Legacy of Blood (1978) User Reviews

Really Awful

[jamiemiller-07611 · 3/10 · 7 December 2021]

In traditional Agatha Christie style, family members gather at the home of their spinster relatives and their mentally challenged brother to find out who got what in the will and are killed off, one by bloody one.

Even at under 90 minutes, Legacy of Blood drags with seemingly endless scenes of people talking about nothing of importance intercut with a few instances of gore.

The Sisters Aren't Wicked, First of All

[thalassafischer · 4/10 · 15 September 2023]

...and their husbands aren't particularly "unsavory" either. Who the heck wrote the description blurb for Legacy of Blood? It's a mediocre low budget flick but none of the sisters struck me as especially odious.

This film's value largely lies in it being a piece of sociological or historical interest. The story itself is pretty confusing for the first 20-30 minutes they don't even explain who all of these people are.

The time period is also a bit off. At one point Margaret is wearing a skirt short enough to suggest the 1930s at earliest, and the three sisters mostly dress like it's the 1920s or 30s. On the other hand, the sister Mary dresses like it's 1915 which could just be a quirk...except something happens later in the film to suggest that the film is ostensibly taking place around the turn of the 20th century.

Meh.

Legacy!

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 18 August 2023]

A remake - a loose one - of The Ghastly Ones, this movie has three sisters and their husbands arrive at a remote inn to attend the reading of their uncle's will. One by one, they are dispatched by an unknown killer. It sounds simple, but this is Andy Milligan. It's going to get strange.

"Think of your worst nightmare... It's about to happen again!" That's what brought people in for this movie and it's a pretty good tagline. As for the movie, it's set in the 1800s but obviously shot in modern day Staten Island. And who cares? By this point, if you're watching this, you've given into the world of Andy Milligan.

Margaret (Elaine Boies) and Mary Lennox (Marilee Troncone) work in the Hanley Mansion, which is also home to their mentally challenged brother Carl (Chris Broderick). The master of the house is long gone, but now his daughetrshave finally come to claim their pieces of the estate. There's Regina (Dale Hansen) and her husband Joe (Joe Downing); Jennifer (Louise Gallandra) and Robert (Peter Schwartz); and Louise and John (Peter Barcia), all of whom must spend three days together to get their inheritance. Well, that is if any of them survive, as the psychic Baba (Bob Elia) predicts at least one will die.

This was also edited into a TV cut, Legacy of Horror, that is a little longer but is missing the gore. That's so much of the fun, as someone gets their guts sawed into, there's a decapitation, a hand chopped off and an accidental hatchet to the head.

Legacy of Blood may be the most technically well-made of Andy Milligan's films, but do we even come to his work for that?

Was the second time the charm Andy?

[reptilicus · 19 May 2003]

What is it that makes directors want to remake their own films? Tod Browning did it with OUTSIDE THE LAW (once in 1921 and again in 1930) and London AFTER MIDNIGHT (the famous lost film of 1927 and the remake MARK OF THE VAMPIRE in 1935). Andy Milligan, Staten Island's own gore master, did it when he remade the 1969 movie THE GHASTLY ONES (1969) as LEGACY OF HORROR.

The plot was nothing new, three women gather to hear the Last Will of the father they barely knew. They are each promised a fortune if they and their husbands will stay for 3 days in an isolated house on a lonely island. Hardly have they settled in when a black hooded killer starts roaming the corridors decreasing the number of potential heiresses. Don't you just hate when that happens?

The killer is so obvious you'd have to be deaf and blind to miss him (oh wait, I said that in my review of THE GHASTLY ONES, didn't I? Well, it applies in this movie too!) but several people are brutally slain. Oh, speaking of that, Andy's gore effects have not changed a bit since the earlier film. If anything, in this remake they are even tamer! The man sawed in half is shown mostly in shadow, Andy's old "pitchfork to the throat" mainstay is suggested rather than shown, and the hand amputation goes by so fast you likely to wonder what happened. If you saw the original you already know who the killer is and what happens at the end so I won't go into it here.

