Michael_Elliott Julie Darling (1983) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Rather bizarre film has Anthony Franciosa playing Harold, a man whose daughter Julie (Isabelle Mejias) has a strange love for him. In fact, this love is so strange that the daughter allows her mother to be murdered even though she could have stopped it. A short time later daddy brings home Susan (Sybill Danning) and the two are quickly married, which sets Julie off again.JULIE DARLING isn't the greatest movie that you're going to watch but the cast is rather interesting and I'd argue that there are enough good moments that make it worth sitting through if you like films that are willing to be a tad bit bizarre. This one here seems to want to cross many disturbing lines but the only problem is that the screenplay isn't good enough to fully grab the viewer and take this into this world of a deranged mind.The film is most remembered for some very bizarre scenes where the daughter shows how crazy she is. One is the attack on her mother that she just watched because she's mad at her. The other deals with a fantasy sequence that I won't spoil but there's no question that this wasn't the type of thing you'd normally see in a movie like this. Perhaps the fact that it was shot in West Germany explains why some of this weird stuff got into it. After all, check out THE FAN and see that this might have just been the norm there.I thought the performances were good for the most part, or at least entertaining enough to keep you somewhat attached to the story. Franciosa and Danning make for a good couple and I thought both of them were fine in the film. If you a fan of Danning and her nudity then you'll be happy to know that it's here. As far as Mejias goes, I think she's the weakest out of the performers but I don't blame her. The filmmakers have her playing a really young girl and she just looks too old for the part. Her trying to make her voice seem "young" also didn't help matters.The screenplay offers up an interesting idea and especially with the twists in the second half but there's no question that the film isn't as strong as one would have hoped. Director Paul Nicholas brings no tension out of the material and I do think that the film gets a bit too far-fetched at times. With that said, there's enough weird moments that makes JULIE DARLING worth watching.

Greenzombidog This is something of a strange one. Julie loves her daddy and wants him all to herself so when she witnesses a delivery guy attempting to sexually assault her mother she does nothing to help which ends in her mothers death. Now Julie has daddy all to herself and everything is perfect until her fathers mistress turns up with her son in tow. Julie doesn't want the competition so she goes about trying to get rid of the two usurpers.I went into this hoping it was going to be a killer kid film along the lines of 'Bloody birthday' or 'Mikey' but it's not it's more of a thriller. I found it quite dull and with the exception of a disturbing incestuous daydream on Julies part I'd seen it all before. Some of the dialogue between Julie's father (Anthony Franciosa) and his lady friend (Sybil Danning) is pure cheese. At times I thought I'd started watching a Danielle Steele TV movie. The acting isn't that great even from the stars of the movie add to that some truly ridiculous plot developments and you end up with a film thats quite hard to take seriously.For me the most disappointing thing was that Julie didn't do enough evil stuff. She wasn't a particularly likable character So I never found myself rooting for her. What the film does do well is maintain a creepy unsettling feeling around the father daughter relationship through out the movie. This was the only thing that kept me watching.Julie Darling promises much at the beginning but fails to deliver.

lazarillo 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.

gridoon This extremely obscure thriller (unavailable almost everywhere) is unpleasant and highly unsettling, but at the same time undeniably effective. The premise of an evil child is taken to extremes: teenager Isabelle Mejias (who delivers her lines like a pro and is frighteningly convincing) lies, blackmails, arranges for people to be killed and kills herself with cold, calm ease. The film also has some perverse scenes (let's just say it goes beyond merely suggesting incest) that will turn most people off, but you have to admit that what it does, it does well (and that includes a shock ending that, for once, DOES come as a shock - forget about "Friday The 13TH"). (**1/2)