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.
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HumanoidOfFlesh15 September 2012
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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. -
Falconeer17 July 2019How 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.
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trashgang9 March 2010Andy 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.
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Michael_Elliott4 September 2015Blood (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. -
Bezenby4 June 2014Well, 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. -
Stevieboy66627 November 2020Set 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.
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Leofwine_draca5 December 2015A perversely entertaining attempt at a Gothic horror yarn, filled with Universal-style old-fashioned monsters and laced with graphic gore to appeal to the grue-hungry '70s crowd, BLOOD is yet another in a long line of Gothic chillers to be directed by trash auteur Andy Milligan. Milligan's films were always of the lowest budget and BLOOD, like most of them, contains long passages of dialogue and inactivity and is technically rough around the edges, with atrocious editing in places. Yet Milligan puts a quality into his films which makes them oddly appealing. I can't quite put my finger on it yet, but here he somehow injects the same vibe as Paul Naschy did into his own Gothic horror movies, a surprising watchability factor considering the limitations of the budget and actors.
BLOOD is very much an entertaining film in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way. Although it does drag in places with long stretches of dialogue, earnest performers and a short running time go a long way into making it palatable. Most of the characters are one-dimensional clichés and the unknown actors put their all into the performances, especially the women playing the old hag (with boot polish dirt) and the other playing the crazed Carlotta. Allan Berendt has a definite resemblance to Bela Lugosi and takes the lead of the commanding Doctor Orlovsky, who spends his time caring for his sick wife by giving her a special serum, and romancing the beautiful young girls he finds in his life. Atmosphere and music are adequate, and the film makes a valiant attempt at a period setting that very nearly comes across.
However, Milligan, being a horror film director, concentrates on giving the gore-seeking audience what they want by focusing on bodily deformity and mutilation. The opening sequence shows the hideously gruesome face of a diseased old hag and is wonderfully spine-shuddering stuff. Throughout the next hour and ten minutes, numerous victims are led into the film to be gorily dispatched in unconvincing but inventive ways. All very tacky, but oddly appealing footage.
You really get your money's worth from the monsters and creations in this film. Not only is the chief character Lawrence Talbot (as in Lon Chaney Jr) a cheesy werewolf who occasionally goes on the rampage, but he's married to Dracula's daughter who definitely hasn't given up her bloodsucking ways. A match made in Hell if ever there was one. The double-monster content means that a titanic showdown is on the way and it doesn't disappoint on that front, although the climatic battle is a little shorter than I had hoped for but certainly fiery enough. Other fun elements to add to the horror brew include a bunch of carnivorous plants living in the cellar, who continuously make weirdo noises and suck people's legs off. Then we have a servant whose legs have been amputated and who walks around on his knee stumps and another serving girl whose leg has turned into a deformed mass of shapeless putty - pretty outrageous. Although BLOOD will never win any awards for originality or skill, Milligan's creativity and the indefinable quality the film possesses makes it worth viewing. -
BA_Harrison4 April 2024Blood 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. -
kamikaze-411 January 2007I 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?
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The son of a werewolf marries the daughter of Count Dracula in this rare Milligan gorefest.Hope Stansbury gives a great performance and is perfectly cast as Dracula's evil daughter.There's lots of gruesome gory scenes including a man who gets a meat cleaver struck into his skull.This is Milligan's most gothic looking movie that I've seen so far and it's worth a look not only for gorehounds but for horror fans in general.I give this movie ***** out of ***** for it's originality and style.
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Blood - 1972 ( This Films Rates a D+ ) The year is 1883. Strange characters travel from Europe to America and are engaged in human experimentation. A werewolf doctor is married to a vampire who have assistants growing flesh eating plants. These plants are growing stronger and can devour a whole human body. Eventually everything is in chaos. Poor scripting with even worse acting. It is as if I am watching a high school play. Some of the camera angles and sequences are out of focus with poor sound transitions between scenes. At 57:44 and for about 1+ minute, the whole sequence is nothing but a black screen. The film is intentionally funny, from the make up to the costumes to lines like this "Not so fast my pretty, I aint finished yet", But often times its not intentional. Minimal gore though not absent of it. There is not enough action going on for me to love this film (and I love cheese). It has fun moments but overall it falters in to many places.
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aronaamora9 September 2006This is one of Milligan's better Gothic style horror dramas. It's a lot in the style of THE RATS ARE COMING!THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! But not as dull. The acting is much better than in most of his films and the camera work is not bad.
The film does have two strikes against it. 1)When the wolf man turns into a werewolf he is wearing a silly looking werewolf mask and 2)The action scenes seem to being missing something as if something was cut out. This is how most of Milligan's films seem to be edited though so I can't tell if I was watching a censored print or if it was edited that way. -
traposa25 June 2020Perhaps I don't know film enough to be as pretentious as most reviews on this site. Perhaps I'm just unpretentious enough to be able to enjoy a movie which is short on budget, experienced cast, and tech, but deep in story and concept. This is one such film.
