“The only horror film where the aspects of the film-making are far more frightening than the slayings themselves”
DVD VERDICT
Who made it? Directed by Andy Milligan | Written by Andy Milligan & Hal Sherwood | Director Of Photography Andy Milligan | Special Effects
Who’s in it? Veronica Radburn | Maggie Rogers | Hal Borske | Anne Linden | Fib LaBlaque | Carol Vogel
If you weren’t watching this, you might have been watching… Rosemary’s Baby / 2001: A Space Odessy / The Thomas Crown Affair
Production notes, wikipedia pages and whatnot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Feast
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056875/
What’s it all about?
So here we go. Next up, I spent about half an hour typing “Blood Rites” into various search engines. Does ANYONE still say “search engine?” It’s right up there with Information Superhighway. But I digress. I tried Google and Bing and even Asked Jeeves at one point, trying to see if this movie was available online. It seemed not to be. At least not in a legitimate “pay us £3 and you can see it” way. No Netflix, Amazon, NOW, iPlayer, iTunes or YouTube.
But then… there it was, nestling in the search results. Under the alternate title “The Ghastly Ones” 1968 (watch full movie) on a thoroughly unofficial site called m.uk.ru/video which frankly couldn’t seem more piratey if it had one leg and a fuckin eye patch.
But hey, I clicked and reclicked and opened and closed and opened and closed and yesses and no-ed and accepted and blocked and on and on. And then there it was. A lurid, red, opening-credit sequence beckoned. Crackly and grainy, probably a tenth-generation-old VHS upload, with the obligatory subtitles.
The Spanish caption read (according to the nice bots at Google translate): “Three married couples are forced to spend the night in a Victorian-era mansion. During the night something horrible begins to threaten them, and a nightmare of horror and death begins to terrorize them.” Yeah, I couldn’t help but feel words like “nightmare” and “terrorize” might be doing a fair bit of heavy lifting here if the trailer (see above) was anything to go by.
But hell, in for a penny. I made a cuppa, dimmed the lights and pressed play.
As I say, we start with JER Pictures Inc Presentation on home VCR made titles which rather establishes our budget and quality, but let’s not judge too soon. Oh no, wait. Let’s judge. We are introduced to Ada and Robert. Two Brideshead Revisited types larking about by the water in starchy 1880’s linens and stiff cuffs. Yep we’re in petticoats, parasols and poncy pratfall territory. Hamptons heads thrown back, pale necks and posh accents, everything’s fucking hilarious. They kiss and snog ineffectually. “Let’s go this way!” They find themselves on the grounds of the old Crenshaw House that looks a little deserted and wouldn’t surprise anyone if it was full of late 19th Century redneck cannibals. But all of this excitement is clearly too much for feeble Ada and she comes down with an attack of the vapours or consumption or whatever seemed to make women in crinoline faint the whole time in Upstairs Downstairs. Robert is more the gung-ho Rider Haggard type so he’s off exploring, leaving Ada in a heap. But poor Richard doesn’t go far before suddenly a be-hatted figure, all dungarees, shoddy dental work, bowl cut and special-needs lurches out, grabbing and stabbing at him with a big old knife. Out comes Robert’s eye in mess of grue and guts, Robert screaming and falling to the grass.
And then our killer is on top of him, hacking and sawing away with ready gusto like he was carving a soggy yule log. Half blinded, terror stricken and mauled to pieces, Rob is hauled off into the woods by our killer yokel. Blimey! Well Ada is clearly both bored of waiting and stone deaf as she limply wafts after Robert, all handkerchiefs and lace, wondering what’s keeping him. Well she’s next on the list for no reason… and our killer is back, knife a-swingin’ and a-choppin’ off her dainty hand. Down she goes too and now it’s all stabbing and lurching and sawing away at pale legs, pawing and peeling at her wounds. Skirts up, gratuitous bum shots and we cut to credits.
That, as Wayne Knight probably said to Sharon Stone once, is quite an opening. Credits are swimmingy swoony James Bond effect wobbles in an odd Comic Sansy font that seems more like a corporate training video than a revolting period splatter fest. But they don’t last long and at least let us know that we are up for The Ghastly Ones or Blood Rites, depending on your download or disc.
