‘Sickening horror to haunt your nightmares!’
Blood is a 1974 American horror film written, photographed and directed by Andy Milligan (The Ghastly Ones; Guru the Mad Monk; The Body Beneath).
The movie stars Allan Berendt, Hope Stansbury, Patricia Gaul, Michael Fischetti, Pamela Adams, Eve Crosby, John Wallowitch, Martin Reymert, Pichulina Hempi, David Bevans, Joe Downing, Lawrence Seelars and Sophia Andoniadis.
Release:
In the US, the film was distributed in 1974 by Bryanston Pictures (Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre).
In 1976, it was re-released by Damiano Film Productions with Legacy of Satan.
British VHS company Iver Film Services (IFS) issued the film on video three times in 1979/1980 and theirs was the only version in general circulation for many, many years.
A limited edition Code Red Blu-ray Disc of the Damiano Film double-bill – which includes nine minutes of dialogue scenes, albeit from a cropped print – was issued in America in 2015.
Plot:
Lawrence Orlofski (in reality, a werewolf named Lawrence Talbot) returns to America from Europe with his sick wife (actually a vampire). He rents a house for his spouse and their deformed servants and performs experiments with man-eating plants in the hope of finding a serum to cure their afflictions but their dark past begins to catch up…
Reviews:
“Blood is hardly what a rational person would call a “good” movie. Still, in a weirdly weird way, it’s pure fun. The premise alone, of a werewolf and a vampire trapped in a loveless arranged marriage, the former resorting to growing and harvesting rare, blood-drinking plants to keep the latter alive, is a riot.” Fringe Void
” … the venom of everyone in this movie for everyone else, the hatred that pervades every scene, in the end just serves to glue all the delirious anachronisms and movie monster mayhem together into one big hateful craft project from Hell.” Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies
” … infidelity, vampiric infidelity, lycanthropic infidelity, poor financial planning, murder and mutilation. There is never a dull moment, and at just under 60 minutes, the film squeezes in a ludicrous amount of nonsense.” Dominion of Scum
” … Blood packs in a lot of Milligan insanity: jealousy, greed, regret, infidelity, murder, man-eating plants, vampires, werewolves, and more. It’s a wild, exhausting ride.” Daily Grindhouse
“The actors often reach a weird, melodramatic intensity, especially when their efforts combine with the claustrophobic framing of most scenes, the unnatural (in a nearly Lovecraftian sense) camera angles and the nearly perversely wrong lighting of many scenes. The whole affair feels as far removed from reality as possible, but it is as much removed from movie reality as we know it as well, somehow straining for a different kind of cinema…” The Horror!?
” … an absolutely hallucinatory shot of bargain basement Grand Guignol, made all the more irresistible by its dollops of soap.” Tim Lucas, Video Watchdog Blog
Filming locations:
North Staten Island, New York City (in and around Milligan’s own house)
Offline reading:
Buy: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
Gutter Auteur: The Films of Andy Milligan – Buy: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents by Stephen Thrower
Image credits: Iver Film Services
