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Last night, as I dealt with my gruesome GI virus, I watched my way through not one but two Andy Milligan films.  At times, I was trying to decide whether the movies or the virus were causing most of my discomfort.

"The Ghastly Ones" is probably the best Milligan film I have seen, and that still isn't saying much.  People still talk about stuff that has not been introduced to the audience, so you spend a lot of time trying to decide if what they are talking about matters, and then what it means.  Characters undergo mood swings that seem to come out of the blue, and then there is the woman who has to beat her mentally retarded brother because he freaks out and does not want to carry luggage for the main characters.

Oh, and lesson learned:  Getting hit on the elbow with a piece of wood will knock a man unconscious.

"Seeds of Sin" had more nudity than I was used to seeing in a Milligan film, though in true Milligan fashion the opening scene does not seem to be connected to the rest of the movie.  Also, the people having sex suddenly changes - though I'm sure we're supposed to believe it's the same couple even after the obvious change.  Come on, if you don't want us to notice then don't use the same guy, who has the same two pimples on his butt (it looks like he got bit by a vampire on his right cheek).  The best part of this was the old lady in her wheelchair getting pushed down the stairs.

Lesson learned:  Only the sober die young.

Bless your heart, Andrew. That couldn't have been pleasant.  :smile:

Poor Andy Milligan! Not since RKO butchered Orson Welles' THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS has a filmmaker suffered seeing his work bastardized like what producer William Mishkin did to Milligan's SEEDS aka SEEDS OF EVIL. When Milligan delivered his final cut of SEEDS Mishkin decided there was not enough sexiness goings on and so removed about 30 minutes of footage and inserted some low-rent generic sex scenes, leaving some of Milligan's best (?) work on the cigarette butt-covered cutting room floor. 

To prove artistic stupidity can be hereditary, Mishkin's son Lew decided he was sick and tired of paying the ten bucks a month storage fee for the original negatives and prints of Milligan's films - so he burned them. That's why so many of Milligan's films are now considered lost and most of the surviving ones exist only on faded and battered prints found in some demented projectionists' private collections.

The Something Weird DVD release THE GHASTLY ONES/SEEDS OF EVIL double feature contains as a bonus the recently discovered partial work print of SEEDS which contains much of the discarded footage. It reminds me of an early John Waters film without the intentional humor - everybody gets on everyone else nerves, characters have shouting fits for no apparent reason, characters physically attack each other and themselves, etc.

If you ever feel up (or down) to it I highly reccommend listening to the Hal Borske (he played the crazed hunchback) and Frank Henenlotter commentary for THE GHASTLY ONES. To paraphrase Pee Wee Herman, you'll learn things about Milligan and his films you wouldn't understand . . . couldn't understand . . . shouldn't understand . . .
 :teddyr:

the only one I've seen is "guru the mad monk".   it was sort of like john waters meets HG lewis without any of the talent and no comic relief of any kind

Raffine, I knew that you out of anyone would be able to commiserate with me.


I briefly flipped over to the commentary track and decided I would have a go at it another night.  Perhaps that and the "Seeds of Sin" workprint.  There was no way I was up to any more Milligan last night.  However, getting through both of them was odd.  Part of it I will attribute to "The Ghastly Ones" being the best Milligan I've seen, and "Seeds of Sin" being such a change of pace. 

When the one girl was "entertaining" herself while looking at the muscle magazine, I wondered if Arnold could have been in that issue.  The timing (1968) would have been about right with his rise to body building fame.


When I think of Milligan the first film that comes to mind is "The Rats Are Coming!  The Werewolves Are Here!"  After that it is "Guru."  I really need to get the "Guru" DVD, since "Rats" still isn't available on the format.

Egads!  Am I the only person who actually ENJOYS Andy Milligan movies? 

From what I've read, the poor bastard had a lot of issues, but the fact he was able to commit anything even vaguely coherent to film earns my respect.  On Something Weird's version of "The Body Beneath", there is an early short that is oddly disjointed, but very touching when you get to the end.  You can see from that short that he wanted to be an honest to god filmmaker, but he really had problems, mentally and emotionally.

If you want to see a fairly well-made (but don't take that to mean good) Andy Milligan film, try "Carnage."  You can find it on Night Screams, one of Mill Creeks 50 movie sets.

Javakoala, have you read Jimmy McDonough's The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan? It's a terrific biography of Milligan and gives many insights into his rather extreme personality.

Before getting into films Milligan was a pioneer in directing off-off-Broadway productions at the now famous Caffe Cino and the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. If he hadn't hooked up with Mishkin he very likely would be remembered today as an important experimental filmmaker.

That said, I've always found his films a lot of fun, but I can see how their charms can be - er- elusive.  :smile: I especially enjoy the over-the-top performances his stable of actors, in particular Maggie Rogers (GHASTLY ONES), Hal Borske (GHASTLY ONES), Neil Flanagan (GURU), and Gerald Jacuzzo (VAPORS), reliably deliver. I've dug around on the internets and found DVDr copies of TORTURE DUNGEON, THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS, BLOOD, and several other Milligan films not available commercially to the innocent public. 

Shocking Videos http://www.revengeismydestiny.com/index.htm is a great source for all things Milligan. It's also where I got my uncut copy of NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980), the infamous 'Killer Bigfoot' movie. It's also about the only place I know of to get a copy of DEAFULA (1975), but so far I've resisted the temptation . . .

A wise man once said, "If you're an Andy Milligan fan there's no hope for you."

I should really see something by him someday.  He can't be worse than Ted V. Mikels or Ray Dennis Steckler, can he?  CAN HE?

the Guru dvd comes with a short interview of some guy who worked with him talking about how awful it was working with him.  It is a unique movie, I'll give it that.  and there is unintentioanl comedy in the form of his acting and ridiculous face

I would not say that I enjoy them, but watch them for the same reason that people go to see a bearded lady, or the world's largest man.  They are an experience, and they do surprise you at times because they can be incredibly random.

Milligan's films seem to have a slightly better baseline than Mikels or Steckler for me, but each of the other directors has a title that is really memorable, like "Rat Pfink a Boo Boo" or "Girl in the Gold Boots."  None of Milligan's films seem to rise out of their general level of cinematic muck.

On the other hand, I don't think any of Milligan's stuff has caused me pain like "The Incredibly Strange Creatures..."

Ozzymandias speaks: You left out my favorite star of Andy's, Hope Stansbury. Her Monica Mooney in Rats Are Coming The Werewolves Are Here has a place along side Jessica Walter's Evelyn and Sissy Spaceck's Carrie as great psycho women of the 70's.

Ozzymandias has spoken!!!

 :bouncegiggle: :teddyr: :bouncegiggle:

^ stolen from whatever happened to baby Jane

Yep, Stansbury is a great in THE RATS ETC.  Too bad several of Stansbury's Milligan roles are among his lost films and its too bad she was never paired with leather-lunged Maggie Rogers. Imagine the screaming fights those two could have!

One Milligan alum who made good: Berwick Kaler, who was featured in BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS, THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS, THE BODY BENEATH and starred in the lost NIGHTBIRDS, is now a very famous 'pantomime dame' in the York Theater Royal.