BLOOD (1973)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Though there's no real humor in this film by "gutter auteur" Andy Milligan, I can't help but think that when Milligan began BLOOD, he must have been amused about the prospect of taking a plot loosely derived from the Classic Universal monster-films and putting it through his psychosexual wringer. I've not read the recent Milligan biography, but somehow I doubt that he was deeply devoted to the horror genre, even if he'd been earning his daily bread making rock-bottom exploitation horror-films for the past four years.

Almost all of the action takes place within a single house (Milligan's own home in Staten Island), supposedly set in (going by the costumes) late 19th-century America. A couple, the Orlovskys, buy the house and move in, at which point it's revealed that they've brought more baggage than just their belongings. Lawrence and Regina argue constantly, with Regina accusing her husband of infidelity with their maid Carlotta. More importantly, though, Lawrence is treating Regina for some degenerative disease-- she's first seen in a veil, which Lawrence lifts to reveal a ravaged countenance. However, Lawrence is able to reverse this condition with his scientific wizardry, which somehow involves draining blood from victims' brains and feeding it to their man-eating plant-- which somehow helps Regina out (I couldn't follow how). 

It's also revealed that Lawrence is the son of 20th-century American werewolf Larry Talbot, while Regina is the daughter of the undead Dracula. Milligan has no interest in exploring any of this monster-mythology; he's tossing monster-tropes out to entice viewers who want a werewolf/vampire fix. Lawrence briefly gets all furry and Regina sprouts fangs in one scene, but Milligan's really focused on the monstrous hatred all of the characters-- the married couple, the servants, a few incidental victims-- bear for each other. As many reviewers have observed, Milligan's preferred form of address is having characters shout at each other at the top of their lungs. The dialogue is endlessly acerbic but not particularly witty, and the plot is even more threadbare than the sort of forties B-picture it most resembles, like THE CORPSE VANISHES. 

The most interesting thing about this visually unappealing slice of weirdness is that Milligan seems to have intuited that the "monster mash" films of forties Universal had a certain "family reunion" vibe.  One sees this to best effect in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, where lonely Larry deals with both a substitute mother (the gypsy Maleva) and a monster with whom he bonds in a loose sibling-like manner. I can picture Milligan looking at a quaint old film like this and then deciding to churn out a movie with deep psychosexual obsessions and occasionally outbursts of gore. Milligan's characters, though, are so hard to watch that only a second viewing did I notice an incestuous vibe between the maid Carrie and her brother, one of the tossed-in victims.