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.

Well, here's my first Andy Milligan film, and I'm feeling fairly indifferent about it, even though I fully knew what to expect. A strange family move into a new home. The husband is some sort of doctor working on various serums from carnivorous plants. His wife has an aversion to sunlight and needs constant injections. One of their servants is used as a blood bank to feed the plants and is all messed up due to this, and of the other two servants, one has no legs and the other is well on the way to having no legs due to some horrible disease.

The doctor meets his solicitor who's up to something dodgy with his dead father's estate, and also he falls in love with the solicitor's secretary. All this leads to, mainly, is people standing around in period costumes, talking endlessly. This film was under an hour long and I still had to watch it over two nights just to keep my attention.

There's werewolves, vampires, man-eating plants, people getting axed through the head, but everything to me seemed a bit flat and boring. Also, it looked like someone killed a mouse for real at one point – that's no good, is it? I'm not writing Milligan off yet – I've got Guru the Mad Monk to watch too – I'll give that a chance soon.

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.

How can someone call themselves a fan of cult horror movies like "The Blob" and the various "Godzilla" flicks, and call this movie "cheap trash. "Blood" is basically a low budget love letter to other low budget cheapies, which are also considered classics today, movies like "The Wolfman" and "Satan's Cheerleaders," are cult favorites. Maverick director Andy Milligan has taken his love for Dracula and The Wolf man, and perhaps the cult tv show "Dark Shadows," which this movie has a lot of similarities to, and created this stylish horror opus. . A cursed family arrives from an obscure part of Eastern Europe, and holes up in a large, gothic home in Staten Island, New York. They harbor a hideous secret, as the lady of the house has a rare disease in which she needs a constant supply of blood to keep her alive. Without her "medicine," she turns into a monstrous creature. The gore is brief, but when it's on screen it can be quite nasty, Fortunately Milligan doesn't let his camera linger on those gore shots for more than a couple seconds. Being a period piece, we get some lovely, albeit cheap 1930's era costumes and hairstyles. Before Milligan turned to horror, he directed a collection of erotic, sometimes even pornographic films, which he was surprisingly good at making. His films are dialog-heavy, but the fact that the dialog is so zany and bizarre, becomes a good thing. If you have patience, "Blood" is considered one of the director's more ambitious works, with it's costumes and music score. It also scores high marks on weirdness, and most importantly, "Blood" is one of the more atmospheric horror movies to come out of the 70's. But it's not recommended for cinema snobs, self-proclaimed critics who are going to rip something apart because of some imperfection. With films like this, the flaws sometimes become their greatest asset. Presently I am working through Milligan's body of work, at least the films that weren't lost due to the neglect of his careless family, and admittedly, there are some bad titles. There are also some real gems among them, the absolute best being "Fleshpot On 42nd Street," which was one of the director's non-horror efforts. I recommend "Blood" to fans of true cult horror movies.

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.