Titles done away with, lets meet the cast and find out if they are as ghastly as we’ve been promised. Or whether it’s the gurning, knife swishing farmer in the denim who’s the worst of it.
We are introduced to three American couples, one by one. Each as tedious and dull as each other. They are made up of three sisters – Elizabeth, Veronica and Victoria. All pretty much cut from the same flouncy, pearl clutching fiddle-dee-dee late Victorian model. Heels, big skirts, bodices, beauty spots and enormous ringlets, liable to faint or need a lie down at least, at a moment’s notice. Each of these daft ladies is married to a cookie-cutter identikit handsome fellow-me-lad. Waistcoats, marcel-waves, double chins and sturdy britches, they are Richard, William and Donald. Which I imagine you could have guessed.
First up, hello to Richard and Victoria. Poncing about in nightwear with plenty of teasy boob-flashing and pale skin on show, R & V snog and pet and snog some more and bicker about a telegram they have received.
The legendary lawyer HH Dobbs – under whom Richard studied at law school – is summoning them to New York. How will they afford the trip? I mean they look pretty comfortable to me, but then it seems everyone was corsets and collars back then. They could stay at sister Veronica’s to save a little dough? Will Richard’s brother Walter give them the travel money? Hmmm, Walter is always attaching strings to his deals. Often, as we’re about to discover, to simply pad out running time…
Because if this sounds like a teasing twist, relax. It isn’t. This entire film is an illogical mess of red herrings, false trails, irrelevant detail and forgotten plot points. Walter’s oddness – which we are about to be treated to – has nothing whatsoever to do with anything much more than the actor Hal Sherwood getting in some hammy camp eye rolling.
Irrelevant Walter is, as we see, something of an oddball. The wealthy one in Richard’s family, his home is all very grand with swags and dark velvet and luxurious oil paintings. Champagne is poured. Walter agrees to lend his young brother the travel money, as long as the couple run some sort of random “rich person” errands (“value a painting for me, pop to Tiffany etc”). Victoria tells Richard his brother has always had “abnormal tastes…” Intriguing? Nope, nothing more comes of this, so forget it. Let’s meet sister number two! As it were.
Elizabeth is an identical Victorian waste of skin. As is setting the tone for this picture, there is much booby and thigh flashing as she and an unseen useless husband (Donald) talk of their identical telegram.
Why does their late father’s lawyer want to see them all in New York? Something to do with his estate? Donald wanders about off screen, unseen, singing to himself idly. So if he gets it in the eye later, no big loss frankly.
And finally, to New York to meet sister three – Veronica and her dressing-gown-full of twit husband, William. She is at her vanity, puffs and paints and lipsticks and lacquers as she either readies herself for bed or gets glammed up for a night out. It’s not clear and it doesn’t matter. More passionate 15 cert marital snogging, some bare shoulders and a little nipple, we swoop and swoon about the pair while they clumsily reveal they have been married for 3 years.
She is due to have Elizabeth and Victoria descend on their home with their husbands this afternoon (“what are relatives for?”) She is meeting them at a little sweet-shop café at 1pm and then it’s all three couples off to Dobb’s legal offices to discover what the fuck he wants.
So that’s our gang. Our two folk murdered on an island by some drooling halfwit in loose Wranglers, and now three middle-class couples invited to hear about the late dad’s estate. We’ll meet the lawyer in a scene or two and they’ll be off to the island where the killer and two housekeepers (Martha and Hattie) look after pop’s old manor house. And that’s our set up.
In the sweet shop the sisters simper and gossip, all pearl clutching and swooning in hats. Cucumber sandwiches are scoffed and delicate tea is sipped. As oft happens in these capers, they share information they all already know in order to bring us poor viewers up to speed.
