Welcome To Our Nightmare: A Terror and Wooley Horror Show

Now we know where Sam Raimi got the skeleton band idea for Army of Darkness.

Psycho killer... qu'est-ce que c'est?

Totes!

*******! They're everywhere!

Welcome to my nightmare. Seriously, my memory of this film was as possibly the most nightmarish movie I'd ever seen. I saw it once, about 11 years ago, when it aired on Turner Classic Movies, no less. And it has haunted (forgive) my memory ever since. In many ways I couldn't wait to see it again and in others I never wanted to see it again lest it ruin that dreamy quality it had in my mind. I was right both ways.

Lemora: A Child's Tale Of The Supernatural is the story of an angelic young girl, Lila, just on the cusp of young womanhood, and her nightmare adventure into her own future. Lila is caught in-between. She is the estranged daughter of a notorious gangster but is also the "angel" of her community, raised in the church as a one-girl choir due to her almost unnaturally heavenly voice.


She is a child but physically becoming a woman. And as such, she is becoming the object of desire of men and the object of scorn of women.
After receiving a mysterious letter from a woman named Lemora, she leaves the Reverend who has raised her (and seems to be struggling with his restraint around her now that she is maturing) to head off into the night to see her sick father in the nearby town of Astaroth. Astaroth. The Great Duke of Hell. Pretty cute. Along the way, essentially every man she encounters will leer over her and make innuendos at her while the mysterious Lemora, the apparent queen of a commune of vampires split into two factions, the civilized and the savage, tempts her to accept an inevitably approaching change.


Of course, Lila is still very much a child inside, though a brave one indeed. Everything going on around her seems more confusing and unreal than threatening to her. She doesn't even seem to understand that she is in Vampire Town until Lemora fails to reflect in the mirror Lila has brought along in her suitcase (Lemora has removed any mirrors in her house).


Despite her courage, she is still a child and clinging to her childhood sense of the world, less and less successfully as the movie moves along, despite all of the threats of this bigger, totally metaphorical world that has insisted upon her becoming a part of it..

Wow, I thought I had remembered the conflict of a girl’s burgeoning sexuality being a bit more subtle in this film. It might as well be called Lemora: A Child’s Tale Of Becoming A Sexual Object. One assumes that the savage vampires who attack her unrelentingly represent baser male instincts toward her, which we see in the men throughout the earlier part of the film, while the more civilized vampires represent the faction of society that is willing to wait for her "ritual" to take her - but they'll take her just the same. Meanwhile, Lemora herself is likely something like Lila's adult sexuality beckoning to her to give in and become a woman in control of her own sexuality. We learn that she feeds on female children and makes them one of her own. Lot of pretty obvious theming here, but that doesn't mean it's bad.
In fact the movie is actually quite good, in my opinion, really an excellent metaphor on the budget. I liked a lot about this movie, including the lighting the sets, and the pluckiness on the budget. I actually even like the score (which I thought was actually better than the score of another dream-like low- budget 70s nightmare of a movie I'll be writing up tomorrow).
It’s funny, my memory from the first time was that Lemora herself was the weak link, if there was one, in this movie. On second viewing I really like Lemora. Like she’s probably gonna be a favorite Horror movie or at least Vampire movie villain. She'll have to go somewhere on my list of favorite vampires. Her and Emil from Vampire Circus.
The movie is sadder than I remember. I guess it ultimately is just about the inevitability of female sexual awakening, whether a girl wants it to come or not, how frightening it is, how in some ways unfair it is to be forced to let go of childhood, but how inevitable it is.
But hey, how about a Horror movie that's really about something?

Now, this is interestingly another movie where the poor print I originally saw of it versus the far sharper DVD version actually dramatically changes the experience. In the old copy, not unlike I noted about Vampyr, there was just a sort of hazy dream-world feel to everything. Which is perfect for this film. It not only hid some of the warts of the movie it also complemented the nightmarish feel of a good bit of it. It certainly lent it an air of mystery. And while, with a better print this seems like it may have been intentionally a better movie than I realized, there’s a little something lost too. While I liked Lemora a lot on this viewing it seemed less like Dark Magic and more like just a movie. And I'll feel this way again in another movie coming up and will discuss this more.

I think Wooley and Cap'n are old enough to appreciate this, an LP from my youth.

The kid on the left is definitely trying to childishly imagine what the words "misogynistic psychopath" means.

Sweet jeezus, that's nice. I didn't have that one.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

I've been slacking here lately, sorry.
Just had to chime in about Mystery of the Wax Museum, one of my favorite 30s horrors. Wray is awesome and Atwill is too of course. The comic relief in films of this vintage is often cringe-worthy but I find the two wise-cracking reporters to be legitimately funny here, which is a bonus.
But most importantly it's a just a gorgeous movie. The two-strip technicolor process did not result in a very naturalistic look, but that suits this sort of film just fine. (I'd like to see what a straightforward drama would look like). I posted a review on RT a hundred years ago in which I included probably 10 screenshots because I couldn't pick just one. Those blue/green walls that are everywhere just push all of my buttons.

My older cousin had this trash can in his room and I've been lusting after it since approximately 1979. (He's still got it but won't give it to me)

Not really a horror movie, but have you seen Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla? Features Bela Lugosi, gorilla suits and a Martin and Lewis ripoff duo. I think it's on Tubi.

Yes, once. The Jerry Lewis ripoff is one of the most obnoxious things I've ever encountered. Even more so than the real Jerry.

He's one of those things that crossed over from deeply unfunny and grating to mildly chuckle worthy for me. Bela was legitimately good, though.

I'll have to give it another go sometime. My one viewing was in a room full of people that were not into such things. (ie, lowbrows)

TBH you can probably fast forward past any scenes without Bela or a gorilla.