Legacy of Blood (1971, aka Blood Legacy) is a John Carradine movie with an intriguing premise, wrecked by technical incompetence. The movie begins with a funeral, that of the patriarch of a small clan of four adult children, followed by the presentation of the will, in this case by reel-to-reel tape. Via the tape, the patriarch, played by Carradine’s voice, announces that his immense fortune will be split between his four children, but they must stay in the family home for a day (or possibly a week, I cannot remember); if any leave or die before the end of the period, their share is then split between the other children. If they should all fail to meet the conditions, then the money goes to the servants; however, the servants, if they agree to stay on in the house, are paid $1 million over the years until the money runs out.
So do the kids love each other?
One brother’s borderline insane, and in fact his episodic emotional problems, in which we’re privileged to share the visuals, are quite unsettling, as Carradine is effective at suggesting the family home was a surrealistic, possibly incestuous hellhole. The balance of the siblings are less distinguished, as another brother is a cheerful lawyer, and the two sisters, despite one bearing a dismaying resemblance, at certain visual angles, to my friend Jeanne, were thematically identical.
The plot lurches from point to point, although it was occasionally entertainingly self-conscious, such as the two consecutive lines, “The phones are out – of course!” “It’s like a bad horror movie.” Sometimes there were moments of glee, such as when the ham is taken out of the refrigerator, or when the identity of the (or perhaps one of?) the murderers is finally revealed. But there are moments of unproductive slackness as well.
The rest of the experience was dismaying. First, the audio was awful. Everyone mumbled their lines to the point that the audio needed to be increased to dizzying levels, and when the commercial interludes suddenly occurred, the blast of sound had its own horrifying effect upon our sense of stability.
Second, the plot lacked consistency. The premise does not imply immunity from law enforcement, so one would expect the various victims to fall to misadventure, but in fact several are incontrovertibly murdered; even law enforcement is assaulted, and worse yet for no logical reason. Losing faith in the internal logic of a movie is a sure formula for disaster.
Third, the special effects ranged from competent to wretched.
Fourth, the acting was mostly awful, although of course Carradine knows his stuff, and the butler, Buck Kartalian, was something of a revelation in the one scene he dominates. But two of the actors seemed to have Elvis-inspired hairdos, another appeared to be a Burt Reynolds (or perhaps Tom Selleck) look-alike, and the rest of the actors, barring perhaps the maid, could not overcome the poor dialog of the script or the unlikely chemistry required of such a dysfunctional family.
In the end, you remember this movie more for what it might have been, than what it ended up being.
And now here’s a flower, to cushion your disappointment.
