PlatinumRead
Just so...so bad
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Raymond Sierra
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
BA_Harrison
Father Guru (Neil Flanagan) works at the Lost Souls Church on the island of Mortavia, where prisoners are sent to be tortured or executed. As well as being mad (Guru has heated schizophrenic arguments with himself a la Gollum in The Lord of the Rings), the monk is also thoroughly bad, delighting in the pain and misery of others, selling the prisoners' corpses for medical experiments, and providing human blood to vampire witch Olga (Jaqueline Webb) for use in her potions.When a young woman, Nadja (Judith Israel), is sent to the prison, having been wrongly been found guilty of murdering her infant, head jailer Carl (Paul Lieber), who is in love with the girl, makes a deal with Guru that sees him indebted to the monk for three months.A title screen made from alphabet fridge magnets, numerous anachronistic goofs, performers fumbling their lines but carrying on regardless, woeful gore effects (severed hands and heads courtesy of shop mannequins): Guru, the Mad Monk is par for the course for an Andy Milligan production. Amateurish and inept on almost every level and incredibly boring to boot, it's a real challenge to sit through, even for seasoned fans of z-grade schlock. I rate Guru a pitiful 2/10, the film narrowly avoiding the lowest possible score for featuring a one-eyed hunchback named Igor (so cheesy, it's worth an extra point).
Leofwine_draca
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.
Woodyanders
1480: Cruel, evil, haughty schizophrenic holy man Guru (a deliciously over the top performance by Neil Flanagan) resides on the remote island of Mortavia. Guru gets his sadistic jollies out of killing and maiming thieves, voyeurs, witches and various other sinners. Crazed lesbian vampire lady Olga (the seriously strange Jaqueline Webb) and meek, whimpering one-eyed hunchback Igor (an uproariously geeky turn by Jack Spencer) assist Guru with his heinous misdeeds. Meanwhile, kindly jailer Carl (the extremely fey Paul Lieber) tries to save condemned fair maiden Nadja (pretty blonde Judith Israel) from Guru's foul clutches. Legendary Do-It-Yourself dimestore indie Staten Island schlockmeister Andy Milligan really outdoes himself with this astonishingly awful, yet often amusing and oddly entertaining period Gothic horror atrocity. The drippy'n'droning stock film library score, ratty, ugly, scratched-up cinematography (Andy gleefully indulges in his ghastly penchant for drab static master shots to an appalling degree), the outrageously tasteless plot, ripely hammy eye-rolling histrionic acting from a game no-name cast (many of whom talk with heavy New York accents), cynical misanthropic sensibility, cheesy gore, the hysterical bloodbath conclusion, and the gut-busting abundant anachronisms (one villager is clearly wearing corduroy pants!) all ensure that this spectacularly shoddy swill is absolutely sidesplitting from stinky start to fumbled finish. A positively jaw-dropping celluloid abomination.
emm
Thank God I had the chance to see this thing! Did you understand how I felt watching CARNIVAL OF BLOOD? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet! If you're one of the few lucky ones to read this message, prepare yourself to witness the greatest cinematic catastrophe mankind will ever encounter since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon! Before you start blabbing to your friends and loved ones that PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is the worst movie ever made, tell them GURU THE MAD MONK is the most horrifying movie that ever existed! And I'm not talking about the things that go bump in the night! No, I'm talking about how experienced film producers with a college education would make such a BAD piece of cinematic trash for the whole world to see! At 57 minutes, Andy Milligan and friends created a rush job in getting this movie released to the local drive-ins in hopes of earning quick revenues. A bunch of poorly trained actors and a ludicrously atrocious script explains why. Things don't get any worse in Badmovieland!Get a barf bag, NOW!!! You'll be glad you did!
Some of the highlights in GURU THE MAD MONK are light years beyond deliriousness. You won't believe the possibilities of the human senses! They include:***A bishop standing on Guru's cape and ripping it! You can actually hear the sound of it!***Olga, who stutters in her sentences and can't make up her mind on what to say!***A villager who gets executed in a small pair of corduroys!***The opening movie title made up of magnetic toy lettering!And much, much, MUCH more!
Watch GURU THE MAD MONK all the way through for the first time without stopping and I'll guarantee you've survived a one-way ticket to Drive-In Hell with minor first-degree burns! I strongly recommend this one for viewers with bad taste and who are die-hard collectors of obscure cinema.Lord have mercy!!!!