Of course there are the usual Milligan-ism's; most notably the movie takes place shortly after the turn of the 20th century and yet we see a gardener working with a plastic rake. Sorely missed is Hal Borske as Colin, the halfwit servant. The fellow in this film tries hard but but I just don't see the sincerity in the role that Hal gave. Maggie Rogers was missed also.

Andy Milligan was a dear friend of mine and I will watch anything he did because it is fun. LEGACY OF HORROR, though, is not as much fun as THE GHASTLY ONES.

Another entry in Milligan's horrible legacy of films

[The_Void · 2/10 · 10 December 2006]

Legacy of Blood is pretty much your typical Andy Milligan film; poorly produced, badly acted and very boring. This film is something of a remake of Milligan's earlier film; the very boring, poorly acted and produced 'Video Nasty' Blood Rites, and does nothing to improve on its predecessor. The film has pretty much nothing in the way of credibility, and while rubbish like this can sometimes be enjoyable; that isn't an adjective I would use to describe this film. It actually took me three sittings to make it all the way through, as the first two times I switched it off before reaching the ten minute mark. The plot follows three women who travel to a secluded mansion with their husbands for a reading of a will left by the father they barely knew. They then start getting picked off by an anonymous killer. The film features a handful of nasty death scenes, but strangely for Milligan; they're all rather tame and we don't get to see much. Hitchcock said less is more, but in this case it really isn't as it just makes Legacy of Blood even more of a non-event. Overall, there's nothing to recommend this (or Blood Rites) for, and by missing it, you're missing nothing.

I don't think any actor in this movie took acting lessons!!!

[kdreynoldsno1 · 1/10 · 22 October 2021]

Nor did the director, or, anyone else for that matter, go to film school. It's lit like all they had was a single light. The film stock used is cheap and the wrong speed (sensitivity to light) and half the time looks completely overexposed. The script totally stinks. The only thing of quality was the gunshot one character took to the head (it's the only thing anybody put any effort into)!

Milligan managed to make a terrible film even worse

[Coffee_in_the_Clink · 1/10 · 15 March 2020]

In 1968 director Andy Milligan released a very dreadful, Giallo-enthused splatter attempt called "The Ghastly Ones", filmed on a shoe-string budget and featuring some of the most diabolical camera-work and all-round film-making that one is ever likely to witness. Then, in 1971, Carl Monson releases a film called "Blood Legacy", by all accounts as much a stinker as Milligan. That film had a very similar plot to "The Ghastly Ones" - I have not seen it, but from what I know I reckon Milligan could have had a case here against director Carl Monson. It's an uncredited remake, really. To add to this madcap, in 1978, Milligan comes back and releases a film called "Legacy of Blood" (So we've "Blood Legacy"... and "Legacy of Blood", now?) - a scene-by-scene remake of "The Ghastly Ones". I don't know what was going on here between Monson and Milligan. There isn't much information online when I go looking, but it certainly is odd and can't be a coincidence. Anyway, you would imagine that Milligan giving it another lash could not be any worse than his original attempt, but by God Milligan achieves a rare feat here. He manages to make a bad film even worse. The dodgy camera-work is even worse second-time around, and I found it very hard to hear what people were saying due to the banjaxed sound. The lighting is diabolical and it's hard to make things out. I can't really comment on the gore or the killings because quite frankly I could hardly make out what was happening half of the time. It drags along at a tedious pace and there is no semblance of talent anywhere to be seen. I watched this very close together with "The Ghastly Ones", so inevitably the two are somewhat mixed in my mind when writing this. However, I did watch this remake first, and when I watched "Ghastly Ones" I felt that I was watching a somewhat better movie. So with that in mind, in conclusion, "Legacy of Blood" is an awful deterioration of an already rotting piece of celluloid.

So awful

[jacobjohntaylor1 · 1/10 · 8 June 2018]

This horror movie is just awful. It is not scary. It has an awful acting. It also has an awful story line. It just awful. It has an awful ending. It crape. If you what see a good horror movie see Dracula (March 1931) or Frankenstein (1931) or The Wolf man. But this is awful. Do not see it. It is a really bad movie. It is waste of time and a waste of money.