I mean, come on now. It's a story about a werewolf marrying Dracula's sexy (and creepily mad) daughter. With gimpy servants. And incest. With a meaty Frankenstein reference. What more can you ask for in life? What are you? Communists? Even Communists should be able to enjoy such an offbeat and low budget but very creepy and well told story.
I watch this one again and again. It's just good stuff. And you can't compare this film to Jaws or The Exorcist. They aren't in the same league. Not even the same sport. It's like trying to compare yourself against me. It's just not going to work out the way you want it to. -
anthonyjllopez10 November 2019If you like movies like messiah of evil or night beast or grave of the vampire...you will probably really like this. It has a unique charm only a movie that was made by someone very invested in the material would make. I love unique movies like this. Despite all the shoddy attempts at dialogue and character building it has a sort of arthouse gothic atmosphere fused with the finest of schlock and trash. Very charming film. I mean theres giant carnivorous plants grown by a werewolf mad scientist who has married to count draculas daughter.
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BandSAboutMovies8 October 2022Dr. Lawrence Orlofski (Allan Berendt) has just bought a new house and moved his wife Regina (Hope Stansbury, who wrote Vapors and also appears in Milligans's Depraved!, The Degenerates and The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!) - "My wife doesn't like the daylight hours. Rather, I should say daylight doesn't agree with her." - in along with their three servants, Orlando (Michael Fischetti), Carrie (Patricia Gaul) and Carlotta (Pichulina Hempi).
If this is your first Milligan movie, you may be wondering why everyone is screaming at one another. If you're a fan of his work, you instantly get excited as soon as people start raising their voices.
Regina is a corpse but as soon as she's injected with blood, she becomes young again. She's angry that she can no longer be in the sunlight, all while the servants hold umbrellas over her and prepare her meals. She and the doctor seem to despise one another with her saying, "Go to hell," and him answering, "We're there already."
Meanwhile, there are carniverous plants in the basement that need to be fed with blood from Carlotta's brain. Also, the doctor's name is really Lawrence Talbot, but this movie doesn't need to explain that to you and you better get the reference yourself. Also also, Carrie's brother visits, which allows her to give the audience at least some background: "There is an abnormal distribution of tissue and blood cells which makes up her physical structure. These plants which Dr. Orlofski and I have found are the only things that will bring a normal balance." Then she makes a move on her brother, who runs right into Regina's room and immediately gets a meat cleaver to the brain and acid poured all over himself. Also also also - this movie has a lot going on while also seeming glacial which is a totally Milligan balance - Dr. Orlofski is having an affair with Prudence (Pamela Adams), the secretary of Carl Root (John Wallowitch), the lawyer in charge of his father's estate who is stealing money and oh I forgot to tell you, the doctor is also a werewolf.
Regina eats a mouse in one cut, I mean, literally chopping it in half and gulping it down as if this was made in Italy. And then there's Petra, Keeper of Graves (Eve Crosby), an old woman who watches the doctor rut around with that secretary in her cemetery and fills in Regina on that secret; she's was also the mistress of Orlofski's father. Well, now she's dealing with the daughter of Dracula.
Shot in Milligan's St. George mansion located in Staten Island - I wonder how much that inspired the TV series version of What We Do In the Shadows - this movie is a period film and under seventy minutes and an abrupt marital fight into a flaming finale, capped by Dr. Frankenstein moving in next.
This movie is not of our world. It's not of our reality. It did, however, play double features with Legacy of Blood and with Chinese Hercules under the alternate title Black Nightmare in Blood. -
azathothpwiggins14 December 2019BLOOD is yet another epic from Director Andy Milligan. It is the tale of Dr. Lawrence Orlovsky and his wife, Regina (Hope Stansbury). Lawrence is a stern, rude man, perhaps due to his hat being six sizes too small.
Enter Regina, a vampire brought in during daylight. This explains why she resembles a molten pizza with fangs. Regina needs injections to keep her from disintegrating altogether. Thus injected, she whines incessantly. This helps to offset Lawrence's turd-on-a-rope personality.
Meanwhile, their servants, including the leg-deprived Orlando (Michael Fischetti), the brain-destroyed Carlotta (Pichulina Hempi), and the soon-to-be-one-legged Carrie (Patti Gaul), take care of the Orlovsky's man-eating plant collection (aka: plastic hotel lobby foliage). Horror ensues.
While this movie is full of Milligan's signature cardboard characters spouting absurd dialogue, there is a bit of a story here somewhere. In spite of the Director's trademark meandering, there's even a modicum of tension. In fact, this could be the best Andy Milligan movie ever made!
Of course, it's still a sub-sludge production, featuring horrid camera work, lantern-like lighting, etc., but at least the damned thing makes some sort of sense! With BLOOD, Milligan reached the pinnacle of his... "talent".
THE BEST SCENE IN THIS MOVIE: When Petra (Eve Crosby), who looks as though she sleeps in a coal bin, is attacked by Halloween-novelty-teeth-wearing Regina! After witnessing this, one will never look at mannequin arms in the same way again! Ever!...