TH13: What I learned from watching “The Body Beneath” (1970)

The body beneath … what? Is there something beneath the body, or is the body beneath something?? Damn vague titles!

1. Americans trying to do British accents is so grating on the ears.  Especially when the vicar is failing to channel Oscar Wilde.

2. Oh wait, these people are British?  Well, the Oscar Wilde thing has got to go.

3. So …. In the first few minutes:

• A woman is attacked in the cemetery by Paducah Shakespeare Festival’s version of Macbeth’s witches.
• We have to endure the vicar trying to explain his familial relationship to her husband.
• The woman manages to get home, sees the vicar, and gasps!
• … and then we jump cut to a couple fooling around in bed.  Yep, someone with attention deficit disorder directed this.

4. Every respectable manor house is Britain must employ a hunchbacked, lurching, mentally dim houseboy.

5. Ah, yes, of course, the name “Ford” was a very respectable name in the ancient Roman Empire.

6. Drinking sherry looks just like V-8 juice.  So does blood.  I do hope they don’t get the bottles mixed up.

7. When scoring your inbred/incestuous vampire movie, use a flugelhorn solo.  It sets such a lovely mood.

8. Dixieland Jazz also is excellent mood music for a vampire flick set in Britain.

9. The plucky female domestic is almost always first to figure out what’s going on, but it usually leads to a pair of size US 17 bamboo knitting needles to the eyeballs.  (Also, the bamboo rinses nice and clean for the next scene.  No one wants blood transfer to their knitting.)

I told you, NO MORE RED HEART YARN!

10.  Any Master Plan that has seven steps to it is far too complicated.

11. Okay, so you and your pregnant girlfriend are beset upon by vampires and you’re locked in a room awaiting your fate.  Next plan of action?  Yep, fool around.

12. Are your domestics just not shaping up?  Nail their hands to the doorjamb with railroad spikes.  That’ll get ‘em.

13. Okay, so Andy Milligan may not have directorial chops, but give him some old upholstery fabric, curtain sheers, and a pile of rick-rack and he can make a pretty decent set of costumes.