There’s something sad, strange, and sensually dreamlike about Lemora—a film that drifts through the haunted backroads of American morality like a gothic lullaby laced with absinthe and rot. And at the center of this moody nightmare is Rainbeaux Smith, casting a delicate, ethereal glow like a candle flickering in a crypt.
Rainbeaux Smith: The Virgin, the Vessel, the Victory
Long before she became a cult icon of the ’70s exploitation scene, Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith arrived fully formed in Lemora as Lila Lee, a devout 13-year-old whose beauty and innocence become the battleground between light and something much older and hungrier. Smith was only 17 during filming, but there’s an uncanny quality to her performance that elevates the film’s B-movie bones into something almost spiritual.
Lila Lee’s transformation—from wide-eyed church singer to immortal blood-sister of the damned—isn’t just a descent into darkness; it’s an accidental act of empowerment. She starts the film tightly corseted by religion and ends it literally draining the lifeblood from her own pastor. Rainbeaux’s performance captures this transformation with disarming honesty—she plays Lila as someone whose purity makes her dangerous, not fragile.
A Southern Gothic Fairy Tale in a Coffin-Lined Key
Lemora plays like Alice in Wonderland by way of Poe and Bergman. The story is simple: a young girl sets out to reunite with her gangster father and ends up in a surreal netherworld filled with decaying towns, ghoulish vampires, and a lesbian seductress named Lemora (Lesley Taplin, haunting and regal). But the real horror isn’t in the bloodletting—it’s in the mood, the silence, the lingering camera shots of dead-eyed children and candlelit rituals.
The production’s low budget actually works in its favor, giving everything a grainy, midnight-movie texture. The locations—crumbling manors, swampy woods, and wood-panelled churches—feel both specific and untethered from time. The film could be set in 1923, 1973, or nowhere at all.
Taboo, Transgression, and the Sweet Taste of Blasphemy
Critics (particularly the Catholic Legion of Decency) saw the film as anti-Christian, and it’s easy to see why. The Reverend (played by co-writer/director Richard Blackburn) is a barely restrained predator disguised in a cassock, while Lemora is seductive but strangely nurturing. The film flips the usual vampire story: here, the monster is alluring, and salvation is a prison.
There’s eroticism to the way Lemora bathes Lila, touches her, speaks to her—not exploitative, but mythic, like Persephone being wooed by Hades. It’s a coming-of-age story by way of ritual bloodletting and sexual awakening, but done with a surprisingly light touch. Lemora doesn’t devour Lila. She remakes her.
Rainbeaux’s Light in the Shadows
What truly makes Lemora stand out, however, is Smith’s performance. With her pale skin, solemn eyes, and choir-girl voice, she embodies the last breath of innocence before it curdles into something monstrous. She never oversells it, never hams it up—even as she’s surrounded by actors chewing scenery like vampires chewing jugulars. There’s grace in her stillness, terror in her silence.
Her final transformation into a vampire—marked not by fangs and snarls, but by a blood-drenched kiss and a hymn sung to a congregation of the damned—is one of the most haunting conclusions in low-budget horror. You don’t forget it. You don’t want to.
Final Thoughts: A Vampire Film for Poets, Outsiders, and Rain-Soaked Souls
Lemora is not a film for everyone. It’s slow, unevenly acted, and so draped in atmosphere it occasionally forgets to move. But it’s also eerie, mournful, and oddly beautiful—like a dusty hymnal with blood on the pages.
And Rainbeaux Smith? She’s the reason the film works. Her performance is the needle through the skin, the last candle in a church about to be swallowed by dusk. For anyone who’s ever loved Carnival of Souls, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, or the strange poetry of ’70s outsider cinema—this is essential viewing.
