 |
Lemora opens with a black screen and the debaucherous sounds
of an adulterous couple in action. The
tinted blue picture finally appears with a crazed 1920s-type gangster (William Whitton) standing in a
doorway with a gun. He blows away the couple in bed, flees the scene in his
car, and runs down an elderly woman in the middle of the road! This first
over-the-top sequence may suggest that the film is going to be somewhat pulpy or campy,
but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The next scene cuts to the cherubic teenage
Lila Lee (Cheryl Smith), singing “Let It Be in a church. She stands alone in the choir pit on the altar, seemingly on a pedestal, with wide innocent
eyes and a somewhat frail demeanor.
The dashing young Reverend (played by the film's director, Richard Blackburn) then addresses his congregation—comprised exclusively of
middle-aged women!—with a sermon about the struggle between good and
evil. He talks about the evil, gossipy local papers, which printed that
little Lila, “our singing angel,” is actually the daughter of murderous
gangster, Alvin Lee. He tells his “sisters” that while Lila comes from evil
parents (whose sins she has been “washed clean from” during the three years
she has been a ward of the church), she is the true embodiment of purity
and good in God’s eyes. This
scene immediately sets up the common themes that run throughout Lemora—the struggle between good and
evil, as well as corruption of lily white innocence.
The story
flashes back to Alvin driving down a dark and twisty road in the woods.
A pale woman’s face fills the screen as Alvin becomes increasingly disoriented. He stops the car when he arrives at a house with a woman (Leslie Gilb) standing harmlessly outside
it. How does Alvin respond? Whips his
gun out and shoots her, of course! His
bullets are useless against this woman and he is apprehended by two dark
figures while an effectively haunting moaning sound is heard in the
distance. The woman finds a clipping of the aforementioned news story on the
man, sees Lila’s photo, and immediately begins writing a letter to the
“singing angel.” She informs Lila that her father is ill and beckons her,
as it is her “Christian duty” to forgive him. She signs “Your fellow Christian, Lemora.”
Lila, looking 13 or 14 in her pigtails and white Sunday dress, packs her suitcase and leaves a note for the Reverend, stating that she wants to be a good Christian and wants to make him proud. This is the first of many indications in the film that young Lila lives to please those around her. She sneaks off into the dark cerulean night (the film from here on out has a luscious and haunting blue tint.) She stops and sees the church sign that reads “Lila Lee: Our Own Singin’ Angel.” Her voice airily floats over the scene, sounding more distant than it did at the beginning, as she stares up at the church steeple for the last time.
Lila Lee’s independent adventure has begun.
What follows is a series of surreal and almost darkly
comedic interactions, mostly with men, that seem to be an attempt
to corrupt or take something from Lila.
She overhears a couple down the street preparing to go out and asks the man if she can have a
ride. The young man tells her to go home, then looks her up and down lasciviously
and adds, “before I change my mind.” Lila backs off, but later sneaks into the backseat of the car.
As she cowers in the darkness, she hears the woman making fun of her, saying she should inform the
Reverend that the “goody two-shoes” has been out late at night. The young man jokes that she’s “shacked-up” with the Rev and wonders how he keeps
his mitts off of her. Hearing
something like this sparks a flash in little Lila’s mind, and she flashes to a time when she was thanking the Rev
for helping her see God’s way, and went to embrace him. The young Rev pushed her off, trembling, telling her that conduct is inappropriate. It seems Lila now sees this confusing moment in a new light. It’s her first time doing something out of character by sneaking off alone, and
she’s immediately realizing that the things she has learned to trust and
believe to be pure may not be so.
Soon, the car is stopped and Lila sneaks out.
It is the middle of the night and she finds herself in a
very dismal town. The first thing she sees is a man urinating against a
wall, smiling at her lewdly. Next, she
sees a “lady of the night” laughing at her from a red-lit window as gunshots sound in the distance. A man beats up on his girl outside of a tavern and asks her if she’s “lookin’
for a good time.” An upbeat country song about a man whose cheatin’ wife
“ain’t no faithful angel anymore” plays over the scene as Lila’s wide eyes
witnesses the horrors of this place.
