A Child's Garden of Fedoras

Our Halloween Film Festival has continued with HORROR OF DRACULA and LEMORA: A CHILD'S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL. Like all children's tales, LEMORA begins with a gangster in a fedora and pinstripe suit gunning down his adulterous wife and her lover. I seem to scoff at LEMORA! Indeed it was a cheap, early 70s artifact with a Hawthorne-style preacher who might have been a leading man if he weren't so cross-eyed. But, like everything, it turned out to be far more sophisticated than its surface would suggest, with echoes of NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, "Carmilla," ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, a touch of Lovecraft, maybe even Cocteau... but mostly its own weird thing. I'm sorry I doubted you, Lemora! Pictured, Lemora.