(1984) 1 Fred Beldin This bizarre vanity project is the work of veteran character actor/tough guy Marc Lawrence, a familiar face to fans of films like The Man With The Golden Gun, Key Largo and dozens more over an eighty year career. Lawrence directed, produced, wrote and starred in Daddy's Deadly Darling, casting his own daughter Toni in the central role of Lynn, the beautiful but demented girl who graduates from patricide to serial murder. Co-star Jesse Vint has alleged that the film wasn't originally intended for public release, but rather as a test run for the Lawrence girl's acting career, footage to use for future auditions, and she is afforded plenty of chances to show off her range. Alternately angry, distraught, confused, seductive and afraid, Ms. Lawrence pushes every emotion into the red in a performance that is appropriately schizophrenic but unlikely to win further work. Perhaps her inability to follow in her hard-working father's footsteps is the reason the picture found its way into the home video market, repeatedly released under a score of different titles (though best known as Pigs, it has also turned up as Horror Farm, The Killer and Lynn Hart, The Strange Love Exorcist). Daddy's Deadly Darling is a confused, turgid tale that even hardcore horror devotees might lose patience with, but the peculiar rhythms that drive the dialogue make the film a unique experience. Lawrence has directed his actors to deliver their lines in an overwrought, repetitious manner, continuously echoing themselves in an apparent effort to communicate intensity ("Don't tell me that! Don't tell me that! Don't lie to me! Don't you lie to me! Don't!"); the effect is unsettlingly hypnotic, though never convincing. Half of the film seems to take place in phone booths, advancing the plot with one-sided conversations in the cheapest, most transparent attempt at exposition. It's a lost cause, since the story is utterly befuddling. Luckily, the frequent shock inserts of snorting pig snouts and severe squealing are effectively disorienting, and the horror scenes are shrill and gory. As a result, Daddy's Deadly Darling might satisfy those seeking the freakish, and it's doubtful that anyone seeking anything else would give it a second glance.

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Daddy's Deadly Darling (1984)

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Daddy's Deadly Darling

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flags

Not For Children

genres

Crime
Horror

category

Feature

directed by

Marc Lawrence

countries

USA

released

1984

run time

83 min.

produced by

Aquarius, D&R, Safia

released by

Aquarius Releasing

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by Cavett Binion synopsis

A knife-happy young lady escapes the asylum (after being imprisoned for disembowelling her lecherous father) and soon joins forces with a sleazy pig farmer with murderous tendencies of his own. Together, the deranged duo manages to keep the piggies supplied with protein-rich vittles, thanks to the chopped-up corpses of unlucky diners from the greasy spoon down the road. This Deliverance-flavored hog pile (known merely as Pigs in many of its home-video incarnations) is practically a one-man show -- written, produced, directed by and starring character actor Marc Lawrence, a familiar face in over a hundred gangster films from the past 50 years. Katherine Ross fans take note: this is not the Katharine Ross of The Graduate but a virtual unknown, whose name was nevertheless top-billed on the video sleeve.

characteristics

- Mental-institution

- Love

- Mental-patient (escaped)

- Murder

- Pig

- Kill

- Investigation

- Dismemberment

- Customer

- Escape

- Hog

- Insane-asylum

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