Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

An action-packed slog

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

On my first attempt at watching Blood Legacy, I had to hit the stop button after forty minutes or so: it was so dreadfully dull, I kept falling asleep. The following day, I sat down to finish what I had started, only to find I had no chapter selection and that the fast-forward didn't seem to work. Believe me when I say that seeing the first half hour of this rotten film for a second time—in order to get to the last part—was no walk in the park.An unimaginative, shoddy, low-grade, piece of garbage, Blood Legacy opens with that tired old horror cliché, the reading of a will, which in this case stipulates that the greedy relatives and staff of recently deceased multi-millionaire Christopher Dean (John Carradine) must spend a week together in the family mansion before getting their hands on any cash. Of course, should anyone die during these seven days, their share of the inheritance will be divided between the others, a detail that provides more than enough motive for murder...Among those due to benefit from Dean's demise: his four heirs, Laura (Merry Anders), Leslie (Brooke Mills), Johnny (Richard Davalos), and Veronica (Faith Domergue), all of whom have a few screws loose; creepy servants Elga (Ivy Bethune) and Igor (Buck Kartalian), who like to indulge in a spot of consensual beating; and chauffeur Frank (John Russell), who owns collection of military souvenirs, including a lampshade made from the remains of a German soldier he killed during the war.Given this collection of suitably insane characters, and the film's sleazy themes of incest, sado-masochism, madness, and murder, it's hard to believe quite how boring this film actually is. Writer/director Carl Monson delivers scene after scene of inane chit-chat and irritating bickering between characters, leaving precious little time for the outrageous trashiness the premise demands. In fact, if it hadn't been for a smattering of cheesy gore (an axe-attack/decapitation and a guy having his face eaten by piranhas), plus the sight of buxom Brooke Mills constantly threatening to spill out of her night-dress, I might easily have fallen asleep again, meaning I would have had to suffer through the first part of the film for a third time ***shudder***!

Blood Legacy starts with the arrival of lawyer Tom Drake (Norman Bartold) to the Dean estate formerly owned by the now deceased Christopher Dean (John Carradine), upon his arrival he is greeted by Mr. Dean's four children, Gregory (Jeff Morrow) & his wife Laura (Merry Anders), Victoria (Faith Domergue), Johnny (Richard Davalos) plus Leslie (Brooke Mills) & her fella Carl Isenberg (John Smith). Drake plays a tape recording of they're late Father's wishes after his death, the estate worth 136 million dollars is to be split equally between his four children, if any should die then the money would be split equally between the rest & if all were to die the freaky servants Elga (Ivy Bethune), Igor (Buck Kartalian) & the more mundanely named Frank (John Russell) would pocket the lot. Well, not satisfied with a quarter share of $136 million (which is still almost $35 million back in 1971 which doesn't sound too bad to me) someone decides they want it all for themselves & it's not long before decapitated heads are turning up in the fridge...Co-written, produced & directed by Roy Monson Blood Legacy disappointed me on two accounts. For starters this film's alternate & much more common title is Legacy of Blood which is also the title of an obscure horror film directed by Andy Milliagn back in '78 which I've always wanted to see, both films are regularly mixed up as both have similar stories & when I checked my on screen cable TV guide for Legacy of Blood I was excited because it said it was the Milligan film & even listed him as director so when I actually sat down to watch it & I heard John Carradine's voice & I then knew it wasn't the Milligan film that I had wanted to see, my heart sank. Then, of course, there's the simple yet undeniably straight forward fact that Blood Legacy is a total utter piece of crap that is literally painful to watch at times. The script by Monson & Eric Norden is slow, boring & extremely predictable. The character's are absolutely bizarre in an annoying way, the freak of a servant who ask's his sister (?) to cane him, the strange set of Brother's & Sisters who are just downright unlikeable & so far removed from reality that any tension or mystery that the simplistic whodunit story could have achieved is sorely missing & then there's the awful twist ending that you can guess within the first 10 minutes. It's boring to watch, it's poorly paced & it's just a chore to even think about it. Please, someone save me as this is really bad stuff. I could go on all day about how bad Blood Legacy is, I really could.Director Monson was either working with a none existent budget or judging by this he shouldn't have even been directing traffic. The entire film looks ugly, it's poorly photographed & there is no atmosphere or scares. The blood & gore is tame, there's an axe in a head, a decapitated head, a scene when someone is stung to death by wasp's & the best murder when someone's face is eaten by piranha. However there are question marks over this scene, so there's the victim, right. There's the tank of piranha, right. Victims head is placed in piranha tank, right. Pirahna eat victims face, right. Water remains crystal clear despite said victim having his face eaten, erm where's the blood?Technically Blood Legacy is terrible, it looks awful, the sound was obviously shot live & it's muffled & hard to hear which considering the terrible dialogue is maybe a blessing in disguise. The acting was not going to win anyone any awards that's for sure, the least said about it the better.Blood Legacy is an awful film, there really isn't a single positive aspect to it or if there is I can't think of it. Do yourself a favour & don't bother with this one, there are much better films out there.

***SPOILERS*** With a gathering of family members and servants of the late Christopher Dean, John Carradine, to hear his last will and testament they get somewhat of a surprise in that the Dean fortune, some 140 million dollars. The money is to be divided between them but only after they successfully spend a week at the Dean mansion. There seemed to have been a mix-up in the story when we later find out that it's really an overnight sleepover, not a weeks vacation, at the mansion for the guests to qualify for Dean's money since almost everyone ends up dead by sunrise.The first victim of the Dean Curse have nothing at all to do with getting and money from the departed Christopher Dean estate the local sheriff Dan Garcia, Rodolfo Acosta. Acosta has his head chopped off refrigerated and then served on a platter to a shocked group of guests. Later that evening cute little Chin Greg and Laura's,Jeff Morrow & Marry Anders,little pet pooch is found dead outside floating in the pond.The movie has all the people staying at the Dean Mansion being picked off one by one until it's revealed who the killer really is. We then have what seems to be a double-twist in the story where the original killer is suddenly killed together with two of the last remaining guest. The real killer ends up not only getting all the loot, 140 million dollars, but then ends up not having to split it with his accomplice by doing him, or her, in by giving him a poisonous cookie that kills him on the spot.Nonsensical who done it, and haunted house, movie with a cast of such immoral and unlikable characters that even a mother, much less the audience, would have trouble liking. There's everything you can possibly think of in the move involving the selective guests that includes incest S&M sadism and of course double-dealing and back-stabbing not even counting murder. You just couldn't care less who of the guests survives to collect the Dean fortune at the end of the movie hoping against all hope then none of them do.Even the big surprise at the end isn't really that much of a surprise since the killer's identity is divulged with the film-maker having forgotten to keep his face in the shadows so you actual see who he is even before he reveals himself! We then have a plot-twist that eliminates the killer together with a number of remaining guest just to make the movie a little more confusing then it already is. The final plot-twist, that you can see coming from as far as ten miles away, was just to show how smart the very obvious killer was which fooled almost nobody watching the movie.

A family of terrible people must remain in a house for a week or else they will lose their inheritance which will go to the servants who will only get their inheritance if they agree to stay on and keep the house in order. People die (and so will you if you try to sit through this) If you've ever had any desire to see bad actors- many with ill fitting dentures-act or attempt to act in a bad horror movie this is your chance. This is just awful. Its so bad I thought Al Adamson, one of the worst directors ever, directed it, but I was wrong.Its so bad I don't want to say anything more about it, not because it isn't polite but because once I start I may not be able to stop.avoid