“How could the London police find a lady such as yourself in all of London (and of course its suburbs)?”

In Highgate Cemetery a woman in a fetching pink outfit is laying some flowers on a grave when she is menaced by three grey-faced girls. This follows her blatant ignoring of a passer-by, who hurriedly tells her in no uncertain terms to “get out”. And by “hurried”, I don’t mean that the passer-by was acting a desperate need to leave and impressing on her that she should do so too. No, this was hurried as in “I have some words to say and I am going to say them as quickly as possible in case I forget them”.

And so begins The Body Beneath, a frankly astonishing piece of work. I think it’s safe to say that if there is a nadir of horror films made on these islands, I may finally have experienced it.

Back in the 1980s there was a programme on British television where Jonathan Ross would talk about cult films, which as I recall were mainly from the US. Stuff by Russ Meyer and his ilk, films like Faster Pussycat, Blood Feast and 2,000 Maniacs. I used to find it fascinating, but I never really sought out these films – they looked endearingly shoddy, but I had better things to do in my late teens, so it’s not a genre I’ve got much interest in or knowledge of.

That programme came to mind when watching The Body Beneath, as this film has the same aesthetic as the clips I saw of those American productions. With good reason, as it turns out… as it was the creation of a chap called Andy Milligan, who churned out a fair few low budget shockers in the US before this oddity. 

The Body Beneath’s UK credentials are up for debate if I’m honest – it never got a theatrical release in this country (can’t think why). But it was filmed here, with local “talent” (although showing a galloping lack of understanding of the geography or culture of the place).

What follows the cemetery-menacing is a confused jumble of disparate storylines, all centring around on an extended family, as the Reverend Alexander Algernon Ford (Gavin Reed) and his strange, mute, constantly-knitting wife Alicia (Susan Heard), turn up unexpectedly at peoples’ homes, tell them they’re related, and unleash a load of stuff which  happens with little logic or reason. All this is done in echoey rooms by bored-looking people with little or no visible acting chops.

The Reverend explains that he has travelled to England from Ireland (someone forgot to mention that this would usually mean he had at least a trace of an Irish brogue) and has set up home at  Carfax Abbey (“That’s near Highgate Cemetery, isn’t it?”). 

He’s got a particular fixation with a newly-discovered relative called Susan (Jackie Skarvellis), explaining they are “related in more ways than your imagination will allow”

He also explains that the Fords in general are vampires (big shock for the audience this, with the Rev already moaning to anyone who will listen that he doesn’t like facing the sunlight “someone has to do it, it might as well be me…”; and that the Fords go back “21 centuries” and sustain themselves via blood transfusions, which enables them to go out in the daytime.

He also tells her they want her baby. Which some viewers have hypothesised gives rise to the name of the film (as in the unborn baby is the body beneath Susan’s body).

Now at Carfax Abbey, and realising she’s in trouble, Susan has manages to ingratiate herself with the Reverend’s hunchback servant, whose name is Boo, or Shoe, or Loon, or Groon… something with an “oo” in it. The sound is so lousy it’s pretty much impossible to pick out (turns out it’s Spool, which of course makes absolutely perfect sense as an unexplained name for a minor character who gets talked about a lot).The Reverend’s maid, who is not a vampire, is also showing signs of not being entirely happy with her lot. (“Are you questioning my authority, you impertinent little slut?!” is the horrendously over-acted reply to her suggestion that lying to his guests might not be part of her job description).

Good news, though, because Susan’s fiancé Paul (Richmond Ross) is on the case, and on arriving at Carfax Abbey in search of his lost love, immediately notices that the Reverend has no reflection and is, quite clearly, a bad ‘un. This comes as a surprise to the maid, who then has to figure it all out backwards before coming to the same conclusion. No reflection… hmmm, that makes sense, they don’t like mirrors… hang on a minute (crosses herself)… “oh my GOD! I don’t believe it!”

The maid, now on the side of the righteous, takes Paul to Susan but before they can escape, Paul is attacked and hit on the head so hard that the camera falls over. The maid is then attacked and stabbed through the eyeballs… so hard that the camera falls over again. You have to give them full marks for originality, shame this approach to film making didn’t catch on.

By this point the entire premise of the film and what on earth is going on has rather gone out of the window. One of the Ford women from earlier on (I’m going to say… Candice? Let’s stick with Candice) is chloroformed by the vampire girls (in what one assumes is a first for gothic horror, given a bit of vampire-y hypnotism usually has the same effect) and the Reverend shows his disdain for the local law enforcement, and his need to be specific about things like search radii, with this pearler: “How could the London police find a lady such as yourself in all of London (and of course its suburbs)?”

But if you have got a bit fuzzy on the plot so far (as I did), help is at hand, because after clearly stating that he isn’t going to explain what his big plan is, the Reverend goes on to do just that. He and his vampire brethren (and sisterthren) need Ford blood. Hence the so-far seemingly haphazard approach to either kidnapping or killing the human Fords they’ve been tracking down.

All the Ford vampires are coming to Carfax Abbey tonight for a feast and discussion about their future, and a blood sacrifice is expected. Spool is talked into helping Candice escape, but they fail and Spool gets nailed to the wall (Candice is, we assume, killed).

Then all the vampires arrive, and you’d expect this to up the ante - but bizarrely, the exact opposite happens as the film deteriorates into a sort of undead parish council meeting. The  Reverend is desperate to convince his fellow vampires to move their activities to the USA, with the argument against this being that Americans are “the scum of the earth” (one assumes this is an hilarious in-joke at the expense of the American writer/director). After an equally bizarre anti-police rant, there follows a detailed plan for Susan (“I want them discovered by the French windows leading out into the garden…”) before the meeting is adjourned (yes, really).

Susan and Paul, who have survived all these goings-on without dying of boredom, wake up and realise Carfax Abbey is now devoid of vampires (they’ve all cleared off to America) and the place is theirs. And that’s it.

The Body Beneath is, as I’m sure you can tell, a real oddity – but I’d hesitate to recommend it to anyone but the most rabid of Brit horror completists. It could, of course, be seen as a masterclass in how NOT to make a film.

There are moments of almost-brilliance – the inventive killings, Alicia’s knitting fixation, the vampires’ ball towards the end – but all this is rendered redundant by the sheer incompetence on show at every level. As an example of this, during the aforementioned ball there is music being played, but no-one thought to take this as an opportunity to pause the weird and utterly incongruous musical soundtrack which plays constantly throughout the film, usually with absolutely no relevance to what’s happening on the screen at the time. So you have two musical soundtracks playing simultaneously.

I am, as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, a lover of the truly ridiculous when it comes to my British horror films. But The Body Beneath is not something I’ll be revisiting any time soon.