Leofwine_draca A 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.

Michael_Elliott 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.

Bezenby 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.

trashgang 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.