Preserving her innocent countenance, she finds a rundown bus station, and asks the ticketman if she can go
to Asteroth. The man tells her that town is abandoned, but there is a
bus that can take her there. He asks
if he knows her, that he should remember such a pretty girl, gazing at her with lecherous eyes and a repulsively
wet mouth. The ticketman offers her candy for the road, and in a
disgusting close-up, asks if she likes “soft or hard centers.” It’s a scene that is simultaneously funny and sickening. She goes to the dilapidated bus and finds herself the sole passenger. The driver (Hy Pyke), is a large lush who locks the door so firmly behind Lila that you can’t
help but shiver and wonder if she’s safe with this man who is obviously
yet another creep. She asks him the cost, and he tells her that it’s late
and he has to make a special trip for her (as he never goes to Asteroth), so
he might have to charge her extra. She’s trapped and there is no going back now, so she scurries to the back corner and takes a seat.
What follows gets my vote for one of the scariest scenes
in any horror film. Lemora almost seems like a black comedy up to this point, but during Lila’s nighttime bus trip it morphs
into pure horror and never looks back.
As the bus rides the same blue-lit twisty road Alvin traveled at the beginning, Lila apprehensively stares out
the window. The shot of the woods is done with a handheld camera,
disorienting the viewer and setting the tone for the upcoming events in Lila’s
journey. She complains of the stink, and the bus driver tells her it’s
the marshes, symbolic of Lila’s impending corruption. He informs her
of the people of Asteroth, who were victims of some epidemic. His ominous story-telling style of this abandoned town and its bizarre inhabitants
sends a chill down the spine, as Pyke hams it up with bug eyes and
twitchy face. Lila falls asleep, but is soon awakened by an awful growling
noise. She looks out the window and sees humanoid creatres running maniacally
toward the bus. [Probably the one shit-your-pants moment in the movie.] They catch up and bang on its sides, and the driver
exclaims “those are the ones that have taken to livin’ in the woods!” They out-speed the creatures but, unfortunately, the bus stalls a ways up
the curvy road. While looking under the hood, the driver is attacked by a
horrifying mutant-type creature with a decayed face. More monsters come running out of the woods, and Lila puts the bus into gear and it
rolls down the hill and crashes into a tree.
She tries to flee, but rotted faces appear in the windows and she cowers into the corner. Suddenly, the woman who sent Lila the letter appears and simply utters, “Burn them!” This horrifying and tense scene mercifully ends, but the scares and chills
continue throughout the film.
Lila awakens in a prison-like room. The nighttime fills the room through a window, which also carries in the sounds of children
laughing eerily. A haggard old woman (Maxine Ballantyne) enters the room and
asks, “Mary Jo?” Lila responds, “No, Lila Lee. Who is Lemora?” The old
lady exclaims that her resemblance to this Mary Jo is uncanny, and then goes
on to say that she, too, was once young and beautiful like Lila. She starts hoarsely singing a campfire-type song called “There Was an Old
Woman All Skin and Bones,” circling Lila and glaring at her ominously. The combination of the spinning and the creepy song is nearly nauseating,
and when the lady shouts “BOO!”, it works as both a tension-reliever and a
jump scare. The woman, Solange, is beckoned and runs off to the
house. Lila hears growling in the night and kneels at the bed to pray. Her quiet is interrupted by hysterically laughing children with black
eyes and pale faces mocking her from the window. She shoos them away, as if offended by the interruption of her time with God by this impish
creatures.