Daddy died about 5 years ago, yes. But the will was not to be read and the inheritance shared until “the three girls are married and settled?” True. It seems, with Dick, Donnie and Bill now in tow, the maidens are all set to cash in. Indeed! Let’s finish these cakes and get over to Dodds. Quite! And hope he’s not being played by some Am Dram crinkly old chap in fingerless gloves who’s been at the Dickens…
Oh. Ah well. Here’s Dodds, and he’s straight out of the Moulde Curiosity Shoppe school. Bewhiskered and muttery, all of about 300 years old, he reveals the will to the three drooling couples. It’s not going to be simple, obviously. Some sort of ‘haunted Crenshaw House’ task we presume. And, well, we’re about right.
The three couples are told to go to the island and stay in the family house. Dad was an oddball, but a rich one, with vast South American “holdings.” Daddy only travelled back to Crenshaw 5 times during his whole marriage, three of those times being the for the brisk conception of his daughters with their otherwise frigid mother. (The other 2 times presumably to do the bins and change the cat litter). There, the couples must – in a slightly pervy dad manner – live in – ahem – “sexual harmony” for 3 days. Nice. If this is done, then day three will see them retrieve a trunk from the attic and share out the estate between them. (By which we must assume the trunk has documents about the estate. Rather than his estate just being whatever crap is in the trunk. A couple of Victorian jazz mags and an old croquet set). Oh, and if for any reason this task can’t be done, the eldest daughter will share things out as she sees fit. Which one assumes is some kind of murder-plot motive it will take the next fifty minutes to get to resolving.
Let’s keep going.
Ah-ha! The Crenshaw place! The six clamber off the boat, all top hats and luggage on sleds, to be met on the shore by…well who’d a thought! Its our murderous dungareed drooling nutjob from about 20 mins ago. Remember him? I hope so, he cut out a man’s eye and sawed some dame’s leg off. This, we discover, is Colin. The sort of weirdo backstairs illegitimate special needs over-acting dunderhead who tantrums and pouts like a 3-year-old. Literally, “I want my teddy!” he yells at one point.
It is now deep winter by the way, which suggests the earlier murder must have been at least six months ago. Or possibly 10 years ago, it’s not made clear. Or frankly, makes any fucking difference as it appears to have been a scene with the actor’s only motivation given as “pad out the run time.” But Colin’s simpering and bag-carrying is monitored and supervised by the two housekeepers who manage the Crenshaw House. Let’s meet Martha and Hatty.
Both pretty much cut from the same curtain fabric and clearly both avoided the same acting classes, they are busty, frumpy, lacey-collared fuss-budgets of the Upstairs Downstairs mould, and could easily have been played by Victoria Wood and Julie Walters. Or – if this means anything to you – Roy Barraclough and Les Dawson at a stretch.
As they fuss and bustle the 3 couples to the house, all talk is of the recent plague which bumped off their dear mother Mrs Crenshaw. Ahhh well, very sad. Add to this hoary old set-up, they are now of course trapped on the island with no means of escape as “the boat won’t come for another three days.” Ooooh, everyone says predictably. Colin, in case we’d forgotten he was definitely in the spectrum, stops off to catch a white rabbit and then eat it, live and raw. For this, Colin gets from Martha and Hattie not the first in a very long line of beatings and whippings like he was a stray dog. Nice. Anyway, we can’t hang around here in the snow, let’s get in to the house for a few days and see if anyone makes it out alive…
Indoors, rooms are assigned and the women coo and simper about the wallpaper and velvet. Colin gets yet another beating for putting cases on the bed instead of in the wardrobe, responding like a wounded hound with gooning and gurning and humpy buck teeth in a manner that makes Marty Feldman look like David Niven. No girls, you can’t use this room. Clearly the stuffed teddy bear swinging in a noose signifies it’s Colin’s quarters.
Cue a few minutes of coupley am-dram nonsense. They all gather in a chintzy drawing room, all rustling bustles and brass buttons and sweet sherries and “I say!”
As per the lawyer’s instructions, they are free and easy with their affections and we get a bit of light petting and cheeky shoulder. Richard and Victoria have been married the longest so aren’t as keen or demonstrative as the randy newly-weds who basically drink and tease and paw and slurp at each other’s necks.
