Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

TeenzTen An action-packed slog

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Leofwine_draca A perversely entertaining attempt at a Gothic horror yarn, filled with Universal-style old-fashioned monsters and laced with graphic gore to appeal to the grue-hungry '70s crowd, BLOOD is yet another in a long line of Gothic chillers to be directed by trash auteur Andy Milligan. Milligan's films were always of the lowest budget and BLOOD, like most of them, contains long passages of dialogue and inactivity and is technically rough around the edges, with atrocious editing in places. Yet Milligan puts a quality into his films which makes them oddly appealing. I can't quite put my finger on it yet, but here he somehow injects the same vibe as Paul Naschy did into his own Gothic horror movies, a surprising watchability factor considering the limitations of the budget and actors.BLOOD is very much an entertaining film in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way. Although it does drag in places with long stretches of dialogue, earnest performers and a short running time go a long way into making it palatable. Most of the characters are one-dimensional clichés and the unknown actors put their all into the performances, especially the women playing the old hag (with boot polish dirt) and the other playing the crazed Carlotta. Allan Berendt has a definite resemblance to Bela Lugosi and takes the lead of the commanding Doctor Orlovsky, who spends his time caring for his sick wife by giving her a special serum, and romancing the beautiful young girls he finds in his life. Atmosphere and music are adequate, and the film makes a valiant attempt at a period setting that very nearly comes across.However, Milligan, being a horror film director, concentrates on giving the gore-seeking audience what they want by focusing on bodily deformity and mutilation. The opening sequence shows the hideously gruesome face of a diseased old hag and is wonderfully spine-shuddering stuff. Throughout the next hour and ten minutes, numerous victims are led into the film to be gorily dispatched in unconvincing but inventive ways. All very tacky, but oddly appealing footage.You really get your money's worth from the monsters and creations in this film. Not only is the chief character Lawrence Talbot (as in Lon Chaney Jr) a cheesy werewolf who occasionally goes on the rampage, but he's married to Dracula's daughter who definitely hasn't given up her bloodsucking ways. A match made in Hell if ever there was one. The double-monster content means that a titanic showdown is on the way and it doesn't disappoint on that front, although the climatic battle is a little shorter than I had hoped for but certainly fiery enough. Other fun elements to add to the horror brew include a bunch of carnivorous plants living in the cellar, who continuously make weirdo noises and suck people's legs off. Then we have a servant whose legs have been amputated and who walks around on his knee stumps and another serving girl whose leg has turned into a deformed mass of shapeless putty - pretty outrageous. Although BLOOD will never win any awards for originality or skill, Milligan's creativity and the indefinable quality the film possesses makes it worth viewing.

