Guru, the Mad Monk

GURU, THE MAD MONK is a no-budget Z-grade horror flick from schlock maestro Andy Milligan. Everything about this film is awful, particularly the production values: there's never a sense of this being a real movie, just a couple of actors inside an old church playing dress-up.

If Milligan's direction is dull and amateurish, his writing is even worse. The "film" charts the misadventures of the titular monk, played by the extraordinarily wooden Neil Flanagan. Guru's crimes include betraying those he's close to and torturing innocent people in a series of shoddy gore sequences that'll have you laughing instead of wincing thanks to their ineptness.

The acting is terrible across the board, the dialogue is stilted beyond belief, and no effort has been made to bring any part of the screenplay to life. Attempts to depict a medieval tableau are ruined by the all-too-obvious mistakes and screw-ups, like characters using a modern pair of scissors and a heroine wearing fake eyelashes - who knew they were invented hundreds of years back?! In my favourite "bad" scene, two characters converse with a motorbike sitting behind them. How did Milligan not notice? My feelings are that he did, and he just didn't care - a real filmmaker he isn't.