Lemora, A Child's Tale of the Supernatural
Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973) - IMDb
Now this truly IS a cult film, unlike films that are called cult yet everyone knows. I only ever once saw this film mentioned on someone's favourite films list.
It's amazing this is an American film as it has a far more European feel to it. It's about a teenage girl (Cheryl Smith), who sings in the local church, whose father is a gangster on the run. She gets an invitation from a woman who is taking care of her father, whose physical condition is poor, saying he desperately wants to see her. What follows is a journey into the surreal as she goes on a quest to see her father.
A movie with a really, really unusual atmosphere. Nearly the whole movie is bathed in a stark blue light, reminiscent of Italian horror and giallo lighting, but more monochrome. It gives the film a real strange feel. The sound-effects are very effective, like truly creepy echoing children's laughter or unidentified animal-like sounds filling the night.
Cheryl Smith (also known as Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith) I had never heard about. She was seventeen when this film was shot and she's perfect for it. She has an enormous innocence about her presence which is just right for a fairy-tale-like film like this. Director Richard Blackburn (who's in the film as the reverend of her church) wanted to have her emote more, as she is really subdued in her performance, but I think the way she plays it adds to the dreamlike quality - it's as if she's in a trance. It's like in Suspiria, where Jessica Harper's emotions are really even; right up til the end she walks through the film in a dreamlike state, never agitated or raising her voice, or reacting strongly to all the strange things around her.
Smith's health apparently was bad during filming and she took a lot of pills, which also may have contributed to her trance-like state. She went on to do all sorts of exploitation movies, like Jonathan Demme's Caged Heat and Cinderella (1977), which is bizarrely a softcore sex/musical version of the fairy tale, with actual singing in between the sex scenes. She was actually a musician working with The Runaways at some point.
She died rather young of a heroin addiction unfortunately.
What the film reminded me of, in the beginning especially, is Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter. There is the religious theme, a child on a quest through the night, a crime theme, they take place in the 30's both. And as it turned out when I watched the interview with Blackburn that was one of its inspirations. Another was Fritz Lang's Moonfleet, which I've never seen.
Blackburn, who's fond of classic fantastic fiction, also was inspired by Arthur Machen and Lovecraft. It's too bad he didn't make more films, he only has two directing credits (the other the tv-series Tales from the Darkside) and six acting credits. The reason why the film didn't do well, I was already speculating while watching, turned out to be confirmed by Blackburn: it was probably too arty for the horror audience and vice versa. He liked the label 'art-sploitation' for the film.
I had to get it on dvd rightaway. The poor quality of Youtube doesn't do it justice. Fortunately there was a dvd released in 2004, which is still available, and is region-free thankfully.