Released as a double feature with Torture Dungeon, Bloodthirsty Butchers finds Andy Milligan making another one of the classics. Sweeney Todd to be exact.
Sweeney Todd (John Miranda) and Maggie Lovett (Jane Hilary) come together to kill off their customers, steal their money and valuables, and give the bodies to Tobias Ragg (Berwick Kaler) to disposal. After a few kills, they start getting way into murder, so they decide to start using the bodies to make meat pies, including one that has a woman’s entire breast in it.
Shot in London, this actually feels like it could be in its time period, unlike the New York City Milligan movies where you can see modern buildings and hear the traffic. Milligan made five movies in 1970 alone — Torture Dungeon, Nightbirds, Guru the Mad Monk and The Body Beneath are the other films — and it’s pretty wild that he was doing so much so often. Then again, to the casual viewer, these movies are overly melodramatic films made by a lunatic who can’t even use a tripod, but to those who love these movies, well, they’re also overly melodramatic films made by a lunatic who can’t even use a tripod. Perspective is important.
TV Guide said that Bloodthirsty Butchers was a “gory and typically cheap retelling of the Sweeney Todd legend.” One star.
I may have ranked it much higher.
You can watch this on Tubi.