Couples depart to rooms, couples drink more sherry, candelabri flicker, strings swoon, men pace like bad Wilde actors, hands behind backs, necks behind winged collars. The ladies don’t do much more than clutch bosoms and say “dahhhhrling…” a lot. “It’s been ages since we’ve been together,” they repeat to each other pointlessly.
For no clear reason, suddenly Veronica decides to overact and gives it plenty of “cold hand o’er my heart! I’m frightened!” and there is much fussing. Vapours and tincture and broth is administered. Hattie and Martha have had enough of all this city folk nonsense and retire to bed, agreeing to let the 3 couples sleep late in the morning. Suspiciously, Veronica appears to let something slip when she refers to the house as hers, correcting herself to ‘ours‘ with a blush. Hmmm? Might this come to something? (No, it won’t). The evening’s adventures end when the half-eaten dead rabbit is found under the bedclothes, to much hysterical shrieking.
The obligatory accompanying note reads “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit!” Oh well, off to bed. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix.
Honestly, its that sort of movie.
As we reach the movie halfway mark, we’re finally presented with some kind of plot or motive or indeed character insight. Victoria and Richard dress for bed and talk of young Veronica’s earlier “funny turn.” She has always had a 6th sense. Remember she somehow knew when momma had died even though they were in Philadelphia? Her premonitions have always come true! “It’s this HOUSE!” Victoria cries and starts giving it lots of panting and pouty shouting. It would appear Victoria has her eye on the place. It’s all worth a lot of money. She wants more than her share. After all, she is the eldest! Always took care of the sisters. “I always did without! I want what’s coming to me!” And if this wasn’t enough to get the amateur audience sleuths in the cinema making notes in the margin, she adds “I’d do anything to get what I want!”
Right. So we’re halfway. Two dead holiday makers, three fussy sisters, (one psychic, the other greedy, one forgettable), three hapless husbands, two buxom housekeepers, a killer gardener, a dead rabbit and a warning note. And they’ve only been there for 12 hours. So let’s greet the dawn and see what more is ahead and hopefully discover something more ghastly than the performances.
Syrupy strings lull us into a lush, Gershwinny mood (despite this being about 50 years too early for that). Elizabeth and Donald snog and grope like randy teenagers after three Silk Cut and half a bottle of Lambrini. Or it might be one of the other couples. At this stage it really doesn’t make any difference. A noise? A light under the door? Is that blood? Or perhaps jam? Flinging the door open, Donald sees a bloody cross painted on the door! With a macho, broad-chested fling of the waistcoat and stamp of a sturdy boot, he’s all “stay here! I’ll be right back!” and grabs up an oil lamp, despite it being, what appears to be, about 3 in the afternoon. Donald bumps into Richard on the stairs and, as men will, they both hurry post haste to the crystal decanters and glasses in the study and pour themselves another in a long line of sweet sherries. “My nerves are shot!” They ponder the bizarre events. Dead rabbits? Bloody crosses? Why? “It doesn’t make sense!” The audience, one feels, agrees.
All clues point to Colin of course, as…well we know he’s a murdering loon. But they simply believe he’s loony halfwit. However as he’s the only one in the sketch with any upper body strength and, yes he did eat that live rabbit, he’s public enemy number one.
So now we get some much needed action as the men hunt the house, checking front doors and pantries. A gasp! A lurch! And, crying out for help, Donald hits the floor. Richard spies blood! Heads downstairs to face a figure off-screen. “It’s you! What are you doing up..?”
Who could this be? We don’t know. And don’t care much frankly. But let’s head back upstairs. Bangs and noises bring the ladies out of their rooms to timidly search by pointless candlelight, only to find..? Richard! Oh no! Dead! Hanging upside down. Bare chested, he swings lifelessly. Predictably, women feint a lot.
Let’s move to the morning, as Martha and Hattie bicker like panto ugly sisters. (Panto ugly sisters’ joke: Whenever I’m down in the dumps, I always get myself a hat. Oh I always wondered where you got them, etc). Complaining about eating late after last night’s fuss (meal timing appears to be their biggest worry, rather than dead husbands swinging from rafters). They’ve buried the rabbit in the garden and are wondering what best to do about young Colin. “He hasn’t done anything like that in years! But you can’t have your own brother committed to an asylum!” They question whether beating him up as much as they do is helping? “You have to Martha!” But of course, given they chain him up all night, it’s a mystery how he could have been involved. Jesus…
We haven’t had a tasteless, edgy, intermarital attempted rape yet, you’ll notice, so let’s take a moment for Veronica and William upstairs. As they discuss the lack of suspicious sleeping-powder in Donald’s drink and ponder Richard’s death, they begin to bicker in a stuffy Victorian manner. And indeed, a stuffy Victorian manor. This leads Donald – quite out of character – to begin slapping his struggling wife about. Lots of panties, side-boob and bare flesh and complaints of course. Donald merely cracks on with the wife-abuse as it’s the 1800s and that’s what one does before an afternoon’s horse riding or murder it would appear.
Meanwhile Hattie and Martha are summoned by the surviving couples and questioned about creepy Colin and his nocturnal whereabouts. They reassure Victoria that Colin was good and tied up in the cellar all night. Which doesn’t appear to worry Victoria in the way you might think it would. On which cue, in lumbers Colin himself, all fangs and doltish hairdo, clutching firewood.
Is he trying to tell Victoria something? He’s having a go, it seems. But beyond whimpering, twitching and gurning with all the subtlety of Ricky Gervais’s Derek, his message is lost.
Downstairs, Donald is busy fetching and sawing wood for the fire. Martha cajoles Colin into helping him with the persuasive use of a massive fucker of a leather belt across the back, putting Donald’s mind at rest that – while Colin will often get violent, hence the belt – he gets frightened of the electric saw. Well, obviously.
And nobody has been murdered for 10 minutes so let’s despatch young Donald and see how ghastly we can make it. It doesn’t disappoint. Bonked across the noggin by a dark hooded figure, down goes Donald, bringing an end to his wood chopping chores. He awakes sometime later tied to an altar or table or Black & Decker workmate or something, neatly like a bakery box. The hooded figure proceeds to plunge a whopping blade into Donald, stabbing and stabbing making a bloody hole of gore and innards big enough to get a cat in.
Donald screams, music thunders and the figure (who, if it is Colin, had definitely got his upper body coordination together momentarily) hauls out innards and grue, Donald’s mouth splashing claret as a saw is taken to his flesh and in a squelch of plastic and papier mache, it gets horribly sausagey and awful.
Being the dullest man on the North East US seaboard, Donald is not being missed by anybody. And nobody catches him bellow out his bloody lungs, so upstairs Martha and Hattie fuss over the turkey lunch. “It will be dried out!”
The couples gather (they can’t be waiting for that Donald if turkey quality is to be preserved) so they gather in the dark dining room and whip off the silver cloche to reveal the tasty bird. However, it’s the other type of “foul” and instead they scream at the sight of Elizabeth’s head. Decapitated, lolling and dead-eyed on a bed of mixed greens.
Well enough’s enough at this stage. Messages, crosses, rabbits, hanged husbands, decapitated wives and missing Donalds? It enough to have anyone writing to the Daily Telegraph. So cue the sobbing and hysteria and smoking jackets. “We can’t even get off this goddamned island,” someone says, but helpfully a wife is on hand to explain that “swearing isn’t going to help.” Martha knocks and enters, announcing now is the time for the father’s trunk to be fetched. The boat will be here tomorrow for the reading of wills and settling of deeds and to return the remains of the cast to the mainland. Colin and William pretend to struggle with a clearly empty trunk which appears to have just been stuffed in an airing cupboard. Colin of course gets a good belt-whipping from Martha to encourage his trunk-carrying.
