The deceased wealthy patriarch (John Carradine) was a disliked curmudgeon whose last will & testament at first glance seems fair enough in its division of cash & property. But his numerous heirs can collect only if they agree to live together on his estate for one week after his burial. If anyone gets killed during that week, those still living can divide the portions of whoever doesn't make it.

Thus unimaginatively begins the nap-inducing Legacy of Blood (1971). Of course the cast gets picked off one by one, beginning with Mr. Chin the Pekinese dog. But neither Mr. Chin nor anyone else is the least bit interesting, so it hardly matters who if anyone will survive.

The only human whose death seemed even slightly unfortunate was the sheriff's (old western character actor Rodolfo Acosta, whose presence in this stinker won the film a distribution in Mexico where Rodolfo was born).

As the sheriff wasn't one of the heirs, the motivation for his murder didn't even apply; it's merely traditional in cheezy horror films to kill the minority first.

"This is going to be like some kind of horror film," observes one of the cast of morons, & it never gets any smarter than that. The gore gags are poorly staged, neither comical enough nor gorey enough to be worth the effort.

One guy's eaten by small piranhas in a tropical fish display (never mind that it's almost impossible to get aquarium piranhas to bite anyone, especially the small silver ones).

Another victim is attacked, completely nonsensically, by flies. An axe, of course, is de rigour for films of this kind, when there's not a big enough budget to rent a chainsaw for a half day's shoot.

The "surprise" ending was no surprise at all since it was predictable from the moment the terms of the will were read. And being no surprise, it was decided to add on a second sillier ending after the first obvious twist.

And since that wasn't very good either, a third twist comes after that, all quite inanely satiric, as if actually saying "Didn't we make a stupid movie?" is all it takes to make it entertaining.

If the "creative" team behind this film had been a bunch of frycooks & gradeschool janitors who caught a film of this quality as a Friday night film interrupted every three minutes by ads for Buck Buick's Lot of Broken Cars, I can imagine them exclaiming, "Hey, we could make a film as good as that!" never noticing Buck's shtick about great car deals was way better material.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl