Reviews

There are three things you should know if you were unfortunate enough to read the review currently given prominence by IMDb: 1) Rag Doll has fine performances from such terrific character actors as Hermione Baddeley (Scrooge), Kenneth Griffith (1984), and Patrick Magee (A Clockwork Orange), as well as yet another ingratiating turn from the lovely Christina Gregg; 2) Gregg's character (Carol) was not nearly as naive as another reviewer claims, as she's aware of what Joe is from the moment she sees him; and, 3) 17-year-old girls are and have always been the most naive and reckless creatures on God's green earth, which means that the screenwriters went far too easy on Carol. I suppose they could have gotten a better choice for the J.V. than Jess Conrad, but it's always fun to see an AYBS alumnus in an older film. Rag Doll is an example of the many modestly effective, medium-length program fillers prevalent in Britain at the time. In addition to Lance Comfort, some directors to look for include Henry Cass, Montgomery Tully, John Gilling, and Charles Saunders.

It's dispiriting, though predictable, that such a fun and wonderfully bizarre film as Ray Dennis Steckler's cult classic has a rating of barely 2 stars out of 10. For ingenuity, for energy, for the sheer love of filmmaking on the lowest of budgets, this is a movie that you need to see. On the other hand, if you're the kind of viewer who calls Hitchcock the "Master of Suspense," if you think The Godfather is the reason why Blu-Ray was invented, if the length of Ripley's cigarette ash in Aliens is your idea of a trivia question, if you have ever queued up on line to see a Star Wars film -- in short, if you're an idiot, the kind of naive, pretentious ass who identifies himself as a "film buff" or "movie lover," and with the sadly misguided temerity to actually feel proud of the aforementioned attributes, then you will want to steer clear of this movie. For the rest of us with taste, who recognize small treasures when they cross our paths, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? is a must.

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.

Unlike some viewers, who have only "recently" become Christopher Lee fans, I've been a fan of Lee for 25 years. Now I don't have a gripe with Steven Kuroiwa's review of this film, since it isn't very good. I do, however, have a problem with upstarts passing themselves off as reliable critical sources, putting viewers off a remarkable film like Peter Sykes's To the Devil a Daughter, a film that falls just shy of his masterpiece Demons of the Mind (both films written, or co-written, by the great Christopher Wicking). So if you were unfortunate enough to read that review, put it out of your mind. And put To the Devil a Daughter at the top of your queue. I have spoken.

It's true that a myth has been built around Elisabeth Bathory. But that myth is not her reputation as a monster: that is wholly deserved and borne out by historical fact. The myth is that of Bathory as vain, beauty-obsessed blood-bather. While there might be some genuine basis for this -- serial killers, after all, have been obsessed with stranger notions than the ones legend has attributed to Bathory -- the bottom line is that this lesbian murderess was a sadistic fiend who extracted intense sexual pleasure from the torture and murder of young girls. The revised version was manufactured in the Victorian era, because people couldn't bear to acknowledge that the "gentler sex" could be as bloodthirsty as men. This was, after all, the era of John Ruskin, "separate spheres," and the notion of woman as civilizing influence. Thus, Elisabeth Bathory was turned into a supernatural fiend whose story mainly served to warn women of the evils of "female vanity."

Apparently, we have not come very far from the mentality of the nineteenth century, for we still live in a culture that cannot or will not view women as anything other than wholesome pillars of moral rectitude. Thus, Karla Homolka's depredations were whitewashed in a loathsome and factually corrupt straight-to-video movie. Aileen Wuornos is turned into some kind of culture hero. And gender feminists refer to the likes of Homolka and others as "classic examples of female victims of male sadism."

Now we have this pack of lies, in which Bathory is victimized by power hungry men while she valiantly strives to protect her children. Yes, the old standby, folks: when you want to make excuses for evil women, just portray them as nurturing and self-sacrificing, willingly shouldering the burden of undeserved ignominy for the sake of their children. The kind of characterization which has nauseated feminists and gelded Marxist males for generations, but which they never fail to exploit when it suits their purposes.

I'm a huge fan of the beautiful and talented Anna Friel. Her presence and performance are the only reasons I give this piece of dreck two stars. May everyone else involved with its production rot in hell.