was okay with that. My theory about these stories is that they should operate on a more visceral level and too much explaining can get in the way and ruin the mood.
In recent years, there has been a trend in movies of this kind to self-consciously make fun of themselves - they maintain a kind of smirking ironic tone and include many one-liners in the script. I was glad that this one, for the most part, avoids this trend and instead tries to be relentlessly tense. In fact, sometimes characters in this movie speak some real silly lines in a grave and sober manner. The fact that Event Horizon takes itself seriously somehow makes it much more fun.