Let's be realistic.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fantastic!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Wow, this is creepy on so many levels I don't know where to begin. So let's begin with the biggie - young Julie (Isabel Mejias) has this serious Daddy (Tony Franciosa) fixation that goes all the way to fantasizing what a sexual encounter with her father might be like. Pretty twisted. This after seeing her mother raped and killed by a delivery man and actually getting some sick kind of enjoyment out of it. So what does she do but contact the same guy to take out her new stepmother (Sybil Danning) to make it a double header. Now I'm wondering who the worse character is, Julie or killer Weston (Paul Hubbard), because they're both now making a pact with the devil that's bound to end very, very badly.You know, I'm glad I'm nearly at the end of my Mill Creek Mystery Collection of two hundred fifty films because this isn't the kind of flick I'd normally seek out. However I decided I'd watch and review each one some time ago and I hate to go back on a promise to myself. I'll be glad when I can just cruise the cable channels for something more suitable or order up recommendations from other reviewers here from my local library.Anyway, back to Julie. Somehow I didn't like the kid right from the start. Part of that could have been the way the character was set up from the beginning, never liking her mother but we don't know why (except for the infatuation with the old man). I really don't want to believe there might be somebody like that out there but these story ideas come from somewhere. But since she was such a b---- on wheels, my gut reaction when Sybil Danning made the comeback for the finale was you go, girl! Good recovery too when Franciosa shows up and she goes with "She saved my life". That pretty much made the whole convoluted story worthwhile.

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.

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.

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!