lonchaney20 Though one of the more notable directors to come from Minnesota, you will not very often hear Andy Milligan mentioned in the same breath as the Coen brothers. In his book Danse Macabre, Stephen King refers to Milligan's first horror film, The Ghastly Ones (1968), as "the work of morons with cameras," and furthermore that a film of that sort is the "staged equivalent of...'snuff' movies." In truth it is difficult to defend Milligan's work on artistic and aesthetic grounds. The inept cinematography makes his grotesque horror stories look like home movies gone horribly wrong. Simple concepts like lighting and framing are alien to Milligan, whose films can feature whole sequences of confused darkness. The chief pleasure for any cineaste checking out Milligan's work might then be to laugh at its failings; in other words, to enjoy it as "so bad it's good" cinema. Being a pretentious asshole, though, I believe that this attitude can often arise from an unwillingness to engage with a film on its own terms. More specifically, it seems to be that traditionally "bad" cinema is usually dismissed for its failure to correspond with one's fixed idea of what a film (or a specific genre, in this case horror) should be. If someone believes these films are bad, their opinion is certainly valid. I'm merely suggesting that the opposite opinion is equally valid, and that traditionally "bad" films can offer a legitimate alternative to classically "good" cinema.With that rambling intro out of the way, I will attempt to defend my own enthusiasm for what I've seen of Milligan's work. Blood is only my second Milligan viewing after my positive experience with The Ghastly Ones. This film, though more technically proficient than that earlier work, is still light years away from the studio gloss we're accustomed to (or even from the threadbare stylistics of Jess Franco). I find Milligan's naiveté behind the camera to be fascinating and educational, in this respect. Completely ignorant of proper filming and editing conventions, it's as if he is forced to invent his own concept of cinema. In reality he was apparently inspired by the avant-garde films of Andy Warhol, so his ignorance may have been willful. If I'm also to be frank, I'd much rather watch a shoddily filmed story of vampires, werewolves, and family dysfunction than the more respected film experiments of Warhol.In the case of both Milligan films I've watched, the chief pleasure is actually derived from the screenplay. Milligan was both a misogynist and misanthropist, and his real-life mean streak serves as the lifeblood of his stories. If there is a married couple in Andy Milligan's work, you can be sure that they despise and/or abuse each other. If they're happily married, they won't remain that way for long. The wife and husband in this film (Dracula's daughter, Regina, and Dr. Lawrence Orlofski, a werewolf) maintain a strained relationship. Regina is convinced that Lawrence is in love with his assistant, Carrie. She says that she loves him, and pleads with him to make love to her. After he refuses, she tells him to go to hell. His deadpan response: "We're there already." In these tales of dysfunctional relationships, the Gothic trappings (a violent werewolf attack, gory hatchet murders, and giant carnivorous plants) are mere window-dressing. Milligan's real interest lies in espousing his hateful world view. These horrific elements mostly serve to make the films salable.At a running time of 57 minutes, Blood hardly has time to overstay its welcome, though many bored internet reviewers would disagree with me. I enjoyed the darkly humorous barbs traded by the film's loathsome cast of characters. The shoddy make-up and set dressing also lend the film a unique, handmade charm, as if you're watching an elaborate home movie made by your deeply disturbed grandpa. For instance, the film is set in the late 1800's, yet the protagonist's house (Milligan's own in real life) clearly has modern plumbing and light fixtures. The actors perform their hateful dialogue with such relish, though, that you can easily forgive these oversights. Likewise, many of these roles are played with such deliberate camp that sophisticated make-up jobs would almost feel wrong.There is plenty else to chew on here, such as the fact that Dr. Orlofski (is this a reference to Franco's Dr. Orlof?) is really named Talbot (i.e. Lawrence Talbot, Universal's tragic wolf man); the hierarchy of abuse in the Orlofski household; and just how the hell those carnivorous plants benefited Regina in any way (they supposedly help to treat her vampirism). Since I'm not getting paid to write this I'll leave those thoughts for another day.

trashgang Andy Milligan, a maker of extreme low budget horror flicks. Most of them are boring but even stranger most of them aren't available. To find an movie by Milligan you really have to search hard, the only two you will find easy are The Ghastly Ones (Blood Rites) and The Rats Are Coming.... All his other features are in the public domain. So it's for the real geeks out there to find them. if you have seen the two ones mentioned earlier then you will know what to get from Milligan. A low budget movie with almost no acting whatsoever. The effects are not really effects, no transformation into a wolfman, the teeth from Dracula's wife are there from one shot to another. But still, it is watchable because it only clocks in into 1 hour. Now IMDb stated it as 74 minutes but so far I haven't found someone who had that version, so for me there's only this version. Most of he actors only played in this flick or in other Milligan movies, just one has made it, Patricia Gaul. Her biggest acting was in Silverado. This was her second feature. again, if you are collecting grindhouse flicks then you should add it into your collection.

aronaamora This is one of Milligan's better Gothic style horror dramas. It's a lot in the style of THE RATS ARE COMING!THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! But not as dull. The acting is much better than in most of his films and the camera work is not bad.The film does have two strikes against it. 1)When the wolf man turns into a werewolf he is wearing a silly looking werewolf mask and 2)The action scenes seem to being missing something as if something was cut out. This is how most of Milligan's films seem to be edited though so I can't tell if I was watching a censored print or if it was edited that way.