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.

"Guru, the Mad Monk" is a cheap and terrible film. But it's not just cheap and terrible...it's REALLY cheap and terrible...like an Ed Wood picture...or possibly worse. So, don't say I didn't warn you!!

The story is about a monk from long ago whose only desire is to make money, power and get hot babes. He sells corpses to medical schools, has a vampire lady as a BFF and cheats and steals constantly. How long can his infamy continue until he gets his just desserts?

The acting is pathetic...high school pageant pathetic at best! The camera work, sets and overall production values aren't any better. It just looks amateurish in every way and is silly and amazingly dull considering the plot. Overall, a huge waste of time unless you are a bad movie buff and simply want to see it for laughs.

Neil Flanagan is a good son of the Church on an island where there are a few aristocrats, a prison, him and his church and his hunchback assistant who is, of course, named Igor. To make money to decorate his church an his vestments for the glory of G*d, he does a few favors for the locals, including grave-robbing, draining blood, and other light work.

Were anyone with anything approaching a sense of humor involved in this production, it would have made a heckuva burlesque of the sort of movie that Karloff and Lugosi starred in as the Universal horror franchise wound down into in the late 1930s. It also could have made a savage satire of the politics of the Catholic Church or any organized religion. However, while that thought might have occurred to someone involved in the shoot, there is no sign on the screen that he or she had this impulse. Neither is there any effort to show the disgusting things that this implies.

Not that I'm complaining about that. Just about wasting almost an hour of time.