MILLIGAN MARCH: TOGA PARTY (1977) *

According to the opening crawl accompanying the Blu-ray, Toga Party was originally filmed as a softcore comedy called Pelvis.  Distributor William Mishkin then changed the title to Toga Party to cash in on the popularity of Animal House and hired Andy Milligan to shoot some new inserts to spice things up.  The original cast, unaware of the new scenes, caused an uproar at the premiere, and the film faded into obscurity.  

Farm boy Pervis (Luther “Bud” Whaney) leaves home to go to New York and become a country star.  He only has one song (about fucking a chicken) and can’t seem to get his foot in the door.  Eventually, he becomes a singing sensation, but drugs threaten to derail it all.  Fortunately for Pervis, his gal from back home, Betty Lou (Mary Jenifer Mitchell) shows up to snap some sense into him. Porn star Bobby Astyr (the only actor who appears in both the new and old footage) stars in the Milligan-lensed framing sequences as Pervis’ former manager, Snake who reminisces about Pervis during the titular toga party.  

The cast of the original film, Pelvis might’ve been upset that the newly shot material sucked, but it’s honestly just as bad as the old footage.  There’s just enough toga partying in the new scenes to justify the title, but it’s all ill-fitting to say the least.  It’s obvious this was a hatchet job as the linking material to the new and old footage is tenuous at best.  The new scenes have an OK amount of T & A, although that’s about all it has going for it.  (Comedy is not Milligan’s strong suit.)  

The old footage is often a chore to sit through.  The humor is lame, forced, or just plain unfunny.  If you laugh at pie fights, fast-motion chase scenes, and Wizard of Oz references you may enjoy it, but it’s all pretty dire for the most part.  (I did like the Iron Eyes Cody gag though.)  It doesn’t help that Pelvis’ faux-Elvis demeanor is paper-thin and can’t sustain an entire movie (or even half of one).  Heck, the movie is so bad, it can’t even manage to play out the tried-and-true rise-and-fall-of-a-popstar cliches in a coherent manner.

Milligan Motifs:  Since Milligan was only responsible for the wraparound sequences, there’s none of his typical touches here.

Milligan Stock Players:  Milligan mainstay Hal Borske appears in one of the Milligan-shot scenes.

AKA:  Pelvis.  AKA:  Disco Madness.  AKA:  All Dressed in Rubber.  

Well folks, we’ve finally reached the end of Milligan March.  (I’ve been running late posting these reviews as I took a little sabbatical from reviewing over Spring Break.)  Here is my ranking of the Milligan movies I’ve seen:  

MILLIGAN MARCH MADNESS RANKING

1. Fleshpot on 42nd Street ***

2. Nightbirds ***

3. Blood ** ½ 

4. Seeds ** ½ 

5. The Man with 2 Heads ** ½ 

6. The Body Beneath ** ½ 

7. Carnage **

8. Vapors **

9. Legacy of Blood * ½ 

10. Torture Dungeon * ½ 

11. Bloodthirsty Butchers * ½ 

12. The Ghastly Ones *

13. Guru the Mad Monk *

14. Toga Party *

15. The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here NO STARS

Next (this) month’s theme will be another crossover with the Tubi Continued… column.  It’s called Amityville April.  I’ll be trying to watch and review all the fake (and maybe a few official) Amityville movies Tubi has to offer.  See you then…

MILLIGAN MARCH: BLOOD (1973) ** ½

I originally reviewed Andy Milligan’s Blood back on May 15th, 2018.  Here’s my initial thoughts on the film, followed by some notes I made for Milligan March:

BLOOD  (1973)  ** ½

Blood is one of Andy Milligan’s best movies, which is telling.  It’s a slapdash, low budget horror flick set primarily in one location that features crummy effects and inconsistent acting.  Some parts are out of focus.  Others are too dark to see.  Sometimes the actors flub their lines.  Other times their dialogue doesn’t match their lip movements.  All this makes the film more enjoyable, not less.  If you’ve ever sat through Milligan’s atrocious The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here, this will seem like Citizen Kane by comparison.

