Bloodthirsty Butchers

BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS is another vapid mess of a film by cult director Andy Milligan, a guy whose films take amateur to a new, low level. This one's as cheap and inept as the rest of his oeuvre and the only interesting thing about it is that it was shot in London for an extra level of authenticity.

Sadly as a film this is a complete mess not to mention a travesty of film-making. It's a near-plot less effort in which various characters converse and romance each other for almost the entire running time. Occasionally some gore scenes are spliced into the mix and these consist of blood with the same consistency as ketchup and some rubber body parts being amputated. There is a plot twist of sorts at the climax but that's the only real incident here.

The entire cast is amateurish and seems to have been picked from a local amateur theatrics group. Certainly they're wooden and awkward in front of the camera although the dialogue they're being asked to deliver is about as mind-numbing as you'd expect. Milligan has cast a couple of attractive young starlets but his level of interest goes no further; they may look the part but as soon as they open their mouths the realism disappears. BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS is another dog of a film from this director and only die-hard bad movie lovers are likely to enjoy it.

The word "boring" gets thrown around way too often when referring to exactly how bad a low-budget Horror movie might, or might not be. I've seen many a B-movie. Many horrible, terribly inept B-movies. Some with a production value of a few hundred bucks. Does ineptness, lousy acting, worse continuity, and embarrassing budgets really make a movie unwatchable? Some would no doubt way yes. Most of which are probably huge fans of The Matrix. Well, I hate big-budget movies, so I say no. Bad can sometimes be funny (Blood Freak), sometimes even mind-blowing (Troll 2), but Boring will always be unwatchable... Hey, kinda like Bloodthirsty Butchers, which reminds me, I'm writing a review for this pile of garbage... Uh, yeah, anyway. This is one of late British director Andy Milligan's many alternatives to sleeping pills. This one is based on Sweeney Todd... Great. Milligan takes a boring story, and still manages to "butcher" it. Hey, that's pretty funny, I said bu... sorry, I keep getting distracted. This isn't exactly easy. On second thought, I'll make it easy. No gore, no scares, no entertainment, just unlikeable, annoying people having incoherent conversations. that's Bloodthirsty Butchers. Oh yeah, and something about a barber killing people, and something or other about meat pies. I don't know, it's not important.

For something a little more rewarding from Andy Milligan, there's always the only other one I've seen, The Rats Are Coming, The Werewolves Are Here. Yeah, you heard me. But hows about we forget about this Milligan guy all together, and pick up something sweet like Sick Girl or Teenape Goes To Camp. Whatever you decide, just know, Bloodthirsty Butchers sucks, possibly even more than any other version of this already lackluster tale. And that, B-movie fans, is really saying something. 2/10

Ooof! The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (John Miranda) lets you know his business right away as he cuts a man's throat in the first three minutes (he pulls a towel over the victim's face and the guy reacts as if he is being pulled back, despite his attacker letting go at one point). Sweeney pockets the valuables and the rest goes into the meat pies of Mrs. Lovett (Jane Hilary). Things get complicated when good girl shop worker Johanna (Annabella Wood) wonders where her boyfriend disappeared to. Good God! Only Andy Milligan could drag down the exploitation material found in the Todd story. You know what the other adaptations of that Penny Dreadful were missing? How about looooong scenes of people talking and talking and talking. To be fair, there is about a minute of pretty good stuff in here, mostly coming from some meat cleaver attacks. Milligan recreates the 19th century about as well as I can waltz and I'm pretty sure one scene has a shot of a modern era heater in the back and light switches. Miranda's Sweeney looks like a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Bowzer from Sha Na Na, but he is, surprisingly, a decent actor. The rest of the cast is there, local theater English accents and all. Look for "fortnight" to be said twice within the first ten minutes.

This is awful, you just could't believe it. The score is annoying, the filming is bad, for example, sometimes you see the shadow of the cameraman appearing on some actors faces. The quality of the movie is ultra bad, seems like it was made in the 20ies. It's terrible. There is a bit of blood in the beginning and through the movie but always too dark filmed. No gore no effects. The director made some better one like Blood Rites. But out there there is a following of the man, 'cause searching to find this cheap flick isn't that hard but you have to pay hard earned cash for it. Surely this will get in my top ten of worst horrormovies ever, I don't know if I would call it horror. There is too much talking, you will get bloodthirsty after watching it

What a terrible movie this was! I made it about 50 minutes into it and started skipping chapters until the end. The plot is nothing special, and the dialog from the movie deviates from the main story so much that your head will explode out of rage. Many useless minutes wasted just listening to characters jabber on about something irrelevant to the plot, AND/OR something that could said in a shorter amount of time. The camera work is shaky, and grainy. It seemed Mr. Milligan needed to take his finger off of the zoom button! I noticed also that at some points during this movie it seemed that Andy was having seizures, and would uncontrollably shake the camera. The splices between scenes were jumpy and didn't flow. The murder scenes were nothing special - incredibly, and laughably fake. Barely any gore, as the title suggests. This movie runs about 1 hour 20 minutes and the murder scenes take up about 1 minute TOTAL of the whole movie - if that. What a wretched piece of garbage this movie was. Andy Milligan is in fact probably one of the worst directors to plague mankind with his talentless directing, and camera-work. Usually, I can make it through really bad horror movies, and laugh about it later. BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS, however, I can't. I am just angry I wasted an hour and a half of my life watching this (what I wouldn't do to gain it back). Take my suggestion, and DO NOT see this movie unless you plan on falling asleep. TERRIBLE.