starrywisdomsect:

Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973)
“If you don’t enjoy our company, you can go back to where you were, Lila.”
Dir. Richard Blackburn, starring Leslie Gilb and Cheryl Smith.

Combine the literary elements of H.P Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and Arthur Machen’s “The White People”, and you arrive somewhere near the uneasy world of this cult-movie gem of a film. 

It tells the story of Lila Lee, an angelic chorister in a depression era revivalist church; the depression providing a natural setting for the almost ‘folk-horror’ feel of the film. Lila’s father is a notorious mobster, so she has instead been in the care of a lecherous reverend. After Lila’s father murders his wife and her lover, and goes on the run, Lila receives a letter from someone called Lemora claiming that her father is on his deathbed and asking for his daughter. She steals away by night and boards a bus to a portentously named backwoods community where the local inhabitants are suffering from strange deformations. Awaiting her is the pale, raven-haired, black-clad Lemora, whose chiselled, angular features, bluish lips, huge dark eyes and throaty voice create a quintessential female vampire.