Sight&Sound - 04.2020

April 2020 | Sight&Sound | 21

The schlocky,

amateurish art of

Andy Milligan (far

left, in red shirt) has

been championed

by director Nicolas

Winding Refn (below)

‘good movie’ – on Blu-ray, tucking away his
slightly more characteristic ranting vampire
movie The Body Beneath (1970) as an extra.
Milligan’s work is both exactly as Bissette
and Winter describe it, and worthy of the sort
of attention bestowed on it by McDonough, the
Flipside and longtime admirer Nicolas Winding
Refn (the director of Drive and The Neon Demon
who has played a behind-the-scenes role in all
these Milligan-related projects). After working
in fringe New York theatre in the early 1960s,
Milligan turned to the movies with a gay-themed
short, Vapors (1965), that might conceivably
have been programmed with the works of Andy
Warhol, Jack Smith or Kenneth Anger. Then he
scratched the filmmaking itch with horror and/or
sex films, mostly made on Staten Island: The Naked
Witch (1967), The Degenerates (1967), The Ghastly
Ones (1968), Torture Dungeon (1970). He relocated
to England for a few years and continued working

• completely outside even the lower depths of
  the British film industry – on gruesome gothics.
  Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970) and The Man With
  Two Heads (1972) are his distinctive takes on
  Sweeney Todd and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
  Back in NY, Milligan ploughed on with monster
  movies. Blood (1973) features Dracula’s daughter
  and the Son of the Wolf Man, while The Rats Are
  Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972) revised
  its family curse because Milligan’s distributors
  wanted him to cash in on the brief vogue for rat-
  related horrors prompted by Daniel Mann’sWillard

(1970). By the end of the decade, he was recycling

• remaking The Ghastly One (1968), a gruesome-
  old-dark-house gothic, as Legacy of Blood (1978), and
  abandoning House of Seven Belles (1979), which Refn
  has recovered from limbo and showcased online.
  In the direct-to-video era, Milligan came back for
  Carnage (1984), Monstrosity (1987), The Weirdo (1989)
  and Surgikill (1989), which even fans of, say, Gutter
  Trash (1969) and Guru, the Mad Monk (1970) deem
  close to unwatchable. He finally achieved his secret
  ambition of making films everyone would hate.
  Compared with the vaguely genial, mostly dull
  nostalgia of his contemporary Al Adamson (Blood
  of Ghastly Horror, 1967; Dracula vs. Frankenstein,
  1971), Milligan’s horrors seethe uncomfortably:
  ugly, angry films by a driven, difficult creator;
  every scratched frame and botched splice only
  makes them uglier and angrier. There’s no
  camp, condescending Milligan cult to match
  the devotion bestowed on oddballs like Ed
  Wood or fakers like Herschell Gordon Lewis. It’s
  impossible to laugh at or with Milligan’s hatchet
  jobs, but they stick in the mind. John Waters,
  who made the films Milligan might have if he’d
  got over his inner fury, once described the works
  of Marguerite Duras as the sort of films your
  friends won’t forgive you for recommending they
  sit through. Milligan’s work is further out than
  that, but he’s still a considerable, unique auteur.
  The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld
  of Director Andy Milligan is published
  next month. Details: fabpress.com

‘Andy led a controversial, violent,

erotic life that combusted in a

painful, lonely death. His story

is a rather compelling and

strangely entertaining one’

Nicolas Winding Refn

‘

Artists are

nasty. When

we’re working,

I’m a monster –

and I know that

• but it’s the

only way you

can get it done

for that money.

Low-budget

means you can’t

do it again’

Andy Milligan

‘

Although there are the usual

laughable Milligan moments, the

intimate, melancholy mood gets

under the skin’

Jimmy McDonough on Nightbirds