Lawrence Orlofsky (Allen Berendt) moves his wife Regina (Hope Stansbury) and his gaggle of assistants into his ancestral home.  Almost immediately, they begin performing experiments on bloodthirsty plants to keep Regina looking youthful and vibrant.  When Lawrence starts making eyes at a pretty secretary (Pamela Adams), it sends Regina into a jealous rage.

Milligan’s Everything but the Kitchen Sink method is admirable.  Just when you start to get restless, he’ll toss in another improbable (but amusing) plot wrinkle.  (I wouldn’t dream of revealing why Orlofsky had to change his name.)  No matter how shoddy the production looks, I can’t in good conscience dismiss a movie that features mad scientists, vampires, AND man-eating plants.

Even at a relatively scant 69 minutes, the pacing starts to sag about halfway through.  The claustrophobic location doesn’t help matters either.  That said, there’s at least one memorable moment involving a mouse that will make your jaw drop.  While most of the performers are wooden and/or stilted, Stansbury is rather charming as the vampiric lady of the house.  The ending, though brief and anticlimactic makes me wish it had been on a double feature with Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein instead of the crappy Legacy of Satan.

MILLIGAN MARCH NOTES:  

1) As cheesy as most of the movie is, the initial reveal of the vampire lady’s decrepit face is effective.  

2) I wasn’t particularly taken with Hope Stansbury’s work in Milligan’s The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here, but she is a straight-up fox in this movie.  I know she’s high maintenance and all (you’ve got to keep her supplied with fresh blood on a daily basis), but I think she’d be worth it.  

3) The pacing is rather erratic.  There are stretches where not much happens and then when something does, it occurs so fast that it’s enough to give you whiplash, which at least keeps you on your toes.  

4) The brief, sixty-nine-minute running time certainly helps, but sometimes the editing is so frantic that I have to wonder if there wasn’t a gorier cut at some point as the film (while it still has a couple of memorable gore scenes) isn’t quite as gory as your average Milligan flick.

5) As with many of Milligan’s pictures, things begin to stall the more time that’s spent on unnecessary supporting characters.  When Milligan is focusing on sexy vampire women, werewolves, and man-eating plants, it’s good, cheesy fun.  

Milligan Motifs:  This is yet another period costume drama/horror movie Milligan made in Staten Island that uses a lot of library music as part of the score.  Like many of his films, someone inevitably gets a meat cleaver to the skull and/or has their hands hacked off.  As with The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here, there’s a scene where a mouse is killed. 

Milligan Stock Players:  In addition to starring in The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here, Hope Stansbury also wrote Vapors for Milligan.  

AKA:  Black Nightmare in Blood.

MILLIGAN MARCH: CARNAGE (1984) **

Here’s my original review of Carnage as it first appeared on November 12th, 2008, followed by some additional notes I made as I watched the film as part of Milligan March:  

CARNAGE  (1984)  **

A couple commits suicide while dressed in their wedding clothes in their new house.  Years later another pair of newlyweds moves in and almost right away, the house starts exhibiting some peculiarities.  Doors don’t stay closed, teacups move around by themselves, and the phonograph ominously plays “Here Comes the Bride”.  Eventually we learn that the deceased couple is haunting the place and they want the latest tenants to die so they can become ghostified and live with them forever.

Low budget horror director Andy (The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here) Milligan was actually working with something of a budget on this film and the results really aren’t too bad at all.  The biggest gripe I had was with the sluggish pacing and the fact that the actors were all amateurish and extremely unphotogenic.  That’s okay though because Carnage had enough (unintentional) laughs to keep me semi-entertained for 90 minutes.

The funniest part comes when the spirits toss a radio into the bathtub on some poor unsuspecting dope.  The fact that he is clearly wearing underwear during this scene is funny enough but the fact that the radio is playing an all-accordion version of Elvis’ “Now or Never” makes it that much more bizarre.  I also highly enjoyed the scene where the cleaning woman gets pelted with a whole bunch of supernatural Silly String for no good reason whatsoever.  

