The Body Beneath

Please excuse me, but I forgot to put my name tag on my review and I inadvertantly hit the wrong button and ended up with a 10/10 award instead of 1/10. Could you possibly edit the review for me please. Regards. Brian Carruthers.

The Reverand Alexander Algernon Ford (Gavin Reed) is from a long line of vampires, and tries to ensure the continuation of his lineage by abducting distant relative Susan Ford (Jackie Skarvellis), imprisoning her at Carfax Abbey, and using her as breeding stock. Susan's boyfriend Paul Donati (Richmond Ross) isn't about to let that happen without a fight...

Any review that claims that this is a good Andy Milligan film is misleading: it's not good... it's just not his worst.

A vampire film set in London, The Body Beneath sees Milligan taking a stab at classy horror, the director striving for style and atmosphere, but failing to achieve either. His attempts at a dreamlike Jean Rollin-esque ambience is ham-fisted, in particular the scenes featuring a trio of female vampiresses: dressed in garish coloured outfits and with crudely painted faces, they're like an unholy cross between Princess Fiona and Grotbags, unlikely to strike fear in the heart or arouse feelings of carnal desire. Andy simply doesn't have Rollin's flair for cool compositions, gothic eroticism, or ethereal vibes.

Milligan's clumsy direction makes this film a challenge to finish, but the dreariness is compounded by amateurish performances, a diabolical script, and a lack of gore, the only graphic scene of horror being a woman stabbed in the eyes with a pair of chunky knitting needles. The final 15 minutes or so see Milligan's awkward Euro-style surreality taken to extremes, with canted angles aplenty and vaseline on the lens for a weird vampire feast, where the Reverand announces that he and his clan will up sticks from Highgate to California, where he has secured tombs at Forest Lawn. I almost dozed off.

In what is clearly intended to be a poetic, darkly romantic ending, the now vampiric Susan and Paul awaken in Carfax Abbey to find the place empty... it's all theirs, for eternity!

2.5/10, rounded up to 3 for Spool (Berwick Kaler), the hunchbacked henchman, 'cos every film should have one.

Andy Milligan has firmly established himself in my mind as probably the worst horror director of all time. Despite making decent sexploitation flick 'Seeds' in 1968, Milligan has succeeded only in boring me to death with the rest of his crappy oeuvre since then, and this film is certainly no exception. I really don't understand this director at all; it seems like he's trying to make some sort of point as his films all have a similar style, but somehow nothing comes out of them but boredom. Take the plot pace of this film as an example; it's painfully slow and the dialogues are delivered by actors who sound like they're close to death. Quite how Milligan made this film and didn't realise how dull it was is anyone's guess...my only thought on the matter is that perhaps it was the director's intention to torture his audience? The plot supposedly revolves around vampires but for all I care they could have been clowns, postmen, FBI agents or French maids...it doesn't really matter. No film made with as little enthusiasm as this is ever going to be interesting, and after seeing five Milligan films; I doubt I'll be seeing another.

The Body Beneath: Directed by Andy Milligan. N.B. IMDb 82mins. It's difficult not to like a vampire movie with an odd bit of atmosphere filmed and produced by the late Andy Milligan, a director people love to hate. He was well known for producing movies with budgets ranging between $8 and $30, 000 dollars on a regular basis and giving the viewer in this case something creepy and surprisingly well put together. It was shot on location in England and some scenes were filmed in one of the most wildly filmed gothic cemeteries, Highgate Cemetery. An ancient coven of avant-garde vampires are hunting for their last living relatives in order to find a new bloodline in order to continue their existence. Their leader, the Reverend Alexander Algernon Ford, (Gavin Reed ) has the usual streak of cruelty in him but he's also a very different kind of vampire. He needs a blood transfusion before he can walk outside in the sunshine. I never saw a vampire having a blood transfusion before. Our friend the reverend has a lease on Carfax Abbey near Hempstead Heath. Very Draculaish, don't you think? He's accompanied by a trio of ladies, in particular a green painted, very red lipped vampire, looking more like a zombie, who walk about during the day and a sad blonde haired ski hatted mortal hunchback called Spool, (Berwick Taylor), their servant, who all follow their master in this schlock horror feast. Normally in a vampire movie you would expect a lot of blood and gore ,but in this one you get a lot of talk and talk. In fact, that reverend vampire never stops talking , especially when he reveals his final plans. The sepia unfocused green tinted look and its terrible mono sound with its home movie look about it seem to fit well with the severity of the decaying building where most of the filming occurs. The idea of the story has the makings of a good vampire movie but all those painted maidens and poor Spool (rather a strange name) get in the way of the actual story. Finally the movie itself is a bit slow at times but the last fifteen minutes are so crazily weird enough to make it worth watching though it's really for someone who loves a bad movie. bcarruthers-76500

A loosely threaded film - it's "stringy", cheesy and rather lame at best. It's a loosely knitted story and seems to be quickly thrown together to make a fast buck, yet it does get a little bit interesting once you get past the first 45 boring minutes of the film. I would have liked this film better if the first part of the film held my attention better - the last part of this one is pretty good though.

Green vampresses - and not all of their hands are covered in green... sloppy make-up here. The rest of the characters are fine, I just did not like the three green vampresses, rather silly to me. The best character in the entire film is the blood sucking priest.

Andy Milligan wrote and directed this - and for some weird reason I preferred his 'Guru, the Mad Monk' over 'The Body Beneath'. I guess "Guru" had enough cheesiness and strangeness to make me giggle harder.

3/10