Sam Panico Between Pin, Cathy's Curse and this film, what is it about Canadian families in horror films? Beneath a surface of politeness, is everyone this psychotic north of the border?Julie (Isabelle Mejias, Scanners II: The New Order) just wants to play with her pet snake, hunt with her dad and, well, lie in bed with him. But when her mom takes away her snake, she just watches a delivery boy (Paul Hubbard, who played Flash Gordon in the deleted scenes in A Christmas Story) violate her and does nothing to save her life, even though she's holding a gun. It's a horrifying scene, as the man is shocked that he's knocked the woman's head so hard into the ground. He's more upset than Julie when he sees the blood seeping out of the back of her brains. Julie just watches, fascinated yet removed.Julie thinks she has her father (Anthony Franciosa, Tenebre) all to herself, but he soon finds a new wife, the alluring Susan (Sybil Danning!). She brings sex appeal and a stepson. And because she may have been dating daddy before mommy died, maybe Julie's dad is taking advantage of the death she caused.One thing he's definitely taking advantage of is the opportunity to make sweet, sweet love to Susan. He doesn't know that his daughter is watching the entire time and enjoying things way too much, imagining herself in bed with her father! Ugh!And it gets worse and worse, as Julie does things like lock her stepbrother in a refrigerator, nearly killing him, and then brings the rapist who killed her mother back to the house to take out her new mom in a blackmail plot. Yep, she even tells him, "You can rape her all you want!" It all adds up to an ending that totally shocked me that I don't want to cheat you out of.Yep. This is one rough little film, which makes sense when you realize it's by the writer and director of Chained Heat, Paul Nicolas (that movie also has Danning in it, plus Linda Blair, Henry Silva, Tamara Dobson, John Vernon and Stella Stevens for a movie that transcends the WIP genre).It's not for everyone. But Mejias is great in it. And it's the kind of movie that you are amazed that exists and even more astounded as it plays in your DVD player (or streams over YouTube).

merklekranz Isabelle Mejias has the ultimate Daddy fixation, and Stepmothers who get in her way become expendable. The object of her attention, Anthony Franciosa, seems oblivious, clueless, or both, to his Daughter's unnatural behavior. The methods employed by Mejias to torment Stepmothers borders on sadism. While the script is sometimes clever, it also has a brutal amount of time wasted on small talk not relevant to the story. Sybil Danning and Isabelle Mejias give good performances, while Anthony Franciosa is so boring, you will almost cringe. "Julie Darling" is an effective thriller that could have benefited from some script tightening, however the extremely satisfying ending totally redeems any minor faults the film might have. - MERK

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.

The_Void This is an odd little film, as on the surface it would appear to be a rather light thriller; but bubbling underneath is a seedy interior that is more disturbing than most visceral horror! In 1956, Mervyn LeRoy taught cinema audiences that murderous young kids can be terrifying, and here Paul Nicholas has reinvented that lesson for trashy eighties horror - and has almost achieved the same effect. I say only almost more because this idea had already been done to perfection three decades earlier rather than because this film isn't good enough to portray it. Of course, Julie Darling isn't perfect and there are a number of plot holes - but the backbone of the film is strong, and that's what really matters. The film centres on a young girl named Julie. Julie is obsessed with her father, and after her mother is killed because she failed to take action, she finds herself in turmoil when her father takes a new wife and she's lumbered with a stepbrother. Naturally, she decides to take steps to ensure that they suffer a fate similar to her mother's...Isabelle Mejias is most definitely the standout of the film. Her performance is completely cold - just how it should be - and it's because of her that this film makes for such uncomfortable viewing. I'd even go as far as to say that she rivals Patty McCormack on the murderous kid front. She is joined by Italian horror stars Sybil Danning (The red Queen Kills 7 Times, Eye in the Labyrinth) and Anthony Franciosa (Tenebre, Web of the Spider), who are both good in the 'grown up' parts. The best thing about this film for me was the way that the plot plays out. It's partly predictable - we always know that Julie is going to take some sort of action against her stepmother and stepbrother, but the way that she does it is well worked and always entertaining. There's not a lot of blood or nudity in the film; but as mentioned, it's the ideas at work that are important and scenes like the ones that implies incest are major standouts on this front. It all boils down to a furiously entertaining finale, which wraps up all the plot threads and even manages a bit of irony! Overall, this maybe won't appeal to everyone; but I found Julie Darling to be a brilliantly entertaining thriller and I certainly recommend it!