The main “scary” thing the ghosts do is make things move around by themselves.  It looks as stupid as it sounds, but at least when the ghosts starts levitating axes, pitchforks and meat cleavers, people end up losing body parts left and right.  (The decapitation scene is particularly shitdiculous).  There’s also a juicy self-induced throat slashing in there too for good measure as well.

Yeah the effects are terrible (the ghosts appear via jump cuts and the levitating objects are obviously being held up by strings), but that doesn’t make the flick altogether unwatchable.  While parts of the film WERE a chore to sit through, it did feature enough gore to justify its title.  It’s far from the worst Milligan movie I’ve seen, that’s damn skippy.  

MILLIGAN MARCH NOTES:  

1) The opening murder/suicide scene is semi-effective and feels much more like a “real” movie than many of Milligan’s homegrown productions.

2) The scenes where the everyday household objects move around on the new homeowners to mildly inconvenience them are kind of funny.  I feel like this is the kind of shit real ghosts would do.  You know, like hide the new tenant’s car keys just long enough to make them late for the dentist and force them to reschedule.  Got to love petty poltergeists.  

3) The scene where the bloody bride randomly appears and sprays the housekeeper in the face with cobwebs (it looks like Silly String) are semi-amusing, but not quite laugh-out-loud funny.

4) The gore is decent, but the transfer on the Blu-ray is so good that you can see the seams of the make-up during the throat slashing and the visible wires when the guy’s guts are being ripped out by the “invisible” ghost.  

5) While the stuff that takes place inside the house is semi-entertaining, whenever it cuts away to other family members squabbling about their own problems, the pace slows down to a crawl.

6) So far, I’ve referred to Carnage as “semi-effective”, “semi-amusing”, and “semi-entertaining”.  That about sums it up.  Close, but no cigar.  However, when Andy Milligan is making horror movies, close, but no cigar is about nearest he can get to a bull’s eye.  

Milligan Motifs:  Carnage is yet another Andy Milligan production that was filmed in Staten Island that's filled with library music on the soundtrack.  The gore is consistent with other Milligan films as it features all the pitchforking, hacked off hands, and meat cleavers to the skull you’ve come to expect from the man.  The concept of three married couples staying in a spooky old house is a theme that constantly recycles throughout Milligan’s work and the death in the bathtub owes a debt to the one in Seeds.

Milligan Stock Players:  Leslie Den Dooven was later in Milligan’s short, Adventures of Red Rooster.  

MILLIGAN MARCH: VAPORS (1965) **

Vapors is Andy Milligan’s first film.  It’s a gay-themed short set in a New York bath house populated by men who are on the make.  A lonely man named Thomas (Gerald Jacuzzo) hangs out in one of the rooms where he meets the married Mr. Jaffee (Robert Dahdah).  Together, they sit and talk about their lives and occasionally are interrupted by the customers who are looking for a quick place to hook up.

Although the customers who roam the halls are portrayed rather broadly, the interactions between Thomas and Mr. Jaffee seem genuine and well-intentioned for the most part.  I’m sure this felt revelatory at the time just for because it showed gay men being gay men.  Despite there being a nice moment or two, the whole thing just never quite gels.  

The film was based on a play by Hope Stansbury (who also appeared in Milligan’s The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here), and it feels very stage bound and talky at times.  What might’ve worked on stage for an act, just isn’t compelling as a short.  While Jacuzzo and Dahdah have chemistry together, Stansbury’s dialogue often lets them down.  Jacuzzo is strong, but Dahdah is merely adequate, and he doesn’t quite sell his longwinded story about the death of his son, which robs the ending of its potential impact.  The scene where they play “This Little Piggy” is rather awkward too.  I don’t know if Milligan was trying to make this scene flirtatious or what, but it just comes off as a cringey interaction.  Maybe that was the intention all along.  I’m not sure.  

Milligan does capture the atmosphere rather well.  The performers seemed game enough too.  Maybe if the material had been better fleshed out, it would’ve stuck the landing.  As it is, it remains an interesting, if only fitfully successful curiosity.   

