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Okay,
you're probably wondering What the heck
happened to Legacy
of Blood? Nothing, really. We've just
run smack into some self-inflicted
technical difficulties. You see, I taped Legacy
of Blood
off of cable about three months ago and,
once again, my inability to clearly mark
my blank tapes resulted, inevitably, in my
inability to find the damn thing.
So,
after swing searching through about fifty
blank VHS tapes, I, and my VCR, finally
cried "uncle". A quick check
shows the film is now available to buy so,
the order is in, the DVD is on the way,
and the review is coming; and we just need
to shuffle the line-up of Bad
Blood Month a little to compensate for
my addle-braininess. (Braininess
is a word? Wow.)
*
* * *
We
open in the swamps somewhere in Dade
County, Florida, in the year of our Lord
1935. As young gangsters in love Nicky (Sal
Vecchio) and his mol, Ruby (Piper
Laurie), prepare for a romantic
evening by sailing a boat into the foggy
marsh (I
mean, nothing says romance like a stinky
old bog, right?), their evening's
romantic rendezvous is cut short when the
rest of the Dade County Mob show up and
blow Nicky away in a hail of gunfire. You
see, after Jake (Fred Kohler),
the old boss, had to go sit a year in stir
on a tax beef, Nicky took control of the
gang and stole his girl, Ruby. An aspiring
singer, Ruby was Jake's sex-pot front when
they horned in and took over rival
territories. Now, Jake's served his time
and wants it all back, permanently.
And after
Nicky's bullet riddled corpse sinks into
the bog, Ruby collapses, critically
pregnant, giving birth to her and Nicky's
child that very night.
That
was sixteen years ago, according to the
prologue, so
let's jump ahead to 1951:
The
Dade County Mob is a relic of the past,
dead and gone. Jake is an aged invalid,
wheel-chair bound, and not in control of
his faculties (and yes, we're
supposed to notice those over-sized
sunglasses), who shares his
decrepit mansion/ballroom/casino with the
now batty grand dame Ruby and her equally
subdued daughter, Leslie (Janit
Baldwin). Yes, the
old mob may be dead, but the gang is still
together and they all work at Ruby's
Drive-In that is adjacent to the mansion.
With Jake's condition, Ruby owns the joint
but leaves most of the daily operations in
the hands Vince Kemper (Stuart
Whitman). I think Vince has a thing
for Ruby, but Ruby still carries a torch
for Nicky. While
Ruby keeps tabs on things from the house
with her trusty telescope, the evening
crowd starts to filter in. In the
projection room, Jess (Eddy Donno)
fires up the first reel of Attack
of the 50ft Woman
(which
is some feat because, technically, that
movie wouldn't actual be shot for another
seven years in 1958). As the
projector projects, Jess finds his bottle
and takes a long swig. Suddenly,
he hears something. A rush of wind
perhaps? Heck, we might even think this is
just a bad case of the DT's until the
projection booth comes to life, batters
him around, and then the film starts to
strangles him!
Since
the next reel is busy strangling the
projectionist, the screen goes white when
the first reel runs out. When the crowd
starts honking their horns and flashing
their lights (including what
appears to be Joe Bob Briggs and Harry
Knowles together in the same truck),
Ruby hears the racket and drives over to
investigate. They find Jess's body,
hanging from the ceiling. Ruby thinks the
old drunk committed suicide, and not
wanting any hassles of a police
investigation, she tells Vince to just get
rid of the body -- after he gets the movie
going again. (Priorities, people!)
Then
things turn even more sinister when
another old gang member, Louie (Paul
Kent), is rejected by Lila Jane (Crystin
Sinclaire), frequent drive-in
frequenter; usually with a different
gentlemen each night, a/k/a the town slut,
a/k/a the running gag. After he's kneed in
the groin and left to whimper (no
means NO, buddy), he's seized by
some kind of malevolent force that uses
him like a ping-pong ball, smashing him
off several trees; and after a few
volleys, Louie is kind of a mess.
The
next morning, while picking flowers,
dough-eyed Leslie finds Louie's bloodied
corpse hanging in the Spanish moss. Vince
finds the mute girl and sends her back to
the house. Suspicious of Jess's suicide,
Vince is now convinced something evil is
afoot. Confronting Ruby with the latest
grisly discovery, she doesn't seem all
that surprised. She's
sensed this was coming. And it was only a
matter of time. Yes, she believes Nicky's
spirit has come back from the dead and
wants revenge on those who murdered him.
And he won't stop until they're all dead...
*
* * *
Quick!
I'll bet you can't guess what the most
financially successful independent feature
was before Halloween?
