Blood (1973)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Powerful

Must See Movie...

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

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.

Though one of the more notable directors to come from Minnesota, you will not very often hear Andy Milligan mentioned in the same breath as the Coen brothers. In his book Danse Macabre, Stephen King refers to Milligan's first horror film, The Ghastly Ones (1968), as "the work of morons with cameras," and furthermore that a film of that sort is the "staged equivalent of...'snuff' movies." In truth it is difficult to defend Milligan's work on artistic and aesthetic grounds. The inept cinematography makes his grotesque horror stories look like home movies gone horribly wrong. Simple concepts like lighting and framing are alien to Milligan, whose films can feature whole sequences of confused darkness. The chief pleasure for any cineaste checking out Milligan's work might then be to laugh at its failings; in other words, to enjoy it as "so bad it's good" cinema. Being a pretentious asshole, though, I believe that this attitude can often arise from an unwillingness to engage with a film on its own terms. More specifically, it seems to be that traditionally "bad" cinema is usually dismissed for its failure to correspond with one's fixed idea of what a film (or a specific genre, in this case horror) should be. If someone believes these films are bad, their opinion is certainly valid. I'm merely suggesting that the opposite opinion is equally valid, and that traditionally "bad" films can offer a legitimate alternative to classically "good" cinema.With that rambling intro out of the way, I will attempt to defend my own enthusiasm for what I've seen of Milligan's work. Blood is only my second Milligan viewing after my positive experience with The Ghastly Ones. This film, though more technically proficient than that earlier work, is still light years away from the studio gloss we're accustomed to (or even from the threadbare stylistics of Jess Franco). I find Milligan's naiveté behind the camera to be fascinating and educational, in this respect. Completely ignorant of proper filming and editing conventions, it's as if he is forced to invent his own concept of cinema. In reality he was apparently inspired by the avant-garde films of Andy Warhol, so his ignorance may have been willful. If I'm also to be frank, I'd much rather watch a shoddily filmed story of vampires, werewolves, and family dysfunction than the more respected film experiments of Warhol.In the case of both Milligan films I've watched, the chief pleasure is actually derived from the screenplay. Milligan was both a misogynist and misanthropist, and his real-life mean streak serves as the lifeblood of his stories. If there is a married couple in Andy Milligan's work, you can be sure that they despise and/or abuse each other. If they're happily married, they won't remain that way for long. The wife and husband in this film (Dracula's daughter, Regina, and Dr. Lawrence Orlofski, a werewolf) maintain a strained relationship. Regina is convinced that Lawrence is in love with his assistant, Carrie. She says that she loves him, and pleads with him to make love to her. After he refuses, she tells him to go to hell. His deadpan response: "We're there already." In these tales of dysfunctional relationships, the Gothic trappings (a violent werewolf attack, gory hatchet murders, and giant carnivorous plants) are mere window-dressing. Milligan's real interest lies in espousing his hateful world view. These horrific elements mostly serve to make the films salable.At a running time of 57 minutes, Blood hardly has time to overstay its welcome, though many bored internet reviewers would disagree with me. I enjoyed the darkly humorous barbs traded by the film's loathsome cast of characters. The shoddy make-up and set dressing also lend the film a unique, handmade charm, as if you're watching an elaborate home movie made by your deeply disturbed grandpa. For instance, the film is set in the late 1800's, yet the protagonist's house (Milligan's own in real life) clearly has modern plumbing and light fixtures. The actors perform their hateful dialogue with such relish, though, that you can easily forgive these oversights. Likewise, many of these roles are played with such deliberate camp that sophisticated make-up jobs would almost feel wrong.There is plenty else to chew on here, such as the fact that Dr. Orlofski (is this a reference to Franco's Dr. Orlof?) is really named Talbot (i.e. Lawrence Talbot, Universal's tragic wolf man); the hierarchy of abuse in the Orlofski household; and just how the hell those carnivorous plants benefited Regina in any way (they supposedly help to treat her vampirism). Since I'm not getting paid to write this I'll leave those thoughts for another day.

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.

I will admit it. I actually have sat thru Andy Milligan movies. And of all his movies (or those I have sat thru), Blood will remain his classic. Poor special effects, some lame acting, and a very short running time- sixty minutes I believe, make this a rare thriller to watch. One thing that was interesting was whenever something wrong happened; the maid and butler always blamed the mishap on Carlotta their near imbecilic assistant. One of the shocking things I acknowledge about Milligan and his writing is he is so mean. For example the dialog about how Carlotta came to be. The maid and butler mention briefly, "They adopted Carlotta. She was such a bright child. Then they started taking blood from her, and took a bit too much which caused a lack of oxygen to her brain". How disgusting. Oh well, unless you get this title through bootleg land, you will never see one of Milligan's more elaborate thrillers. The IMDb acknowledges this film's running time as seventy-four minutes. The version I saw at the theaters was roughly sixty minutes. I have one of those bootlegs which run sixty minutes. Is there any truth that there is a version with roughly fourteen minutes which consists of vampire bats and rabid townspeople?