Milligan Motifs:  Milligan would make movies with gay themes on and off for the entirety of his career.  

Milligan Stock Players:  Dahdah had a small role in The Body Beneath, Jacuzzo was in several Milligan productions (most notably Torture Dungeon), Hal Sherwood also turned up in The Ghastly Ones, and Hal Borske appeared in a bunch of Andy’s stuff.

MILLIGAN MARCH: SEEDS (1968) ** ½

The old, horrible, alcoholic, wheelchair bound matriarch (Maggie Rogers) of a family of no-good louts goes ballistic when she learns her scheming children (whom she calls “bad seeds”) will be visiting her for Christmas.  After a thoroughly unpleasant dinner, the children retire to their rooms where we see that their mother has good reason to be upset as they basically act like sex-mad degenerates.  Before long, family members wind up being bumped off by an unseen killer, adding to the familial strife.   

Seeds is essentially the prototypical Andy Milligan movie.  It has a lot of the themes that would permeate his work, namely domineering mothers, incest, and a family with a checkered history gathering under one roof, only to be stalked by a killer.  When Milligan worked through those themes later in his career, it was usually in films full of garish color, cheesy costumes, and cheap gore.  What makes this one work slightly better than his later stuff is that the gritty, handheld, black and white aesthetic of Seeds feels better suited to the themes Milligan is exploring.  Whereas his later pictures felt like amateurish home movies parading around as horror, this feels like underground cinema that was mis-marketed as sexploitation. 

For example, the scenes of Candy Hammond (Milligan’s wife) taking a bath, reading muscleman magazines in the nude, and seducing her own siblings is the sort of thing you would expect to see in a New York skin flick at the time.  However, the fringy touches Milligan lends to these sequences sometimes makes it feel closer to Andy Warhol than Michael Findlay.  The acting is better too (for the most part), even if most of the cast is prone to over-the-top histrionics.  

Seeds still suffers from many of the same flaws that mar many of Milligan’s pictures.  Namely, the pacing drags considerably thanks to the overly talky nature of the film.  While it might not be up to snuff with his sexploitation work like Nightbirds or Fleshpot on 42nd Street, it’s a little bit more offbeat, interesting, and better than his straight-up horror films like Torture Dungeon and The Ghastly Ones.  

Milligan Motifs:  As far as the story goes, we have a domineering mother figure, incest, a family gathering where a killer begins picking them off one by one, and servants who are secretly scheming against their employer.  On the technical side of things, it was yet another one of the films that Milligan made in Staten Island.  Also, his knack for using library music, allowing his actors to give overly theatrical performances, awkwardly adding in “hot” inserts into the lovemaking scenes, and odd camera placement (sometimes it feels like you’re looking directly up at the actors) crop up again.

Milligan Stock Company:  Hammond was also in Milligan’s Gutter Trash, The Promiscuous Sex, and Compass Rose.  Rogers was also in Tricks of the Trade, The Ghaslty Ones, and most memorably, Torture Dungeon.  Neil Flanagan appeared in a slew of his movies including Guru the Mad Monk, Torture Dungeon, and Fleshpot on 42nd Street.  

AKA:  Seeds of Sin.

MILLIGAN MARCH: FLESHPOT ON 42ND STREET (1972) ***

Dusty (Laura Cannon) is growing restless from being shacked up with Tony (Last House on the Left), so she robs him blind (but not before balling him first) and splits.  She then hocks his valuables at a pawn shop and proceeds to rob the owner blind (but not before balling him first).  Dusty then bumps into her drag queen friend Candy (Neil Flanagan from Guru the Mad Monk) who lets her crash at her apartment where she turns tricks to help out with the rent.  Things seemingly change for the better when Dusty falls head over heels for a rich Wall Street lawyer named Bob (Harry Reems).  Predictably, her newfound happiness will not last very long.