Well, since we're reviewing that
particular film, maybe you can. Ruby's
reign was short-lived, however, and its
been wallowing in obscurity ever since. I
don't know if its falling off the radar
had anything to do with its troubled,
bitter, and somewhat cantankerous
production but it's a pretty good bet.
Wanting
to cash in on the recent financial success
of the bloody supernatural films The
Exorcist
and Carrie,
executive producer Steve Krantz entered
into a collaboration with writer/producer
George Edwards and director Curtis
Harrington. Edwards
and Harrington had put together a string
of pictures derived from the antics of
those nutty old ladies in Whatever
Happened to Baby Jane
with titles like What's
the Matter With Helen
and Who
Slew Auntie Roo,
and a downright disturbing piece on the
mother/son-the-serial-killer relationship
in The
Killing Kind.
Since his first film, Night
Tide,
Harrington's pictures have had a tendency
to almost choke on their own gothic-ness.
High on mood and style, his pictures
tended to get bogged down in extremely
dull stretches while he showcased his
talent (RE:
his leading ladies).
Here
again, Harrington wanted the film to focus
on the doomed romance between Ruby and
Nicky: an old fashioned Greek tragedy with
all the trappings of a southern-gothic
potboiler. Krantz, on the other hand,
wanted to focus on the possession, the
murder, and the mayhem; not the diva and
the dead guy.
When
the production began, the battle lines
were clearly drawn between Harrington,
Edwards and the cast versus Krantz,
cameraman William Mendenhall, and
assistant director Stephanie Rothman. And
it all kind of makes you wonder if the
story behind the movie is more interesting
than what's playing on the screen, doesn't
it? Well, all I'll say is this story's
climax is directly linked to the climax of
Ruby
-- so I'll keep you in suspense for a
little while longer as we rejoin our film
already in progress...
...Vince
brings in an old friend, Dr. Paul Keller (Roger
Davis -- a familiar face to all you Dark
Shadows
fans out there), the
local spirit medium, to
help them. While he gets the psychic feel
of the joint, and Ruby fills him in on the
sordid history of the old Dade County Mob,
Nicky's spirit continues to manifest
itself rather anti-socially. Ruby
constantly has visions of him, and tries
to explain that she wasn't in on the hit
-- it was all jealous Jake -- but the
ghost fades away before we can tell if he
got the message or not.
That
night, during the feature, something goes
wrong with the soda machine. A young boy
keeps pressing the button for a Grape-Nehi,
but nothing comes out. Then the machine
cracks open, revealing Barney (Len
Lesser -- last seen molesting orphans in
our last
feature), another
gang member that Nicky can cross off his
list, skewered on the tubes inside. (This
is long before aluminum cans, folks. This
is a fountain-drink type machine.)
Of course, the boy's mother doesn't
believe him, vowing to never bring him to
any more horror movies. But we're not
quite done with this joke yet:
WARNING!
Fat
person unwittingly drinking blood joke
coming in 3...2...1...Bingo!
(See,
it's funny because she's fat.)
*sigh*
ALL
CLEAR!
Nicky's
next manifestation gives Dr. Keller his
first clue as to why the spirit is
manifesting itself now. Ruby was on the
verge of sending Leslie to a sanitarium,
despite Vince's protests, because she
could no longer handle her special needs.
Leslie, who appears to have some psychic
gifts of her own (according to
Keller, anyway), didn't want to go
and her displeasure over this development
served as a conduit for Nicky whose spirit
now possesses her. So, while Keller does
his best Father Merrin, Leslie goes all
Regan on us (-- just not quite as
graphically except for a very effective
hysterical arch sequence; better known as
the spider-walk for those Exorcist
aficionados). Talking in her
father's voice, Leslie's spastic fits are
punctuated by several stigmatas, where she
bleeds from the exact same spots where her
father was shot.
Meanwhile,
with that evening's show rained out, Ruby
tries to
drown her
sorrows with booze while listening to her
old records. (Well, one record.
Actually, one song. Played over and over
and over...) Eventually, she
wanders into the deserted drive-in, calls
to her dead lover, and has another vision
of Nicky as he talks to her through the
speakers.
And as
soon as he disappears, there is a great gust
of wind and
Ruby hears a scream -- and the unmistakable
sound, a
dull
wet thud, of something sharp plunging into
a warm body. Suddenly, the projector kicks
on and shines a spotlight on the drive-in
screen. There, dead center, impaled on a
speaker pole, is Avery (Jack
Perkins) leaving only Vince, Jake
and
Ruby left
on Nicky's hit list.
A
truly startling, disturbing, and very
effective scene! Kudos to all the
technicians who pulled that of.
The
next day, Ruby reveals that she has an ace
up her sleeve -- make that something
hidden in her closet -- that will surely
convince Nicky that she still loves him
and had nothing to do with his murder.
