Blood

Blood (1974)

** (out of 4)

Downright craziness from director Andy Milligan has Lawrence Talbot working under the last name Orlovsky. He moves his wife, the daughter of Dracula, into a house where he also brings along a wide range of weird people. Inside the house he is growing plants, which will eat humans but there are more dark secrets within these walls.

Milligan has a huge cult following and it's really easy to see why. I've gone through a hand full of the director's films and for the most part I've found them ranking from downright horrid to suicide worthy. With that said, BLOOD is probably the best film I've seen from him because of how crazy and bizarre it is. I'm not sure if the director just figured he'd throw everything into a film and see what would stick but you've got a werewolf, Dracula's daughter, a deformed mutant and of course the man-eating plants.

There are some really kooky moments throughout this thing ranging to some bizarre dialogue where the wife wants to know if her husband still loves her to a werewolf attack that is filmed in such dark conditions that you can't even see what is happening. The melodrama that Mulligan adds to a lot of his horror pictures is something that actually works here because of the fact that it's a werewolf and a vampire. The added supporting of the other freaks is just a good bonus.

The performances really aren't all that bad and the film has a much more professional look that the majority of the director's work. At just under 70 minutes the movie manages to keep your interest throughout.

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.

Blood is another one of Andy Milligan's coma-inducing home-made horrors that tests the patience with its leaden pacing, awful direction, overly verbose script and wooden acting.

Stephen Thrower, author of Nightmare USA, praises Milligan for being a true auteur, with a style that distinguishes his work from other directors. This I cannot deny - Milligan's method of film-making is certainly unique - but everything that Thrower enjoys about his films, I find insufferable. Made on an extremely low budget, Milligan's movies are on a par with amateur dramatics productions, and as much as I appreciate trashy films, they're just too badly made and incredibly dull for me to enjoy.

Milligan certainly gives it his best shot, with a schlocky plot that sees the wolfman's son, Lawrence (Allan Berendt), and his vampire wife Regina (Hope Stansbury), the daughter of Dracula, cultivating carnivorous plants in order to try and cure Regina's malady. Along the way, we also get a bit of incest and some cheesy gore, all of which should add up to a good time, but Milligan's lifeless direction and the dialogue heavy script prevent this from being the entertaining cheeze-fest that it could have been (in the hands of a better film-maker).

2.5/10, rounded down to 2 for the mouse/meat cleaver scene, which I suspect wasn't a special effect.

Andy Milligan's "Blood" has everything:werewolf who happens to be an amateur scientist and his vampire bride,legless butler and his frustrated wife,enormous man-eating plants thirsty for human blood plus some sort of serum from the roots."Blood" is one of the most professional Andy Milligan's horror efforts,but it's still not competent enough.The plot is delightfully absurd,the editing is awful and the location sets are obviously modern.The characters are truly hateful and frustrated and the mood is strangely hypnotic.The acting is surprisingly good but the gore effects are abysmal.Overall,"Blood" is a delirious piece of zero-budget cinema that trash fans everywhere need to see.6 killer plants out of 10.

Set in the 1880's the son of the wolf man moves back to America from Europe with his wife, who happens to be the daughter of Dracula - and three members of staff. They are employed to grow vampire plants in the basement in order to keep the wife Regina alive! Our first glimpse of her is as an old hideous looking hag but a dose from the plants and she is back to looking radiant, In fact there are three attractive women in this movie, one of the few redeeming points. There is a suggestion of incest between one of them and her brother, who pays a brief visit to the house before being killed by Regina, but no sex or nudity, despite the director being a producer of porn. Director Andy Milligan was known for making films on tiny budgets, doing much of the work behind the camera himself., I respect that even if the end result is poor. To be fair this is only the second of his films that I have seen, the other being the truly awful The Ghastly Ones, but as a fan of cult and bad movies I hope to watch more. There can be no denying that this is a very cheap, bad movie. Despite being set in the 1880's a kitchen used in some scenes is obviously from 1973. On the other hand the acting isn't too bad considering it has a cast of largely unknowns (Patti Gual is the only one who appears to have a decent filmography). The script is amusing, lines such as "We'll face tomorrow tomorrow" only adds to the charm. The "special" effects are terrible and for the transformation into werewolf the husband obviously just put a rubber mask on. Great ending, made me chuckle but I don't like spoilers in my reviews so you'll have to see it for yourself! I would only score this movie 2/10 on technical merit but I did find it mildly amusing, hence my 4/10.