A young girl travels alone by night bus into a town of shadows and feral children, chasing a letter that may be a trap. The journey takes her further from God than any sermon warned her about.

LEMORA: A CHILD’S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL (1973) follows Lila Lee, played by Cheryl Smith, a girl raised by her minister guardian, played by director Richard Blackburn. Her father, a bank robber and wife killer, is a fugitive from the police. When a letter arrives claiming he’s dying and wants to see her, Lila sneaks away to the town of Astaroth. There the sinister Lemora, played by Lesley Gilb Taplin, holds court over a population turning into something no longer human.

Blackburn, an actor and writer turned first-time director, co-produced the film with Robert Fern on a low budget. California locations stand in for a decayed, nameless South. The result draws on vampire mythology and Southern Gothic religious dread, filtered through a coming-of-age story that treats adolescence as a kind of haunting.

Given a PG rating despite its disturbing content, the film struggled to find distribution and audiences on release. It has since earned a reputation as one of American horror’s strangest and most hallucinatory visions of innocence corrupted.