Doctor Bloodbath

If I ever were to host some kind of film class, I would just show Nick Millard marathons every single class so everyone would know what not to do. Nick Millard movies are fascinatingly inept, hopelessly tiresome, dreadfully boring, which just makes it all the weirder that I can't stop watching them. It's almost like he's hypnotizing you. It's almost like he's a spider luring you into his barely cinematic web. It's beautiful. No, it's atrocious. I need help. I need more Nick Millard movies. I don't know anymore.

I feel like I should elaborate. Every Nick Millard movie is sort of the same, in a way that it's all over the place but at the same time horribly repetitive and predictable. From the "Death Nurse" movies to "Crazy Fat Ethel II" to "Cemetery Sisters", Nick Millard always follows the same formula of boring you to death until you somehow want more. "Doctor Bloodbath" is no different. It's a tiring loop that you have to go through for all eternity (or 57 minutes, but you'll soon forget the difference when this is on). Doctor Bloodbath performs an abortion (with what is clearly a turkey baister) in his clinic, then he visits the patients at their house and kills them, and then back to square A. No surprises, no suspense, no pace whatsoever (our doctor seems to just sit on the couch for most of the time), you always know exactly what's going to happen. And yet, there's a unique Millardness to all these proceedings that pulls you in and doesn't let you go until you've finally seen it all (twice).

An important reason why I end up watching Nick's movies is just to see how lazy he can actually get. "Crazy Fat Ethel II" was essentially just "Crazy Fat Ethel I" with about 20 minutes of new footage. Even "Death Nurse" is chock full of stock footage from "Crazy Fat Ethel", and that's not even (officially) a sequel. "Cemetery Sesters" crams in ten straight minutes from "Satan's Black Wedding" for no reason whatsoever. In a recent interview Nick has stated that he does this because he wants people to discover his earlier works. Let me state right now that this explanation makes about as much sense as his movies do. He does it because filming an entire movie is a lot of work, even with a camcorder. But I've got to say though, "Doctor Bloodbath" is almost an entire movie. In an absolutely hilarious scene he does kill a character from "Satan's Black Wedding" because hey, the backgrounds vaguely match so why not, but overall this movie does it all by itself. Albeit with credits from a different movie taped from a TV screen, but making credits is such a hassle so I understand.

There's more good news about "Doctor Bloodbath": it's not quite as mind-numbing as the usual Millard dreck. Sometimes it almost seems like you're watching a real movie. Millard still hasn't figured out that you can have people talk to each other while they're in the same room (the grating hard edits are an attraction on their own), but at least actors are in the same shot here and there. There's even an ambitious kill scene where we get an overhead shot of the killer approaching the victim. That's as close to suspense as Nick is ever going to get. And at one point you actually see the weapon hit one of the girls (or rather, a super-obvious fake head). That's completely unseen in a Millard film, take my word for it if you don't know the joys of his cinema. And of course the typical Millardisms are here too. The police inspector talking about "the other two victims" when there have already been four murders, the doctor yelling "murderer!" while chopping up a victim, every single thing the Polish poet character says, the thunderous applause you hear after the doctor gives a speech in a clearly empty and clearly tiny room, Millard die-hards will have fun with this I guess. I know I did.

Normally I keep reviews short and to the point, but there's just something about Millard that brings out the worst in me. I could write so much on this wonderfully untalented filmmaker, but you just have to experience him yourself. I promise you you'll never be the same again.