Next, the story flashes to the Rev, waiting by the phone, presumably for a call from his little angel. All dressed in a snappy “I’m symbolic of Good!” white suit, he gets into his black car and drives the same twisty road that Alvin and Lila traveled. However, this driving scene takes place during the day and isn’t as creepy. In fact, all of the Rev’s scenes in the first half take place in daytime and have a muted feel that contrasts with the atmospheric blue tint that encompasses the other scenes in the film. While he drives, a radio announcement indicates that Alvin Lee is still missing. Meanwhile, Lila is still in her cell, struggling to keep her identity and sanity by screaming her name, address, and desire to leave this horrible place. Solange returns and Lila knocks her down and escapes into the night. She finds an entrance underneath the porch and crawls into it, as the woman croaks her name and threatens to get Lemora in an eerie sing-songy fashion. Further under the house, she overhears a woman speaking to her father from above. Their conversation is mysterious and evasive. The woman cries that her throat is burning out of thirst, an Alvin claims that he knows he’s going to change but doesn’t want to hurt his own kid. She claims that he will be actually setting her free, and that he’ll change his mind once he physically changes. While this conversation isn’t completely informative, it is the first indication that there is going to be something vampiric going on in the plot. Lila’s journey has already been very intense, filled with letches and perverts and a Reverend that probably has a crush on her. “Setting her free” may refer to freedom from lusty men, religion, and repression.
Solange interrupts, informing Lemora that Lila has run off. When Lila tries to escape after encountering a rat, Lemora greets her at the crawlspace door and introduces herself. She is tall, imposing, and somewhat androgynous. Her angular face is pale, her eyes are dark, and has her pitch hair pulled-up and wears a long black gown. She informs Lila that she was not in the stonehouse to be locked-up, but rather to keep things out, obviously meaning the creatures she has already encountered in her travels in the woods. She tells her that her room is ready and she can see her father once she is immune to his disease, which will happen after the ceremony. Lila asks if the creepy kids and woods-monsters also have the disease, but Lemora is not ready to give her any answers. As she sends her upstairs, the viewer is treated to the outstanding set-design of Lemora’s house, which is like Hammer Horror meets Southern Gothic. Alone in her room, Lila finds a platter on the bed, filled with what appears to be red runny meat chunkies. She instinctively takes them in her mouth, gnawing hungrily. She hears a child yelling “let me go!” and rushes to the window to see two dark minions dragging a boy to the stonehouse. While looking into a handheld mirror, Lila hears Lemora open the door—but she casts no reflection in the mirror! Vampire hint #2! The mirror crashes, and Lemora tells her it doesn’t matter because “you can see how lovely you are in my eyes,” as she caresses her face.
A chilling score sounds like something out of a
children’s movie as Lila follows Lemora down the stairs into the next surreal
scene. She encounters the “diseased” children again, dressed as
gypsies with pale faces and dark eyes.
An androgynous one touches her with a withered hand and utters without emotion, “you have pretty skin.” Lila is taken aback, and soon all the children are groping her and laughing as
she enters Lemora’s lair.
They all sit in a circle on a bed, as the hostess pours drinks. Lila says
it’s unchristian to drink wine, but Lemora snaps back that it’s rude to not do as another does under his
roof. The gender of the pronoun seems significant coming from the
semi-andro Lemora, even if it is a rhetorical comment. She’s clearly not an easy woman to get along with if you aren’t completely compliant, and
she threatens to put Lila back in the stonehouse if she doesn’t drink from
the goblet. There’s a close-up on both of their contrasting eyes
before the fluid is drunk by Lila. So
soon everyone is drinking. Lila is asked
to sing, and she reluctantly does, but the fragile voice that comes
out is very different from the confident voice that soared in the
church. The children laugh mockingly at her, and her vision begins to
blur. She nearly faints, and Lemora claims that the drink is having
its nice effect on her already.
Lemora turns on an amazing red victrola and plays the same song Solange sang earlier, without the vocals. She asks Lila to dance. But
apparently that’s unchristian too, and Lila says Rev would disapprove.
Lemora immediately starts spinning her anyway, snidely
remarking that it’s wrong for a girl to deny herself joy, to which Lila
responds “vanity is a sin.” They spin so
fast, disorienting the viewer again, until Lila falls onto the floor. Next, a window breaks in another room, which Lila
realizes is her father’s room. She runs and
sees restraints on the bed have been broken. Lemora insists that he escaped, but Lila thinks something in the
woods got him.
