Lemora - A Child's Tale of the Supernatural

Lemora - A Child's Tale of the Supernatural is a low budget, b-flick that was made in 1975. For its time, it was pushing some boundaries -- then again, so were a whole lot of films from the 1970s. Lemora has the feel of a weird-out giallo, or a b-grade cheese from Europe -- either way, it succeeds in bringing back the 1970s. The movie is supposedly a horror, but by today's standards, it's not the least bit scary. It's actually more of an adult fairy tale. It certainly shares a lot of themes with fairy tales. Children coming of age -- in this case, the teenage Lila Lee, played by Cheryl Smith -- who begins to get noticed by males, and while she appears not to notice, she does; monsters of the vampiric and ghoulish sort -- and monsters in the form of the lust of men -- even men of the church -- a fact that probably contributed to the Catholic Film Board seeking to ban the film for quite some time; a dark forest, where evil lurks, and where young Lila Lee finds herself -- alone and surrounded; the loss of innocence; and too many references of sexuality. The tone of the movie is dark -- like the forest that Lila will eventually find herself in. She will make her journey at night, in a dark bus, on dark roads, driven by a driver who's most likely mad. The music is melancholy and is used like the dark tones, to paint the entire movie with a slow, dreamlike atmosphere. Altogether, the movie is up there in b-movie status.

The plot: young Lila Lee is taken in by a Reverend, after her father, a gangster, kills her mother and takes off. The Reverend has her live in his house, has her sing in his church as his angel, and teaches her the ways of god, although, at times, his behaviour towards her is less than holy. He notices her becoming a woman -- and Lila is aware of the effect she has on him. Lila receives a note from someone who has her father -- claiming that he's dying, and needs to see her before he passes on. In the middle of night, she slips away from the Reverend's house and journeys to a far away town to find her father. Her journey is a perilous one. She has to dodge the lecherous advances of men who can't seem to help but be drawn to her. The town where her father is, lies within a forest. Through the forest, the bus is attacked by a group of monsters with claws and fangs -- but Lila is saved by some people with a penchant for wearing black clothes -- with robes. In the town, she meets Lemora -- a vampire, raising a brood of vampiric children and presiding over the town of vampires. The monsters in the forest were vampires at one point, but apparently something went wrong with them. Lemora wants to turn Lila into a vampire -- to make Lila her companion -- to fill a role no man could fill. Lila is struggling to understand what is happening, and all she wants is her father. Unfortunately, there's something wrong with her father -- and his desire to be reunited with his daughter becomes monstrous.