Lemora

During the Prohibition era in the Southern United States, the devout 13-year-old Lila Lee is summoned by letter to visit her injured father, a gangster, before he dies. She runs away from the Reverend, who has raised her and in whose church she has become well known as a singer, though her extraordinary beauty is beginning to attract attention as well. Lila boards a bus to her father's purported location, the strange town of Astaroth. At the bus station, the ticket salesman informs Lila that the people there are strange, and that visitors rarely return from the town. That night, the bus Lila is riding, in which she is the only passenger, is attacked by a band of mindless vampires as it approaches the woods surrounding Astaroth. The vampires kill the bus driver, and Lila crashes the bus while attempting to flee. She is attacked by the creatures, but rescued by a mysterious woman named Lemora.

When she regains consciousness, Lila finds herself locked in a cottage outside a farmhouse, where she is tended to by Solange, an elderly hag-like woman who feeds her. Lila attacks Solange and escapes the cottage, fleeing to the farmhouse where she hides in a crawlspace. She hears her father's voice from inside the home, but before she can find him, Lila is confronted by Lemora, who informs her she cannot see her father under she is immune to his "disease." Lila finds that Lemora boards numerous other children in her home, all of whom, like her, are pallid and sickly in appearance.

It becomes evident that Lemora highly covets Lila, bathing her and attempting to soothe her. While alone, Lila is violently attacked by her father, who appears severely mutated. He attacks Solange, killing her, before Lemora chases him away with a torch. Lemora explains that some of the townspeople of Astaroth have become sick, and refers to an impending ceremony in which Lila will participate. After reading a diary of a child in Lemora's home, she soon realizes the truth: Lemora is a vampire who feeds upon children and is holding her father captive. She is also the unofficial queen of the Astaroth vampires, and plans to turn Lila into one of her own.

While trying to escape, Lila embarks on a nighttime journey through the town of Astaroth, witnessing the two types of vampires: one faction is like Lemora herself, relatively human in behavior and appearance, while the others are mutated or perhaps regressed, far more feral in behavior and monstrous in form; and the two groups are at war. Meanwhile, the Reverend, who is seeking Lila, manages to retrace her steps.

After a climactic battle which leaves most of the vampires dead, Lila is forced to kill her own father, who has become one of the degenerates. As she weeps over his corpse, Lemora approaches her and offers her comfort by her vampire's kiss. When the Reverend shows up not long after, he finds Lila willing, even eager to kiss him. He resists at first, then he gives in. That is when she drives her fangs into his throat and drains his blood, watched over by a smiling Lemora.

In the last scene, Lemora is seen singing before her church congregation.

Lemora had its premiere in Claremont, California on April 30, 1973 at the Garrison Theater on the Scripps College campus.[1] The audience response at this screening was allegedly so poor that Fern and Blackburn quickly sought to sell the film and recoup part of the money spent to produce it.[3] It was subsequently released in 1974 after being purchased by Media Cinema Group, who cut the film from 118 minutes to 80 minutes.[3] It received screenings through Media Cinema Group at drive-in theaters and local cinemas in the United States, opening in December 1974.[2]

• List of American films of 1975
• Vampire film

• Flynn, John L. (1992). Cinematic Vampires: The Living Dead on Film and Television, from Devil's Castle (1896) to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-899-50659-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Hardy, Phil, ed. (1995). The Overlook Film Encyclopedia. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press. ISBN 978-0-879-51624-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Maltin, Leonard (2013). Leonard Maltin's 2014 Movie Guide. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-1-101-60955-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Hardy, Phil; Milne, Tom (1996). The Aurum Film Encyclopedia of Horror (Second ed.). London: Aurum Press. ISBN 978-1-854-10384-0.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Smith, Gary A. (2017). Vampire Films of the 1970s: Dracula to Blacula and Every Fang Between. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-1-476-62559-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural at AllMovie
• Lemora at IMDb
• Lemora at Metacritic