B-movie actress Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith essayed her most famous role in this unusual, vampire-themed cult film.
Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973), aka The Legendary Curse of Lemora, directed by Richard Blackburn of Eating Raoul fame, from his own script; starring Blackburn, Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith, Hy Pike, and Leslie Taplin.
Some horror fans find this early 70s vampire film a cult classic and some find it an interesting but deeply flawed production. Count me in the latter group.
The two main problems are a) most of the acting sucks and b) most of the dialogue is terrible. In addition, the tale is set in the Deep South, but the shooting locations are so clearly in Southern California that it’s distracting. (At least, it’s distracting for those of us who know what Southern California really looks like, i.e. the bone-dry polar opposite of the swampy, humid South.)
The storyline, however, is pretty good. It concerns a 13-year-old half-orphan named Lila Lee, who is known as the celebrated “Singing Angel” of a popular church. (Lila Lee is played by Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith, a blonde, B-movie temptress from the 70s and 80s.)
Lila has been under the guardianship of the pastor of her church (Blackburn) since her father, Alvin--a notorious gangster--murdered her mother for being unfaithful. Lila continues to pack the pews with her singing talents until one day, she receives a letter from a mystery woman named Lemora, who has seen Lila’s picture in a local newspaper.
The letter states that Lemora is taking care of Alvin, who is dying, and that Alvin wants to see Lila one last time before he goes. (Lemora, the villainess of this tale, is played by Leslie Gilb, aka, Leslie Taplin, who only has two acting credits in her IMDb listing. There’s, umm, a good reason for that, which I’ll get back to later on.)
Into the Piney Woods
Lila sneaks out of her pastor’s house and takes a trip to a remote house in the deep, piney Goergia woods at the invitation of Lemora. Once she arrives, via a night bus that’s clearly driven by a member of the undead (one of the creepiest scenes), Lila gradually finds out that Lemora isn’t the Angel of Mercy that she portrayed herself as in her letter.
In fact, she is actually a vampire who runs an orphanage for child vampires—and a lesbian one at that. She makes it clear that she wants Lila to join her collection of kiddie vamps, while also having obvious carnal designs on Lila’s body.
Alvin, Lila’s father, is also a vampire, but he’s the wrong kind of vamp. As Lemora later explains, the process of becoming a vampire can sometimes go awry, creating feral, barely sentient zombie-vamps, like Alvin. The zombie-vamps live in the woods and fight against the “normal” vamps, whom they despise. A civil war between different species of vamps is a concept I’ve not seen before, which is a point in this film’s favor.
Alas, the big, honking zit on the face of Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural is that the title star, Leslie Gilb/Taplin, can’t act. Not one bit. She speaks her dialogue like a middle-school English teacher feeding rehearsal lines to the star of the upcoming Christmas play. Of course, it doesn’t help that Taplin/Gilb is hampered by lines like “You’ve got an exciting figure,” which she addresses lustfully to poor confused Lila Lee. Who on earth talks like that?
The one good thing that Taplin/Gilb brings to this film is her unconventional looks; chiefly, a slightly bulging forehead and huge dark eyes, which, when combined with thick, white, undead make-up, provide a very unsettling appearance. It’s too bad that she wasn’t dubbed by a better actress—and one who was given better dialogue to speak.
Pervy Overtones
There’s another unsavory fact about this film (and a big reason it couldn’t be made today): as Lila Lee embarks on her journey to the piney backwoods, everyone she deals with pervs on her in very obvious ways, including her church pastor. And she’s only 13 years old!
Cheryl Smith was 18 at the time of filming, but she’s made up very convincingly to look like a child, complete with what looks like a breast-binder around her chest. The ever-present, creepy pedo vibe is essential to the plot, but some viewers may be disgusted.
Despite its flaws, this film is worth a watch just because it’s so famous among horror aficionados. There are also a few very eerie scenes that are memorable, mostly the ones involving the child vampires. I would give it a 6/10. On disc and streaming; there are also a couple of good copies on YouTube as of this writing.
