Julie Darling (1983)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Directors:

Paul Nicholas
Maurice Smith

Writers:

Paul Nicholas (screenplay)
Paul Nicholas (story)

Genre:

Drama | Thriller | Horror

Tagline:

she's sweet, sixteen, and she simply loves her daddy..... she'll slaughter you if you love him too.

Plot:

A teenage girl whose inaction caused her mother's death arranges a similarly gruesome fate for her stepmother and brother. |

Plot Keywords:

Mother | Stepmother | Mental Illness | Psychopath | Murder

Cast

Anthony Franciosa	...	Harold Wilding
Sybil Danning	...	Susan (also as Sybill Danning)
Isabelle Mejias	...	Julie
Paul Hubbard	...	Weston
Cindy Girling	...	Irene
Reinhard Kolldehoff	...	Lt. Rossmore (as René Kolldehoff)
Michael Tregor	...	Kirby
Natascha Rybakowski	...	Michelle
Benjamin Schmoll	...	Dennis
Elizabeth Paddon	...	Shirley
Benjamin Gordan	...	Salesman (as Ben Gordon)
Terrea Smith	...	Rita
Dwayne McLean	...	Bouncer
Jack Jessop	...	Bartender
Margareta Rance	...	Motel Girl

Also Known As:

Bad Blood
Daughter of Death

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

West Germany | Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Norway:18 (video premiere) | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Berlin, Germany

Company:

Hansa Productions

Surprisingly, this is pretty good

This movie is marketed as a Sybil Danning vehicle even though the erstwhile German-American sex symbol is really only in the last half of the movie, and the really memorable performance is by the unknown Isabella Mejia as a disturbed teenage girl whose infatuation with her father (Antonio Franciosa from "Tenebra")leads her to allow an intruder to rape and murder her own mother. She then blackmails the same guy into trying to do the same to her new stepmother (Sybil Danning). The disturbed girl at one point even locks her young step-brother in an old fridge in the middle of a junkyard.

I saw this film almost back-to-back with another, much more terrible Sybil Danning-starrer "They're Playing with Fire". But while that film was a horrid hybrid of a dumb 80's teen sex comedy and an idiotic 90's erotic thriller (featuring Sybil in the sack with the annoying kid from "Private Lessons", and the once great Andrew Prine flushing his career right down the toilet), this film does the burgeoning erotic thriller genre proud (or as proud as you can do that crappy genre). It has a real, if not necessarily highly believable, plot and pretty decent acting. Other reviewers have compared it to "The Bad Seed", but it is actually better than that stagey, melodramatic flick (which ends with the villain literally being struck down by lightning). I'd put it somewhere between that one and a truly deserving classic like "Pretty Poison" (with Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins).

This movie is certainly no classic, but it doesn't really deserve its current obscure status either. It's probably Danning's best (American)movie. Those who watch it just to see her take her clothes off for the zillionth time won't be disappointed of course, but I think they'll also be pleasantly surprised with the rest of the movie.