THE WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME?

[movieman-227 · 1/10 · 17 November 2020]

I saw this on 42nd Street at the time of its original release and thought it was the worst movie I had ever seen. It still might be. Could someone explain to me why Milligan has a cult following, and why (heaven help us!) TCM actually showed two of his films last month?

It's OK

[Rainey-Dawn · 6/10 · 9 November 2015]

I will say this film is just "OK". Not the world's worst horror film - I've seen far worse than this film. But I have seen much better horror films from the 1970s. That leaves this one in the middle.

Basically we have a rich uncle that dies and he leaves a will. His 3 nieces and their husbands show up for the reading of the will. All of them that want a part of the inheritance must stay in the house for 3 days - isolated from the rest of the world. One by one they are bumped off by an unknown killer. Who is the killer? While you might easily guess who the killer is in this stereo-typical plot - the film is good for some Z-grade giggles.

The movie is worth about 4 stars to me but I did get a kick out of watching the film and John Carradine is in the movie so it gets a couple of extra stars from me.

6/10

I gave this a 10 just for the ending!

[JonjaNet · 10/10 · 1 February 2022]

I have not laughed that hard at a death scene in all my life!

The whole film was a meandering collection of seemingly non sequitur events, but who watches an Andy Milligan film and expects anything else?

That being said, the acting wasn't the worst I've seen in a Milligan movie and his hotel/flop house made for a great film set.

Low budget period horror

[thomandybish · 4 March 2001]

Andy Milligan has something of a twisted reputation among bad film buffs as producing inept low-budget gore. This flick is a slightly more competent remake of an earlier film Milligan conceived called THE GHASTLY ONES. The plots both films share is this: a trio of sisters, along with their husbands, travel to the family mansion for the reading of the late father's will. The sisters stand to inherit a substantial fortune, but someone plans to kill them before they can stay the prescribed weekend in the house, and various gory murders ensue. Milligan tried both with period settings, 1905 for the first and circa 1920 for the latter, and the remake fares better in terms of accurate period detail. Also, Milligan takes more care to develop the characters and their relationships with each other. Also, the two sisters who care for the mansion and their retarded brother are given more development, most noticably in the brother, originally a rabbit-eating geek in the first, is portrayed as a sad waste of human potential in the second. The sight of this simpleton crouching in his squalid basement room, punching a teddy bear over and over while babbling, "Stupid, stupid" is more chilling than any disemboweling. While not a great film, it stands head and shoulders above it's predecessor. And nobody hacks up a single mannequin this time around.

Downward slide already under way.

[dmacewen-619-299258 · 10/10 · 17 September 2015]

Milligan had made some wonderful "z-grade" horror films about ten years before this dud. Torture Dungeon, Ghastly Ones, Guru the Mad Monk, Bloodthirsty Butchers; these were the golden years for Milligan's thrillers. By the time he had made this film, he was only a stone's throw away from his excruciating Poltergeist knock-off, Carnage. In fact, Legacy of Blood itself seems to be cribbed from an identically titled Carl Monson film released earlier in the decade. I've never seen that one, but if there is no connection, then what we have here is yet another mysterious coincidence as had happened with the two Naked Witch films in the 60s. If you do view this film, make sure you see the others I mentioned first, especially The Ghastly Ones and Bloodthirsty Butchers.

Pretty Fun

[horrorbargainbin · 16 August 2002]

I could order Milligan's celebrated The Ghastly Ones over the internet for twenty dollars. Or, I could find his hated and chopped up remake, Legacy of Horror, in the bargain bin for two dollars. The latter worked for me, and while it made me badly want to see the original, I still enjoyed Legacy of Horror.

It's got some of Milligan's outrageously gay acting characters. Almost all the characters are pretty flamboyant making the production come off as a bit silly, but over-the-top is how it's meant to be. The story is strong, even if some of the sub-plots go nowhere. I'd have loved it if it were not so obviously missing spots of gore. I'm surprised that something released by Gorgon video would be ever censored.