Keller has quieted Leslie down and checks
on Ruby, finding her in the ballroom,
still lamenting the past. Suddenly, an
evil wind blows through the house, and it
brings Jake -- rocketing in on his
wheelchair -- to join them. Jake doesn't
seem to mind the bumpy ride, though,
mostly due to the large butcher knife
sticking out of his chest. As Nicky's
spirit whips a few kitties on the
wheelchair, the stunt sends Jake sprawling
to the floor where he loses his glasses on
impact, revealing empty eye-sockets that
were hidden underneath. Aghast,
Keller asks what happened to his eyes; but
before Ruby can answer, Leslie starts
screaming. As Keller runs to help her,
Ruby heads to her closet, and as you've
probably guessed already, that secret toy
surprise she has hidden in there is,
indeed, Jake's eyeballs, pickled in
formaldehyde, that she pried out
personally with some scissors after he
killed Nicky. This macabre offering is for
Nicky, and she professes that all she
wants is to just be with him again.
So
Ruby is off the hook, but Vince isn't and
he comes under a ferocious poltergeist
attack as Nicky destroys the drive-in,
throwing speakers, popcorn, and several
cars at him. Despite all that, Vince
manages to get back to the house and finds
Keller and Leslie. Leslie is fine --
Nicky's spirit has left her -- and
miraculously cured of her muteness, but
they can't find Ruby anywhere. They
trace her down to the marsh where the
ambush took place sixteen years ago, and
spy Ruby walking to the end of the pier.
Then the ghost of Nicky appears, and leads
Ruby into the water. When Vince tries to
stop her, Keller stops him, saying this is
what Ruby wants.
Evidently
not, though, as she's soon kicking and
screaming as the skeletal remains of Nicky
drag her into the muck claiming "She's
mine now!"
Cue
ghostly maniacal laughter, freeze the
frame, cue credits and --
The
End
The
hell?!
If
you notice -- and it's pretty damned
obvious -- that actress being drug to her
watery doom is not Piper Laurie.
And that
final twist wasn't how the movie was
supposed to end, either. Ruby was supposed
to walk into the water to be reunited with
her dead lover willingly, a tragic ending
to their doomed love affair from beyond
the grave. That's what Harrington wanted.
Krantz, on the other hand, adamantly
wanted a shock ending. This proved to be
the last straw for all involved, and when
Harrington refused to make the changes he
quit the production, even though it was
basically done. Undeterred, Krantz shot
the ending with the double and the
skeleton, and re-cut the movie more to his
liking. Harrington, of course, was furious
and sued to have his name removed from the
credits, making Ruby
the first film at 3B Theater to be
directed by Allen Smithee.
Despite
these changes, Ruby
proved to be a big hit -- but then it
mysteriously vanished off the radar. VCI
Entertainment has recently resurrected
Ruby
on DVD that claims to be the director's
cut -- but it's Krantz's ending that is
still used. I find this odd since the
makers of the DVD are clearly in
Harrington's corner. There's an hour long
interview with Harrington --
that, for the record, would have been
better if the interviewer would shut his
pie-hole and let the man talk instead of
answering his own questions for him -- and
a commentary from the director and Piper
Laurie. Listening to both, the dislike
Harrington feels for Krantz is palpable.
I
don't know if the original ending was ever
shot but its omission in this DVD is
puzzling. Other cut scenes are restored,
and the love affair between Ruby and the
corpse is more pronounced, making that
ultimate twist ending monumentally stupid.
The film is so schizo on this; one instant
Ruby is a tragic figure to be pitied, in
the other she's a crazed harlot. In truth,
I'm almost curious enough to track down an
old VHS copy of this to see Krantz's
version to compare and contrast.
I
do enjoy Harrington's movies. When he's
good, he's good. But when he's bad, he's
duller than dirt. Sometimes, watching his
flicks is a lot like watching William
Castle movies without the gimmick. Like
Castle's films, some can stand on their
own without the gimmick, like The
Tingler
and House
on Haunted Hill.
While others, like 13
Ghosts, the only form of entertainment
is the Illusion-O glasses. Lot's of
dull-dull-dull punctuated by brief blips
of the macabre. Harrington's movies are
the same way. Night
Tide and The
Killing Kind
are pretty good, while What's
the Matter With Helen
is a chore to sit through to get to the
disturbing ending without the aid of Illusion-O.
Lucky
for us, Ruby
is more than capable of standing on its
own, and honestly, some of the credit must
be given to Krantz. Despite his meddling,
miserly budget, and refusal to pay for
rehearsals, when you compare Ruby
to Harrington's previous idiosyncratic
granddame excursions, the differences in Ruby,
to me, are obvious, resulting in a
efficient, effective horror film that
needs to shake its undeserved label of
just another Exorcist
knock-off.
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