I don’t know if bleak is the right word for this drama.  Maybe realistic is a better fit.  After seeing so many of writer/director Andy Milligan’s fanciful horror flicks, Fleshpot of 42nd Street is kind of a shock.  I mean that in a good way.  I think it’s funny that he spent so much time and money (OK, maybe not money) making those period horror movies when his real strength seems to be in the gritty sex film market.  As with Nightbirds, he shows he has a knack for capturing the squalor and despair of lost souls living on the fringes of society who use sex as a survival mechanism.  

Milligan’s period horror films are marked by overly theatrical performances and hammy dialogue.  Fleshpot on 42nd Street is proof that when he’s working with naturalistic actors who say dialogue that sounds like actual human conversation, the results can be truly worthwhile.  Make no mistake, this isn’t exactly a classic.  If anything, it’s a better than average sexploitation drama.  However, compared to the majority of Milligan’s other films, it’s some Turner Classic Movies type shit.   

The film also benefits from an interesting cast which is comprised of actors from Doris Wishman movies, porn stars, co-stars from Last House on the Left (which came out the same year), and porn stars that co-starred in Last House on the Left.  Cannon (who also appeared with Reems in Forced Entry) is great in the lead, but it's Flanagan who steals the movie as Cherry, the drag queen with a heart of gold.  As awful as he was in Guru the Mad Monk, he is terrific here as he lends a touch of dignity to what could’ve otherwise been a stereotypical character.  He also provides a gratuitous plug for Milligan’s previous films when he tells Cannon says they should take in a double feature of Torture Dungeon and Bloodthirsty Butchers.

Surprisingly enough, the sex scenes are probably the weakest part of the movie.  There are some hardcore inserts during a couple of the sex scenes, but the camerawork is awkward and the editing is jarring, which ruins the intended impact.  Whenever the characters are conversing in between the sex, Fleshpot of 42nd Street really comes alive.  

Milligan Motifs:  Not many, other than the use of stock library music and the fact it was partially shot on Staten Island.

Milligan Stock Company:  Neil Flanagan was the primary repeat offender.  

AKA:  Erotic Diary of a Happy Hooker.  AKA:  Flashpot on 42nd Street.  AKA:  The Girls of 42nd Street.  

MILLIGAN MARCH: LEGACY OF BLOOD (1978) * ½

You know, I thought I had seen this one already, but as it turns out, I was thinking of the OTHER Legacy of Blood, which starred John Carradine and Faith Domergue.  I can’t really blame myself for the confusion since both films are about family members gathering in an old house for the reading of a will.  This feeling of déjà vu was only heightened once I discovered (about fifteen minutes in) that this was, in fact, writer/director Andy Milligan’s loose remake of his own movie, The Ghastly Ones.  

Three sisters receive word they must convene at their former hometown for the reading of their late father’s will.  It states they must stay at their old mansion on an isolated island with their husbands for three days before they can receive their inheritance.  The servants resent the siblings being there, and their simpleminded brother, Carl (Chris Broderick) is extremely agitated by their sudden appearance.  Eventually, the family members begin being bumped off by an unseen killer.

I’m not against Milligan remaking The Ghastly Ones, especially as it is one of the lesser films in his repertoire, and there was definitely room for improvement.  However, he does a big disservice to the audience by taking an inordinate amount of time to get the ball rolling.  Say what you will about The Ghastly Ones, but at least it came right out of the gate with a gore scene.  This one makes you wait until the last ten minutes of the movie to make with the guts and gore (not counting the mauling of the poor bunny rabbit).  Til then, you’ve got to sit through a lot of painfully dull dialogue scenes filled with amateurish acting.  

To be fair, it is a slight improvement on the original (although that wasn’t exactly hard to do).  Once people start dropping like flies, Milligan does pepper the film with a modicum of atmosphere.  The Dutch angles and quirky lighting are moderately effective during these sequences.  The gore (when it finally happens) is pretty good too.  One guy gets his guts sawed out, there’s a decapitation, a pitchforking, a hand hacking, and (the funniest) an accidental meat cleaver to the head.  Unfortunately, it’s just a case of too little, too late for it to really come together.