They’d better find Donald if this lark is going to be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Plus where is the firewood? So William and Colin head down to the cellar. But what’s this? As William descends he is followed by a mysterious hooded figure. Ducking out of sight – by which I mean, crouching slightly in clear view of everybody – the figure hides from William as he searches. But hey, what’s this in the box? Pots and plates? Bric-a-brac? Wade Whimseys and china whatnots? A photograph! Dated 1865! An old man cradling a baby! And what’s this written on the back? “HC, my favourite girl, from Walter C.” But…that must mean…presumably something? Hattie? I’d lost interest at this point. Colin’s clearly a red herring; it’ll be one of the mad housekeepers obviously. As I say, Hattie I expect. HC. Oh let’s just get to the end of this thing.
Colin attacks! William barks back at him like a dog, Colin cowering and whimpering. William runs but…no! Attacked finally by the hooded figure, William is impaled against the wall with a glorious pitchfork through the neck, bloody mouthfuls of goo and grue come spilling out as the figure stabs and lunges.
Cut to Colin sobbing in Martha’s arms. “They’re mine! They’re mine!” He grunts, revealing the dusty box of pots and plates. And the revealing photograph!
But now the figure is back, chopping off Martha’s hand, sending her collapsing. Colin is chased indoors, up, up the stairs. Victoria and Veronica cower in the bedroom. The figure, a witchy crony face glimpsed beneath the cowl, splashes oil about the stairwell and sets fire to Colin who lights up like a fuckin twig. He topples backwards and finally, hood pulled away and mask removed we see… Well, it’s Hattie, obviously. I mean for heaven’s sake.
So now we need some lumbering, ponderous bond-villain style reveal of all the methods and plots and motives as the girls whimper and Colin smoulders away.
Here it is, in a nut-job Or rather, in a nutshell, explained at length by Hattie. Brace yourself:
41 years ago Hattie was the first born of the Crenshaw family. Momma died giving birth. Dad wasn’t going to go without a bit of further nookie or a shortened bloodline, so he married again. It was this second wife who gave birth to the three girls. But wife 2 grew to hate young Hattie, blaming her for her husband’s reluctance to come home. But now? With everyone out of the way? Hattie will be free to inherit! And who will be blamed for the murders? Colin! ha-ha-ha! There’ll be no doubt poor mad Colin did it! And she can claim she killed him in self defence! This drivel is all explained with wide eyed hysterical mania and Macbeth-style cackling. So much so, Hattie is too distracted to notice a smoking, smouldering, still sizzling Colin clambering up behind her. In a tumble of limbs and chaos, Hattie’s murderous clumsy swing backfires and the blade enters her skull.
Squirts and splashes of bright red blood ketchup-up the stairwell as Hattie and Colin tumble to a dead heap.
The two sisters collapse sobbing into each other’s arms. A doorbell sounds. That will be lawyer Dobbs. Fuck, they’ve got some explaining to do. But they don’t say this. They just sob and whimper in far, far too much crushed velvet.
Cut to credits.
Is it any good?
Good? Hahahaha. Sorry. No.
On the plus side… well it’s blissfully short. About 71 minutes from neck to nuts. Which is a godsend, as I must have checked my watch thirty odd times during its run time, begging the hands to whizz around a little faster and bring the sorry, velvet-laden crinoline-draped blood-smeared dumpster-fire of cinematic crapola to a finale. But good? No it’s not. Not in any measurable way. I mean it just isn’t. Call it “campy” or “kitsch, call it ”charming” or even “delightfully naïve” if you’re that sort of twit. But it’s just terrible.
How did it come to be so? And what do we know about the man behind the script and lens? Director Andy Milligan (who I should stress, is NOT the OTHER Andy Milligan who is the BAFTA winning wordsmith behind Ant & Dec’s best work) left the army in 1951 to work in dress-making and theatre production, successful enough to scrape enough dollars together to purchase a tumble-down old mansion on Staten Island.
Here, he hooked up with famed sexploitation producer William Mishkin, Milligan picking up a 16mm Auricon camera and cheap cast-off film stock from other productions. The preposterously stuffy, dusty and crumbling mansion became their go-to personal studio and the pair shot 11 miniscule budgeted efforts in its rooms, halls and grounds. Ever tight on costs, Milligan and Mishkin were responsible for set design, building, costumes, scripts and sets. One would imagine Milligan would have also made the bacon sandwiches for the hungry crew at lunchtime, if he’d had a hungry crew. Or indeed any crew.