Oddly enough, Lemora sends the children to go try to catch him, as they are also “immune.” The following scene is unsettling and almost pedophiliac, though it has been referred to by some as the erotic point in the film. Lemora pours Lila a bath in an old-fashioned basin, instructing her to not be embarrassed to undress in front of another woman. As Lila complies, Lemora hums the “turning into an old woman” tune, and says that Solange used to own the house. As Lila gets into the basin, Lemora uses this ultimate vulnerability to investigate the purity of her subject. She comments on how “exciting” her figure is, and how it much popularity it must bring her. At this point, it’s pretty obvious that this lady has her eyes set on little Lila. Lila remarks that girls are mean and boys are dirty, and Lemora tells her that one day she’ll understand the power her sexuality can have over men. As Lila covers herself in the tub, Lemora says she shouldn’t be modest, and that the way her father speaks about her you’d think he was in love with her too. It seems that no one is spared from craving a piece of little Lila. Lila explains that she loves her father regardless of how evil he is, and vice versa, as Lemora bathes at her neck and glares at the cross hanging around her neck (Vampire Hint #3!). Lila says her father never hurt her, except when his unshaven face would nuzzle her as he hugged her. Lemora claims Alvin loved her the minute he saw her, as does anyone who “has the capacity to.” Lila stands up and Lemora covers her with a towel, tickling her. Lila submits to the playfulness, laughing joyously, and allows Lemora to dress her.
Afterwards, Lemora goes to get a “surprise” and leaves
Lila alone. She sees someone lurking behind some furniture, and realizes
it is her father. Her reaction is to shout “I forgive you! I’ll pray for
you!” but then realizes that he has become a horrifying monster, like
the ones that dwell in the woods. He
chases her around, proving to little Lila that forgiveness and prayer do not always work. She runs from the room and finds Solange chopping up more red runny meaty
chunkies. The monster gruesomely tears the old woman’s throat open, but he’s
interrupted by a torch-carrying Lemora.
She burns him and he jumps out of the window. Lemora has rescued the frightened (but physically
unharmed) little Lila from the monster and comforts her with a love that’s
almost motherly, as the camera pans down to Solange, who has been left
twitching and writhing to her death on the ground. All that matters is her Lila. Back in the room, Lemora says that a year ago, some of the people who
joined her became “ugly, beast-like,” and that they must be
killed. Lila asks if she’ll kill her father, and Lemora says she’ll have to
because he might hurt either of them.
Lila agrees, and lays gratefully in her lap. Lemora notes that her nightgown has been torn and there is some
blood on her back. She angrily
asks if he did it, and then sucks the blood hungrily. Lila is
understandably shocked, but the woman claims that it was necessary to do because it was like a snakebike. It’s an obvious fib, but Lila buys it.
She carries her off to bed and tells her a story about a
little girl, beautiful and loved by all, but who felt like something
was after her. The girl ran away, “just like a lot of people who do not
want to accept what they truly are,” Lemora narrates as she combs Lila’s
hair. The girl found herself at this place, and Lila innocently asks,
“Is it you?”
“Maybe.”
“Are those kids yours?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to your husband?”
“I don’t have one. They’re all adopted. None are as lovely as you.”
“Lovely as Mary Jo?”
Lemora becomes angry and yanks her hair back and said
“Who told you!” Lila explains that Solange mentioned the name. Lemora states that Mary Jo was incapable of loving, and that Lila and she shall become
“blood sisters” at a ceremony tomorrow, and they’ll share blood, beauty, and
life. In a rare humorous moment at this point in the film, Lila naively
asks if it will be a Baptist ceremony.
Lemora responds that it is more ancient than that. With piercing, almost pervy eyes, she tells her that the
ceremony will be so intense that Lila will think she’s going to die, but
she won’t, and she’ll live better than ever before. Lila has been lulled to sleep by this, and Lemora’s creepy looming face closes in on the
camera, filling the screen, as she kisses Lila goodnight. So, at this point it’s clear that she’s a vampire, though the “V Word” is never
uttered. It’s also clear that she wants little Lila to be her
companion. The bedtime story Lemora tells works as a metaphor for an outsider—whether they
are vampiric, queer, or (as in her case) both.
