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Film students, horror affectionados, critics, art house dwellers and closet Homo's all hate Andy. They tend to focus on the technical aspects of his cinema, not realizing that he did miracles on nothing. But this is an easy target to substitute the truth, Milligan got to the rotten core of the human being and shined a spotlight on it, and it was this that no one liked seeing!!! The great thing about cinema is that it can open us up to the good side as well as the bad of human nature. When cinema is forced to play everything as good, or worse yet good and bad in an even and black and white form, reality is obliterated and you are left with a false presentation. Although Milligan tended to focus on the worst of vices (this mostly due to the exploitation producers wishes) there is a distinct humanistic voice crying out for sanity and justice in Andy's films, we are aware at all times they are made by a living breathing human being, not some executives son dictating scenes to techno-brats who drum them up on a computer!
COMPASS ROSE (1967) Rare as rare can be, here is Andy Milligans unfinished masterpiece which takes a critical aim at the Andy Warhol /Factory scene. Loaded with nudity and vicious hate filled talk, it's a classic Milligan drama showing the human race to be vile and intrustable. Now, bare in mind this film is unfinished, it editing is complete as far as story telling goes, but it doesn't have credits and a final sound mix, which in turn renders the sound lousy, not that lousy sound recording was something Milligan was alien to. One of the rarest titles I can offer you, hop on it now, especially if your a Milligan fan. |ORDER| SEEDS (1968): The dysfunctional family as explored by Milligan but could have been written by Cinefear's own Larry Koster. Mental case matriarch of a large family unleashes bad feelings when it is revealed that all her kids had different fathers. This flick was lost for many years but SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO has released a copy on DVD that had been released and altered by Aquarious Releasing. The disc also features an incomplete work prin tthat they had to assemble themselves from various footage they found. See their website in my links section. THE GHASTLY ONES (1968): Milligan's masterpiece about a reading of the will and the mass slaughter that occurs while awaiting the lawyer to show up. Gruesome gore and uncut, this flick has all the Milligan stops pulled out: Fags acting ridicules, wife abuse, rape, and folk getting disemboweled, pitchforked, cleavers in the head, you name it, it happens. We are introduced to another Andy staple, an idiot hunchback who eats rabbits, kills people without provocation and ends up set on fire by some cackling old biddy (maybe representing Andy's mom). Both film and it's equally great trailer are available from me, CINEFEAR VIDEO. |ORDER| BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS (1969): The Holy Grail of Milligan films. His take on Sweeny Todd done long before Broadway made Mr. Todd a singing sensation. Todd, Ms. Lovett and their brutal assistant Tibias chop up their enemies and bake them into meat pies!!! The highlight involves some poor victorian schmuck finding a woman's breast in his meat pie. I should be so lucky. Cheap gore abounds but those low life Mishkins cut some of the heavier stuff to accommodate an R rating. Milligan pokes fun at Mishkin when he presents a cheap and lying Jewelry dealer with an unidentifiable Eastern European accent! I would do the same thing in my film The Bloody Ape many years later only I took a bigger beating for it. Milligan himself dubs the sound of a dog barking early on in the film, there is no doubt about it, that is a human being imitating a dog! Get your copy from CINEFEAR while it's hot!!! |ORDER|
GURU, THE MAD MONK (1970): A crazed monk and his lady assistant (who, incidentally is a vampire!) run a penal colony and attempt to reform the prisoners through prayer and extreme torture. The best part of this film is the amazing performance by super gay Neil Flanagan, who like Milligan was married but gay as a blade. I guess super catholic irish males really had trouble coming to grips with their homosexuality. Supposedly shot on 35 mm, but I have my doubts. The gore effects include a clowny eye gauging and an equally cheesy decapitation. Fun and easy to endure as it runs a little over 60 minutes. As always, CINEFEAR is on hand to supply you with a copy, this tape coming from the man himself, Bad Andy. |ORDER| THE BODY BENEATH (1970): Shot in Highgate cemetery in England, Andy made this film for the British Cinemedia Productions. A vampire who calls himself Reverend Ford prepares to migrate to America with his tribe of vampires. Some very atmospheric scenes of green faced vampires roaming the cemetery make this one of the better entries into Milligan terrain. Not very heavy on gore but well shot and erie. Again, a hunchback gets the shit kicked out of him and is then set on fire. What's the deal with flaming hunchbacks!!! Available through CINEFEAR, yet SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO has announced a DVD that will include trailers for other Andy flicks, so keep your eyes peeled! |ORDER|
THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! (1972): Originally to be called the Curse of the Full Moon, Andy shot the bulk of this over in England while working on Body Beneath. A family of wealthy imbreeders look forward to ending the family curse, Lycanthropy. As usual, Mishkin gave this flick a title that would cash in on the success of Ben the very same year. Uncle Bill had Andy insert some footage of killer rats into the film, hence legitimizing the title. Andy himself plays a wacky dime store shop owner who ends up eaten by the rats. The film is notorious for the scene where by a little white mouse is butchered on camera, a real cheap attempt at shock by any director. Milligan would pull this cheap shot again in Blood. FLESHPOT ON 42nd STREET (1973): This film was available in both a nudy and hardcore version. This is Milligans take on the Flesh, Trash and Heat films of Paul Morissy, only better. A very sympathetic portrayal of marginal and prostitutes in the big apple. A young Harry (Deep Throat) Reems appears under a different name as the sympathetic boyfriend of a girl gone wrong. Someone should really track Reems down and interview him, he has a past in Exploitation cinema that can not be beat. He worked with Milligan and the clowny Doris Wishman. He broke the barriers of porn down in his work with the terrific Gerry Damiano. I hear now that he is an evangelical preacher, the flip side of the porno star but still powered by the narcissistic sickness inherent in both porn stars and preachers. Anyhow, Neil Flannagen steals the show as a drag queen who takes a beating after soliciting a male john unaware of his tricks true gender. A funny line in the film mentions how "Irish women are frigid" I guess thrown into the film as a compliment to Andy's mom. I dated Irish before, when they are passionate, you can't beat them, but when they are angry, they beat you! Only available in it's softcore form, get it from CINEFEAR and then take a shower when it is over. |ORDER| BLOOD (1974): Said to be Milligan's highest budget, a whopping $20,000 dollars, this is a fun and easy to endure film. It seems as Milligans budgets got higher his films ran shortly, and this could be a blessing in disguise. You read plot synopsis's for this one before, so I'll keep it brief. Dracula's sickly daughter marries the Wolfmans hammy son and together they raise killer plants in an effort to extract the life giving fluid that acts as a substitute for the blood Dracs daughter craves. Needless to say, nothing beats the real thing and she goes off her diet! The usual abuse of the handicapped ensues, with a retarded housemaid who needs beatings to keep her in line and a man with no legs who rides around on a dolly acting as the Wolfmans loyal assistant. Best part involves the lady vampire chopping off some old farts hands by closing a trunk door on them! Very, very funny scene. Milligan does have a sense of humor, only he is very sly about it. Exclusive from CINEFEAR, and a real nice print to boot. Get yours now!!! |ORDER|
MONSTROSITY (1988): A true CINEFEAR exclusive, but not my personal favorite, way too silly and disjointed (click HERE to see part of the real script). A young man, whose girlfriend is killed by LA street thugs, builds a Golem (who looks like Ronald McDonald) to kill off the criminals. The Golem gets a junkie girlfriend who is killed by his creator because she is making the Golem to soft in his nature. The Golem blows his top and wipes out the rest of the cast. True, this film is very sentimental and probably Andy's biggest protest film. A very funny scene has the creator trying to toughen his creation up by flashing Rambo and Commando posters before his face, and promoting militarism. The creator and his friends are all disgusting jock boy Americana types who make you want to barf, the monster is really the only nice guy. Milligan appears in a behind the scenes ending that tries to come off like the ending of Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain, only failing in really making any kind of point. Some say this is Milligans heart laid out for us all to see, but I have trouble getting past it being anything more than a Toxic Avenger rip off, and I really hated that film as well. WEIRDO (1989): Now, this is an altogether different story, as this is truly one of Milligans best most heartfelt creations. An outcast and his handicapped girlfriend get constant abuse from a prejudiced and ignorant society, finally resulting in a massacre when the outcast loses his cool! Milligan must of at times felt empathy with the handicapped as he seems to identify with the abuse and intolerance they suffer. Not since Browning's Freaks has the outcast been shown in such a sympathetic light. The handicapped girl cries out "why can't people be nice to each other" while witnessing a mother beat her young daughter. As always, CINEFEAR to the rescue. |ORDER| SURGIKILL (1989): A horror comedy set in a hospital. It has Milligan touches in that it pokes fun at the greed and insensitivity of hospitals, but it is ruined by the Jewish fratboy humor most likely penned by story writer Sherman Hirsh. Farts, bed pan jokes and pee pee humor, all the stuff that didn't make me laugh as a kid and still does not make me laugh today. Porn star Joey Silvera can be seen wondering around as an orderly, but he does not use this name on the credits. In case your interested in the plot, it involves a killer offing patients and doctors in a poorly run hospital. Despite the appreciated attacks on hospitals, the stupid Troma inspired humor sucks, making this flick as bad as Monstrosity. |ORDER| Note of interest, screenwriter Hirsch wrote me some time ago to say that Milligan added that toilet humor, he claimed he had nothing to do with it. He's here to tell the story, so we'll have to side with him on this one!