Also included on the Blu-ray is the alternate TV/video cut, called Legacy of Horror.  Again, I’m not a total masochist, so I didn’t sit and watch the whole thing.  However, it did look as though it had been stripped of all the gore (the only reason for it to exist in the first place).  It also ran six minutes longer, which means there are even more dull dialogue scenes than the original cut (probably added in to fill a television time slot).  

Milligan Motifs:  This is yet another costume drama/period piece/horror movie filmed on Staten Island.  Since it is a remake of The Ghastly Ones, the idea of a family with a fractured history and the reading of a will is once again trotted out.  Also, a guy gets nailed to the wall and skewered with a pitchfork.  

Milligan Stock Players:  Other than Milligan himself, who appears in a cameo as a mailman, I didn’t spot any of his usual cast of characters.    

AKA:  Legacy of Horror.

MILLIGAN MARCH: GURU THE MAD MONK (1970) *

Guru (Neal Flanagan) is a corrupt priest who is willing to do stuff like save your condemned girlfriend’s life if the price is right.  Sometimes, that price may be stealing cadavers or securing blood for a vampire woman.  You know how it is.  However, Guru is slowly going mad, and his condition is made worse when the Church replaces him with a younger priest.

Guru the Mad Monk starts off with an avalanche of exposition and it never quite recovers.  Although it’s only fifty-six minutes long, it might’ve actually benefitted from some more fleshing out.  I mean, you remember the old show biz motto:  Show us, not tell us?  Well, when you’re working with budgets as low as Andy Milligan did, all you can afford to do is tell us.  Even with all the plot-heavy verbal diarrhea the characters spout, it's still hard for the audience to get their bearings.  It also doesn’t help that the narrative is quite choppy, and Milligan rushes from scene to scene so quickly that you’re often in catch-up mode.  And while the movie may be less than an hour long, it feels much longer thanks to the community theater level acting, high school drama costumes, and awful dialogue.  

It also features some of the worst gore effects of Milligan’s career (which is a bold statement if there ever was one).  The eyeball poking scene is some grade school level shit and the scene where a prisoner’s hands are hacked off might go down in cinema history as the worst special effect of all time.  To make matters worse, the gore scenes are all too brief.  It’s almost like Milligan forgot to put them in there and then just tossed a couple crappy effects in at the last minute.  (If you blink, you’ll miss a really shitty decapitation.)

Flanagan is just awful in the lead.  If Guru really was deranged as the title suggests, we might’ve been in business.  However, we just never buy him as a Looney Tune.  The scene where he talks to himself and his evil personality in the mirror feels more like a filmed rehearsal than something that any director in their right mind would put into their finished product.  

When I originally reviewed this back in ’07, I gave it No Stars.  Nowadays, I’m not as harsh as I used to be, although I still say Milligan’s The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here is still one of the worst pieces of shit ever made.  I wouldn’t put this on the same level as that crapfest as it’s not nearly as reprehensible (no animals are tortured this time out, thankfully), but it’s still one of Milligan’s worst, which is REALLY saying something.  

Milligan Motifs:  This was another one of Milligan’s no-budget costume dramas parading as a horror movie.  It’s also the second Milligan movie in a row with a typo in the opening credits (“Sreenplay”).  We also have a villain with a hunchback assistant, characters who have thick modern New York accents in 19th century Europe, and someone gets nailed to a wall.  

Milligan Stock Company:  Flanagan was in a bunch of Milligan flicks from The Ghastly Ones on up to Torture Dungeon and Gerald Jacuzzo, who plays the new priest, was also in Torture Dungeon and The Man with 2 Heads.

Here's a reprint of my original review of the film, which was first posted on August 18th, 2007:

GURU THE MAD MONK  (1970)  NO STARS

You know you’re in trouble when the opening credit for “Sreenplay” is spelled wrong!  