Lila wakes up on this seemingly endless night to sounds of the growling kid being dragged out of the stonehouse. She decides to snoop around the room and finds Mary Jo’s diary (dated 1892! Has it been this long since Lemora has loved another!) She learns that she and Mary Jo were indeed more similar than even Solange suggested. She was a little girl who Lemora had stay at her place with her father. Mary Jo writes about how worldy Lemora is, though later she becomes scared when the possessiveness begins and her father disappears. The last diary entry Lila reads says, “She’s going to do it again, I’m scared, it hurts, help me God!” Is she raping her, or is it something even worse? Whatever it is, it is unchristian, and the clueless Lila suddenly realizes that this maybe her fate and she needs to take control of the situation. She leaves the room and finds herself in a hallway lined with framed portraits of women, which seem to whisper her name, telling her she has to get out before she is killed. Off she goes again, into the cerulean night. She goes around the house and overhears Lemora through a window. She peers in and sees her with a non-diseased boy on her lap. She bares her fangs and chomps down into his neck. Lila screams in horror and runs off into the woods. The handheld camera is from her perspective and is appropriately disorienting as she traverses the creepy forest. It’s a suspenseful scene, as the viewer knows what horrific monsters await her here.
What follows is possibly the longest chase scene in any horror film. If not for the fantastic set-pieces and lush fantastical atmosphere, it probably would have become more than a little dull. Lila climbs a tree as the monster of her father searches below. He notices her and tries to get her, but the monster of the bus driver appears and they literally fight over her. While they’re distracted, she escapes and continues into the night. She finds a boarded up shack and approaches it, but in a tremendous jump-scare, monstrous hands reach through and try to grab her. She backs off and overhears none other than Lemora, instructing her gang of cloak-clad minions to exterminate the things in the shack and find Lila before the other monsters get her. Lila climbs into their car to hide. Outside, a group of monsters attack the minions. She finds a coffin and climbs inside to hide as the car drives off.
Meanwhile, the Reverend is still driving around twisty roads. The fact that it took Alvin and Lila so little time to reach this town suggests the ineptitude and powerlessness of this Man of God. He finally reaches a town, but the road is lined with bodies and there doesn’t seem to be anyone alive around. It’s an eerie scene, though it isn’t clear if this is actually Asteroth. Is the aftermath of the monsters vs minions fight from the previous scene? Or is this a different abandoned town that has been drained lifeless?
The vehicle carrying Lila arrives to a group of torch-bearing minions. They pull the coffin out and she pushes open the lid and screams, startling them. They bare their fangs and she runs off again. She finds an abandoned building. There is alternating moments of silence, moaning, crickets, and ominous score as she finds a place to hide. She stumbles on a room of women’s skeletons, as well as a glass casing with a woman’s body seemingly preserved in it. She runs into a factory-type place, climbs to the rafters, and outside onto the roof. The minions hear her, and seem to bark at each other as a form of communication. They seem particularly group-oriented and aren’t very good at catching their prey, as Lila escapes their clutches yet again. She finds a decrepit dark house that is similar to Lemora’s and reluctantly heads to the upper floor. The stairs are broken and the room seems moldly. She finds herself locked-in, and then the doorknob wiggles as if someone is on the other side. Lila climbs out of the window, runs across the roof, and loses her footing and falls.
The next
scene is one of the most dream-like sequences in the film. Lila finds
herself in some other pitch black room, and the only thing she can see are torches. One torch encroaches upon her, Lemora’s voice looming behind it in darkness, telling Lila that
there was no getting away and that her fate has always been to be with
her. Lila shows resistance, and backs away, telling her she knows she is
going to kill her. Lemora
insists she wants to give her a gift of eternal life. Lila says she doesn’t want it and Lemora responds, “I know you
do. We are the same. If you don’t realize that, you will never be
happy. It has to happen. Wouldn’t you rather I do it out of love, than
have one of those wood things do it out of their own animal hunger? You’re
too good to be their queen.”
