The Body Beneath

The Body Beneath (1970)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A family of vampires realize that their bloodline is coming to an end so they must try and get new people in so that their family tradition can continue.

THE BODY BENEATH is one of five films that director Andy Milligan made in Britian and believe it or not this film has some fans out there. Sadly, I am not one of them as I found this to be yet another extremely boring period piece that just didn't have enough working in it to keep me interested. It's strange but the more Milligan films I see the more of them I don't like but at the same time I find myself becoming a fan. That might sound weird because how can you become a fan by watching bad movies? Perhaps it's the fact that no matter which Milligan movie you're watching you can tell that it's a Milligan picture.

I must admit that I somewhat admire the fact that he was making these period looking films on such a small budget. There are all sorts of technical issues with this film and there really aren't any "good" performances. With that said, the film remains mildly entertaining just because of that weird factor that the director always managed to bring to his pictures.

Nonsensical garbage, cheesy costumes and long meaningless dialog. Seriously sucks.

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

To say THE BODY BENEATH is a *GOOD* film might be sugaring things a bit heavily, but it certainly stands as one of the more professional achievements put forward by schlock auteur Andy Milligan.

The evidence of more technically adept workmanship than in many of his other projects is multi-directional within this eerie little vampire opus, though the the gore is noticeably slight this time around. It's a fairly unembellished bloodsucker story with a few novel twists...a vampire-priest calls a meeting of all existing vampires at his Old England lair. During this meeting, he expresses his concern with the rapidly diminishing numbers of their blood-line, and motions that they move, collectively, to the United States.

THE BODY BENEATH looks like a project which Milligan took a bit more seriously than many of his other horror offerings. It's fairly coherent(an amazing achievement for him), and the pacing and exposition actually aren't miles away from the accepted norm. Is this merely a film which denotes the natural progress of it's maker? Is it a sincere attempt to bring something palatable to mainstream horror film fans? Is it a sellout? ...I dunno...all I can say is that it has all the quirky Milligan hallmarks, but it's far removed from the schlock quality of much of his other work.

4/10

In England vampire Algernon Ford (Gavin Read) realizes his bloodline is disappearing. With the help of his silent wife Alicia (Susan Heard), humpback Spool (Berwick Kaler) and three green-faced female vampires he abducts descendant Susan Ford (Jackie Skarvellis) to use her to breed more children. Her boyfriend Paul (Richmond Ross) come looking for her and they try to escape the vampires.

For Andy Milligan this is actually well-made. I saw the restored version by Something Weird. The color is bright and strong, the picture clear and the audio can be heard. Still this doesn't make it a good movie! The plot is more than a little vague, the pacing is VERY slow (even at 82 minutes) and it all leads to really nothing much. To make things worse the makeup on the three female vampires changes from green to blue for no reason! Also there is totally inappropriate music in some scenes that destroy any power they might have had. The vampires don't have any fangs either! On the plus side is the strong color, the incredible dresses the female vampires wore and some pretty good acting (noticably by Skarvellis, Ross and Kaler). Also Ross and Skarvellis are introduced in a pretty lengthy nude sex sequence which is quite erotic. They're both good-looking with nice bodies so there's NO trouble watching it. It adds nothing to the movie but is still one of the best parts. Andy Milligan made all bad movies but this is (arguably) one of his best made. Still, it's just too dull to enjoy. I give it a 2.