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ANDY'S AVAILABLE FILMS
VAPORS (1965): Andy's 40 minute take on the gay culture of the village circa 1960's. Two men meet in a gay bathhouse and chat. One man, Mr. Jaffe (Robert Dahdah) may or may not lead a straight life, as each story he relates to Thomas (Gerarld Jacuzzo, a Milligan regular) gets more and more demented, leading one to assume that Jaffe is a closet homosexual acting out. The suspense built in this short film masterpiece is nerve shattering. This film is a real eye opener as it helped me identify my own Mr. Jaffe! A guy at my former day job behaved that exact same way Jaffe does in this film, telling stories that may or may not be true, talking of being married with kids yet displaying nothing but disdain for his wife. Super effeminate and overtly concerned with his own looks, a homosexual in hiding, and hating every minute of it. Thanks to Milligan, this film is a blueprint for the closet queen. By understanding what I was dealing with, I could get along with this fellow because I knew his dilemma and therefore would not internalize his abuses. Available from me, CINEFEAR VIDEO, and I can add another Milligan title of your choice to the tape as it runs so short. 
TORTURE DUNGEON (1969): Milligan's theatrical faggots are back in this dime store version of the Tower of London. Gerry Jacuzzo, of Vapors fame, plays a fruity Duke killing his way up the ladder of progress in this historical horror. The highlight of this flick is the gruesome dungeon where all the Dukes victims are kept. The makeup's are very disturbing, perhaps Andy's best. Another great scene involves the murder of Milligan regular Hal Borsk, who plays the mentally retarded nose picking prince next in line for the throne. He gets a wooden stake hammered through his chest on his wedding night! 
THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS (1972): When I first saw this flick back in the early eighties, I was quite disappointed! The main reason being that the title is misleading, the film being a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, not a man with two heads in sight. On top of that, story teller Barry Kaufman in his long defunct Demonique magazine gave a misleading review of the film that told of a two headed man who's second cranium craved blood and had meat dripping out of it's mouth?!!! I still have no clue as to what film he saw if he saw any at all! Anyhow, Andy made this film as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Blood, it was the leader in good business ethics William Mishkin who gave it the other idiotic title, attempting to cash in on such films as The Incredible Two Headed Transplant and TheThing With Two Heads. This is one of Andy's best written films, with misogonistic dialogue definite to tickle your funny bone (even if you are a woman). One of the most hallucinogenic scenes ever shot by Andy involves Mr. Blood's night in an S&M brothel. The sex gets so wild people end up mutilating one another. Unfortunately, the Mishkins cut the gore quota so they could release this with a PG. rating?!!! What parent in their right mind would take their child to a Milligan film. I'd at least wait till they were 12 years old.
CARNAGE (1983): A 35mm production that is more American gothic than period piece. The incredible Bill Landis acted as a focus puller on this one. A stormy relationship ends up in death, and the couples ghost haunt the house and commit terrible atrocities on the new owners. After all these years, nothing changes, a Milligan film looks the same as it did 13 years earlier. At one time I sort of criticized Andy for this, now I fully acknowledge this as Andy's calling card, his true sense of style. It is so unflashy, unpretentious, and honest you can not help but love it. Over the years and depending on my mood I either praised or condemned Milligan, as sometimes I felt he was lazy and in contempt of his audience. Well, I no longer believe he is lazy but he did hold contempt for his audience, which is very understandable, as his films were being made for the grindhouse dwellers, people he had a love / hate relationship with. Remember, there are two Andy's, the in the closet moralist and then the out of control faggot who might blow you in a men's room. The highlights of this gorefest involve saurkraut being pulled out of a mans stomach as it is cut into with scissors. It supposed to be intestine but it is sauerkraut. CINEFEAR'S got it for you. 
MILLIGAN'S MISSING MADNESS |
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