Lemora is referring to the monsters on the surface, but also to the Reverends, Bus Drivers, Ticketmen, Fathers, and anyone else who has wanted a piece of Lila’s innocence. Lemora tells her that she shows people who they really are (as Lila looks into a mirror),
just as she showed that her father was really monstrous and
debase. Lila tells her she hates her, and crawls away through a giant
dollhouse. Lemora insists that Lila has been drawn to her from the get-go, and that
she wants this even if she doesn’t know it, telling her that coming
under her wing would change her into the person she really is. Lila resists, and steps through a red velvet curtain.
Suddenly,
she finds herself back in the brightly lit church with the congregation full of the gazing women in their Sunday
dresses and hats. She is back
in her choir gown, and the Reverend is staring at her, preaching about the contrasts between her innocent
angelic self and her demonic dad. The
parishioners chant “AMEN!” after each of his exclamations. As
she’s standing on her pedestal, the minions flash over the congregation, questioning her innocence, and claiming
that Lila understands the Reverend’s sexual attraction to her and
even encourages it: “You see everyone trying to SEDUCE YOU, DRAIN YOU,
DEVOUR YOU, but it’s you who wants to SEDUCE, DRAIN, and DEVOUR!”
The fantasy sequence cuts back to the room, and a bizarrely choreographed fight sequence between minions and monsters ensues. It’s almost like a dance. Lila screams for it to stop, as she sees images of the congregation women and the lewd men in town she met on her journey—everyone who wanted or needed something from her. The score becomes glaring, like a siren, and suddenly everything goes quiet and everyone fighting falls to the ground, seemingly dead. Lila looks around in fear and notices all the torches are standing upright, as if it were a ceremony. [i]The[/i] ceremony. One last monster, her father, jumps at her. She screams, but finally finds courage to fight back and grabs a wooden stake. He jumps on her and is impaled. As he dies, he utters “Lila? Princess?” She cries and mourns her father’s passing, but hears Lemora beckoning her in the distance. She looks up and sees her on an altar, wearing the ceremonial garment she promised the day before. Lemora tells her that Lila is now the killer, and she needs to free herself of guilt. It’s an alternative (albeit manipulative) to Lila’s repressive Christianity. The experience has been all to much for the girl, and she finally submits and jumps into the scary woman’s arms willingly. “What are you?” she asks, more curious than afraid. “I am whatever you want me to be,” Lemora states matter-of-factly, as she bares her fangs one last time and goes down to bite Lila’s neck. The intimate scene is not shown; the camera does not linger here as it did with Lila's previous [male] monstrous accosters.
Reverend is
still looking for Lila among the bodies in town. He falls asleep and when he awakens he finds himself in a
haystack. He claims he is dreaming, because his “singing angel” has
finally appeared to him. Lila is on
top of him, wearing a beautiful red and black cloak instead of her Sunday whites. Her hair is disheveled and she radiates a sexiness that is in stark contrast to the timid and frail
“singing angel.” She hugs the Reverend and presses her face against his,
remarking that he hasn’t shaved.
This scene refers back to when Lila told Lemora that the only time her father ever hurt her was when he
hugged her and his scruffy face scraped her soft skin. The day’s growth of beard represents the maleness Lemora wants to protect Lila from. Lila mentioning the Reverend’s scruff signals his inevitable death. “That hurts!” she says coquettishly, as she kisses him. He submits to her kisses and she pulls back, baring her fangs.
She goes in for the bite, and the camera pans away to show Lemora looming above them, with the countenance of a proud teacher. The final scene is of Lila singing, center stage, in church. Instead of “Let it Be,” she is now appropriately singing “Rock of Ages.” For in the end, Lemora can be seen as a sort of terrifying coming-of-age film. On the surface, Lemora may seem like another predatory lesbian in a long lineage of such characters, but she also represents an alternative to a male world that wants to pass Lila around like a piece of meat. Lemora has literally eaten Lila alive, and in doing so, forced her to become the Other. Now that she is a grown-up monster, Lila is finally able to empower herself and turn the tables on a dangerous, predatory world.
My Rating: 10 Lesbian Vampires out of 10.
No comments:
Post a Comment