Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural

(1973) ****1/2



Filmed by 2 UCLA graduates on a shoestring budget, Lemora positively tanked at the time and was quickly banished into obscurity. Over the years it has developed a small but avid following (in France in particular). It remains their only film.

We begin with a murder. A man walks into a hotel room and shoots his wife and her lover. Cut to innocent, sweet Lila Lee, singing angelically in church. The priest praises her piousness and purity. Why should she bear the burden of her father's guilt?



Soon Lila receives a letter from her father on his deathbed, begging for her forgiveness. As she strives to be a good Christian, she sets off. Every person she meets along her journey looks at her with lust. Even the priest who reared her battles impure thoughts. She catches a bus to the town of Asteroth. The bus breaks down as it nears the town, and when the driver goes out to investigate, he gets mauled by white-haired ghouls. Lila takes the emergency break off and the bus flies down the hill. She wakes up to find herself in a cell, being fed by a crazy old hag. And so begins this lovely, twisted fairy tale.

She soon meets Lemora, who comes across as an upper-class walking corpse. As the two get to know each other, she discovers that Lemora is a vampire queen who feeds on children. She takes Lila under her wing and becomes a much needed parental figure. After bathing her, she tells a bedtime story that is more ancient than the church. She describes a "ceremony that goes so far back, no one knows where it began. It's beautiful. When you're going through it, it's so intense that sometimes you feel like you are going to die. But you don't, you live better than you ever had." This is what the film makers were striving for.

The film plays forth like a nightmare that seems so vivid though you struggle with the details. It's as though you're being dropped off in a gothic, stained glass world filled with werewolves, ghouls and witches. Lemora is a perfect example of what I search for in the Horrorthon competition. Inspired movies that despite owing a debt to the classics, are so imaginative that they can only be described as "peerless".



Tragically, the actress who played sweet Lila became a heroin addict and died in 2002.