11 December 2024
Dear Dead Delilah (1972)
97 min.
Directed by John Farris.
With Agnes Moorehead, Will Geer, Michael Ansara, Dennis Patrick, Patricia Carmichael, Ruth Baker, Robert Gentry, Anne Meacham, Elizabeth Eis, Ann Gibbs.
The great, the indefatigable Agnes Moorhead is Delilah Charles, a southern matriarch who is heir to over half a million bucks bequeathed her by her father.

The old bat invites her family to search for the money which is hidden on her Tennessee estate.

(Guess what happens?) Soon, someone is offing the greedy clan...one by one!

Patricia Carmichael plays a drifter who killed her mother years before with an axe and, having just been released from a psychiatric asylum, is hired as Moorehead's housekeeper, Luddy (!!).

Could the unstable Luddy be responsible for all the horrifying mayhem? Or is the answer more complicated? See for yourself.

One of the lower profile entries in the grand guignol cycle begun in the 1960s, Dear Dead Delilah is bloody fun all the way, boasting some wonderfully gory murders, and hammy acting all around.

One gets the feeling Moorehead had a ball with this, her final film.

Director Farris would later write the novel The Fury, followed by the screenplay for Brian De Palma.

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