While a list of some of his previous efforts might sound like a splatter-filled fleshy squirt fest of terrors (Depraved! 1967, Fleshpot on 42nd Street, 1972 and Seeds, 1968 – “Sown in Incest! Harvested in Hate!“), The Ghastly Ones was his first real attempt at horror. Despite the appalling cheapness, stumbling illogical plot, padding, panning and hammy readings, TGO was enough of a gory curio to allow him to follow up with Torture Dungeon (1970), The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here! (1972), The Body Beneath (1970), right up to the 80’s with films like Carnage (1984) and The Weirdo (1989).
So, to the script. Look, on paper the story is competent enough and not an un-trodden dramatic path (wills and inheritances and murder plots and “It’s mine I tell you! Mine!” style soapy outbursts with a big sign-posted finale twist. Plus revelations of secret children and evil step moms. It holds up, mostly and is nothing we haven’t seen a dozen times in stagey amateur dramatics and Tales Of The Unexpected dramas. As it stumbles and progresses, the script has nods here and there to reveal undercurrents, a number of characters might be said to have some sort of motive for misdeeds, skull-duggery and skull-peircery with knives and saws and pitchforks and nooses. Fine.
However it would appear from both a painful watch and, just for you viewers, a more recent re-watch and some behind the scenes digging, that production wise, once Milligan had captured the plot on screen, he was at least 20mins shy of a full-length feature. Whoops. He had no choice therefore than to add as much unnecessary canoodling, petting and fondling to extend the length of each scene. And eventually, to nudge it over the 70m mark, to pad out the running time with 2 additional story lines that went nowhere, hints that hinted at nothing and downright plot holes big enough to stuff an antique chest in.
For example, Walter. Remember him? No of course not. But a good 5 mins is given over to the visit to Richard’s “mysterious” brother. He hams and haws and eye rolls and hints at intrigue and mystery. “Value a painting for me! Pop to Tiffany!” And what of Victoria’s reveal of Walter’s “abnormal tastes…” and “attached strings?” Well nothing at all. He is never heard of again and the whole thing is the reddest of red herrings. But not cleverly as we never once are given to think Walter has made it onto the island for a murderous killing spree. It’s just a scene to add 5minutes to the spool.
Which brings us to my favourite piece of bolt-on nonsense, the airy-fairy wafting about of the first five minutes as hopeless Ada and hapless Robert mess about with parasols and spatz before poor lumbering Colin lurches in and gruesomely hacks them both up. I mean what is this? So Colin IS the killer? But he’s NOT the killer! He’s the pitiful patsy who Hattie is going to pin it on. I mean for Chrissakes Milligan, you can’t lead the who-dun-it astray by simply changing your fucking mind about who dun it 5 minutes before the end. A nonsense add-on, pasted into the pre-credit to get a decent running time and baffle the popcorn munchers.
Shooting the damned thing seems to be a clumsy, haphazard badly-lit half-assed attempt to get it all done before lunch, or at least before all the snow melts (night scenes shot in the middle of the afternoon). The cast crowd and barge into each shot which attempts to theatrically frame all nine of them onscreen at once, all elbows and shoulders and faces peeking from under arms. It’s like they’re all standing next to Simon Bates on the balcony as he introduces a 1986 edition of Top Of The Pops.
“Theatrical” is probably the kindest term I can use for this effort, and I mean it in the worst possible way. Everything you hate about amateur, period costume, shouty, creaky, freezing church-hall productions has been captured. But of course, not captured well. The stagey lighting is so hurried that somehow the scenes are both too dark to see and too bright to focus, so the main feeling the film conjures up, rather than “suspense” is “where did I put the Anadin?”
The too-loud buzzing sound-recording is a multi-directional boom microphone held overhead and it picks up every crease, crush, crack and crinkle of fabric, every chink clink and drink of dinner-wear with an arbitrary uniformity. It’s no wonder the cast appear to be loudly bellowing their lines to each other, as it’d take Pavarotti to be heard over the swoosh, swish and swash of over-cranked velvet and lace.