Guru (Neil Flanagan) is a priest in the mythical land of Mortavia who executes criminals for the “mother church” and sells the bodies to a medical school.  His son Carl (Paul Lieber) falls in love with Nadja (Judith Israel), a young criminal and begs his father to spare her.  He agrees but only if his son collects blood for his vampire mistress!  (How a vampire could live in a church is anybody’s guess.)  When his superiors replace Guru with another priest, he kills to keep his place in the church.  Guru also has a hunchback assistant named Igor (Jack Spenser) who also falls in love with Nadja.  In the end, Guru gets his comeuppance when he’s hung in the church’s bell tower.  I’ve seen a lot of terrible movies in my time but this is one of the worst.  

It’s only 56 minutes, but it seems like a 12 hour mini-series.  The inept gore scenes include eyes being poked out with sticks (they’re obviously ping pong balls) and a pretty lame crucifixion.  All the characters have heavy Noo Yawk accents and the budget, costumes, sets and acting would be dwarfed next to any grade school drama production.  Director Andy Milligan also did Bloodthirsty Butchers the same year.  

AKA:  Garu the Mad Monk.

MILLIGAN MARCH: THE MAN WITH 2 HEADS (1972) ** ½

Not to be confused with 1972’s The Thing with Two Heads or 1971’s The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (or even 1983’s The Man with Two Brains), The Man with 2 Heads is actually Andy Milligan’s take on the old story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  After making movies about vampires, Sweeney Todd, and werewolves, it was only natural that Milligan would set his sights on Robert Louis Stevenson’s (although they misspell his name as “Stephenson” in the opening credits) classic tale of horror.  He even throws a bit of Frankenstein imagery in there as this Dr. Jekyll (played by Dennis DeMarne) opens up a corpse's skull and pokes around in their brain.  

Dr. Jekyll has performed a procedure that allows him to isolate the evil in someone’s brain.  The old guard of physicians scoff at his ideas, and to prove them all wrong, he tries his new formula on himself.  Naturally, it turns him into the evil Mr. Hyde… err… “Danny Blood”.

The acting is surprisingly strong for a Milligan movie, which makes the dialogue scenes seem downright Oscar-worthy next to something like The Ghastly Ones or The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here.  I’m not exactly saying they are great or anything, but it was nice to see some actual talent on screen for a change.  DeMarne is quite good as the straightlaced Jekyll and has fun chewing the scenery as Danny Blood.  The make-up and transformations for Blood are subtle, but effective.  He basically just has big eyebags and bushy eyebrows, but DeMarne plays the role with intensity.  Gay Feld (in curiously her only role) is excellent as Jekyll’s long-suffering fiancée and Julia Stratton (in her second and final role) is equally memorable as the comely barmaid, April.  

Yes, there are still sluggish passages in between the gore (which is limited to a couple of decapitations and a brain surgery scene).  Yes, the movie goes on about fifteen minutes longer than it really needed.  Yes, there’s probably too many supporting characters.  However, the highlights more than outshine the draggy sections.  The sequence in which Blood smacks April around and forces her to bark like a dog packs an unexpected punch, and it ranks as some of the most effective work Milligan has done.  If anything, The Man with 2 Heads shows what Milligan could do with a strong cast and a sturdy script.

As far as Milligan’s motifs go, this was the final film he made in England.  Like many of his movies, it’s a 19th century costume drama/gore flick with lots of canned library music.  The Milligan stock players include the reliable Berwick Kaler, Gerald Jacuzzo from Torture Dungeon, and William Barrel (from numerous Milligan productions) appearing in this one.  

AKA:  The Man with Two Faces.

 

MILLIGAN MARCH: THE RATS ARE COMING-THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE (1972) NO STARS

You’ve got to hand it to Andy Milligan.  He has a way with a title.  The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here is one of the greatest titles in cinema history.  Unfortunately, it also happens to be one of the worst movies of all time.  

