Julie Darling (1983)

Please don't spend money on this.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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).

I've been searching and waiting to see "Julie Darling" for quite a very long time, and now that I finally watched, I'm both pleased and upset. Pleased because it's one of the most intense and disturbing 80's thrillers I've seen in a very long time, and upset because it undeservedly became obscure and forgotten amidst the overflow of inferior slasher pictures in that same decade. "Julie Darling" can more or less be categorized as a so-called Bad Seed effort, or – in other words – (horror) movies dealing with evil, psychopathic and murderous children. But this awesome little gem qualifies as a lot more than just that as well. It's a psychological "family" drama with a thoroughly uncanny atmosphere, numerous controversial undertones and a handful of very efficient shock moments. Julie Wilding is a cherubic and well- educated adolescent girl with a rather unhealthy affection for her daddy. Her mother notices Julie's rivalry and possessive behavior and wants to send her to a boarding school. But then her mother gets raped and killed by the grocery delivery boy, and even though Julie witnesses the whole thing from atop of the stairs, she doesn't move a muscle. Just when Julie thinks to have her daddy all for herself, he reveals that he's been having a secret affair for many years and wants to raise a new family with the lovely Susan and her little son. Rather than to get her own hands dirty, Julie tracks down her mother's murderer and blackmails him into doing the same with her new step family. She even joyously adds the words "Oh, and you can rape her all you want…". If Sigmund Freud would have ever written a movie script, the result would look a lot like "Julie Darling". The film is literally stuffed with psychosexual references and disputatious elements, like incestuous, intercourse with minors and matricide. In spite of its obscure status, "Julie Darling" features quite a few famous (in the cult/horror business, at least) names. Writer/director Paul Nicolas was also responsible for the greatest Women in Prison exploitation flick ever made, namely "Chained Heat" released that same wondrous year 1983. Anthony Franciosa, known from Dario Argento's giallo classic "Tenebre" is excellent as the unsuspecting (?) father and many horror fanatics will be super enthusiast to see Sybil Danning stars as the lovely stepmom. The one true diva of the film, however, is young Isabelle Mejias as Julie. I always thought that Patty McCormack ("The Bad Seed" 1956) was the most devilish child star, but she's a church choir girl in comparison to Isabelle Mejias. She depicts a truly frightening, cold-hearted and malignant teenage psycho.

Crackerjack thriller here, a deeply twisted film about a budding 12 year old psychopath's obsession with her own father and willingness to kill off anyone who comes between them. Tony Franciosa is good as the befuddled, utterly clueless father, Sybil Danning even better as the sex maven MILF single parent whom he is in love with, and the show is completely stolen by Isabelle Mejias as young Julie.One thing I kept wondering about through the film: Does Julie know that her feelings for her father are twisted, and that her actions are wrong if not outright evil? The film scores points by not letting the viewer find out whether she actually knows right from wrong. Hitchcock would have been impressed by the plotting, especially the killing of a young child by a sex murderer who is rewarded for playing a part in young Julie's scheme by being set up for his own execution. The ending is also inevitable, or rather the only ending that was possible given the material. Anything else would have been a cop-out, and there is a knowing glint in someone's eye when it's all over to suggest that they didn't have a problem with how everything worked out.One aspect of the film that's very interesting is the early 1980s polyester culture in which the film is set, which upon further research proves to be both Toronto, Canada and then West Berlin, Germany, seamlessly edited together into a strange, unwelcoming urban hell. Everything looks cold (the film is set in the winter), unhealthy (at one point a character stops by a Burger King to scarf down a Whopper on the run), impersonal (a key scene is set in a crowded shopping mall) and hopelessly tacky (the stairwell in Franciosa's mansion is festooned with a mass of framed pictures arranged in a way that makes them impossible to be seen individually) in a way that feels unique to the time period.You also couldn't make this movie today. It's too sick, twisted, amoral and politically incorrect. Another commenter nails it perfectly when referring to the film as "Bratsploitation", and modern viewers will be hard pressed to equate the film with anything later than THE GOOD SON, which lacks the psycho-sexual tension that raises JULIE DARLING's quease level beyond mere camp. Recommended as a double bill with William Grefe's IMPULSE with William Shatner. Creepy.8/10

This movie gave me the creeps. Why didn't the father realize how messed up his daughter was? I don't want to watch this movie ever again. I love horror movies, but not when they actually make me feel uncomfortable. Don't see it unless you are doing some kind of report on Freud.