The accompanying music is a Gershiwnny Manhattany “He Loves She Loves” sort of syrup half the time. The other half being Irwin Allen-ish bonkers hysteria trying and create horror and suspense that simply isn’t there.
I understand from IMDB internet trawling that Andy Milligan had a mother called Marie who was, quote “an overweight, neurotic-bipolar alcoholic who physically and verbally abused her husband and children and served as the basis for scores of her son’s characters when he began making films.” This may explain the casting and direction given to the female actors who do most of their work like Disney Wicked Witches.
But to be fair, the whole cast are so uniformly hammy, hackneyed, scenery chewing, stagey, shouty and amateurish as to make one hide behind the cushion UNTIL a murder happens.
Nasty?
Well. What I’m learning as I embark on this project is that there is a certain “look.” And it comes up a lot so far (well, in the last 2 movies). I confidently expect it to come up a lot in the next few dozen.
It’s this: Imagine you took a lasagne. Mashed it all up with some rubbery entrails. Drowned the whole lot in ketchup. Right? Now hollow out a large fat church candle and pour the mixture in. Paint the candle a fleshy pink. Zoom in close. Chop the candle in half with a big knife so it all spurts and sploshes and jets out like…well, like a waxy candle full of lasagne. If you can get a squeezy washing up liquid bottle in there too, off camera, for some “spurty jets” that’d help.
Perhaps in 1968 this was face-coveringly macabre. But now it’s puerile and silly. It might startle a maiden-aunt or a timid grandad. But certainly no more gruesome than a nasty episode of Holby City or E.R.
For all that, the kills – for which most eager video-renters in the 1970s would have been hungry – are nicely sticky. Dead rabbits are clearly toys covered in corn-syrup; body-horrors are a mess of papier mache and sausages while blood capsules are spat and dribbled. Elizabeth’s dead-head is the hole-in-the-table effect seen in everything from The Muppet Show to This Morning With Richard Not Judy’s “Curious Orange.” But the garden pitchfork in the neck is a particularly fun bit of screamy gore.
In fact, the least pleasant moments are the grasping, grappling and bruisy-grips of the “romantic scenes” as married couples squirm and slap each other into semi-consensual humping and the manly face-slapping of “hysterical” women. All of whom are seen largely topless, wandering about in their bedrooms, getting aggressive fondlings from their idiot husbands and shifting under semi-see-through night-dresses. Not exactly the unpleasantness of “Straw Dogs” but an attempt at being ghastly I suppose. It’s sexy, if Kenny Everett and Minder were sexy.
Ban Worthy?
Not in the least. A huge drop in quality since our first outing of Blood Feast. No more pairs of boobs than you’d get in Porky’s Revenge or a feature length episode of The Sweeney. Dull periods of swooning maidens and brandy-swigging menfolk. A backwards/backwoods “Egor” like gardener. And a half dozen jumpy stabbings with household equipment that, as I say, are silly rather than gory. As gruesome as the Great British Bake Off “Sponge Cake Mix” episode.
What does it remind me of?
Remember Victoria Wood on UK TV. Her spoof sitcom Acorn Antiques? With all the wobbly sets and banging into furniture and blocking each other’s view and cue-card reciting and shadowy boom-mics and fluffed lines? Well it’s THAT. Exactly like THAT. One can imagine them bickering over screen time with a director in a scarf saying “one more time loves!” But not on purpose. And with absolutely no sense of humour.
Oh and a little bit of this Fry and Laurie Sketch. And, I suppose, the squirty red paint dismemberment of Blood Feast (1963) I suppose. See earlier episode.
“Groan With the Wind” meets “Scooby Don’t.”
Where to find it?
If you want to bother, and it’s for completists only. Remember, I’m doing this so you don’t have to, it’s here, if you can wade through the pop ups. https://ok.ru/video/3174539004601
Also available on DVD on Amazon, Ebay and the usual places
letsgetthebannedbacktogether.uk 
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