The story goes Milligan originally planned to make a straight werewolf picture called The Curse of the Full Moon.  The producers got a bit nervous that werewolves on their own wouldn’t sell tickets, so they made Andy add some new scenes of rats to cash in on the killer rat craze that had been spearheaded by Willard and Ben.  That legend (two of the rats are even called Willard and Ben, just to show how crassly it all was) is much better than the movie itself, although the incongruous way that the rats are pasted into the narrative at the very least is enough to make this mess memorable.  Sadly, it’s mostly memorable for all the wrong reasons.  

Diana Mooney (Jackie Skarvellis) brings her husband Gerald (Ian Innes) home to meet her family.  Naturally, the family is full of nutcases (her crazy brother is kept in a room full of chickens) and is keeping a terrible secret from him.  FINALLY (in the last reel), it is revealed they are werewolves.

There’s only about one minute of plot stretched out to ninety minutes.  Until the predictable finale rolls around, you have to stomach lots of dull scenes of mindless exposition, bickering sisters harping on at each other, and family members alluding to their big secret.  I’m of the mind that a movie can be anything except boring.  This one can’t even clear that low bar.  This one of those films where you watch it and think you’re an hour in and you check the timer on the remote and only five minutes have gone by.  

The new rat scenes are ill-fitting at best and downright despicable at worst.  Why anyone would go to a shop and buy rats that bit the shopkeeper’s arm and half his face off is beyond me, but at least it gives you a chance to get out of the castle and take a breather from all the mind-numbingly awful family squabbling.  However, the cruel scenes of a mouse being stabbed and nailed are unpleasant and meanspirited.  I mean, I don’t even like mice and it’s fucking hard to watch.  I rarely hand out No Stars reviews anymore, unless the film is a detriment to the human race or at least the moviegoing public.  I’d give it Negative Stars if I could.  

In fact, the rats show up way before the werewolves do, which is weird.  Because of that, it should’ve been called The Werewolves are Coming-The Rats are Here.  Of course, that would’ve made too much damned sense.  

Like most of Milligan’s movies, this is a boring costume drama parading as a horror flick.  It also happens to be even more technically inept as usual.  The piercing music often drowns out the dialogue (which might be a good thing) and none of the costumes or locations look or feel authentic.  The muddled accents coupled with the muffled sound and overbearing soundtrack makes a lot of the dialogue unintelligible and the constant onslaught of dull family drama is enough to put you in a coma ten minutes in.  At all times, it feels like you’re watching a filmed community theater production or something.  

Milligan’s other movies were bad, but they at least had a gore scene every now and then to liven things up a little.  This one doesn’t even have that (unless you could the geek show scenes of animal cruelty).  Without them, there’s no real excuse for this piece of shit to exist.  

The good folks at Severin, who released The Dungeon of Andy Milligan box set, also added Milligan’s original version of the film, The Curse of the Full Moon as a co-feature on the Blu-ray.  It’s missing titles, but it’s essentially the same movie, minus the producer mandated rat scenes.  I only skimmed through this cut (I’m not a total masochist), and I have no intention of ever really sitting down and watching it, but I’m glad Severin preserved it for posterity’s sake, especially given the fact that so many of Milligan’s earlier efforts are lost to time.

Milligan scholars can amuse themselves by spotting some of the motifs that permeate his work.  Most of his movies are either filmed in Staten Island or England.  This one was filmed in both places.  Like many of his films, it’s another period piece costume drama with high school production values.  It’s about the family strife surrounding the continuing of their bloodline, which is a theme we’ve seen throughout his pictures.  Also, the overuse of canned library music is pure Milligan.  

Milligan usual suspects round-up:  Hope Stansbury was later in Blood, Jackie Skarvellis was also in The Body Beneath, Berwick Kaler was in many Milligan features, and Milligan himself (who has two roles) was in a lot of his own films too.  

AKA:  The Curse of the Full Moon.  

Here’s a reprint of my first review of the film, which was originally posted on July 17th, 2007:  

THE RATS ARE COMING-THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE  (1972)  NO STARS

God awful tale of the Mooney family, who are cursed to become werewolves during the full moon.  (MOONEYS!  GET IT?)  In one scene, one of the weird sisters buys a rat from a scarred rat catcher (writer/director Andy Milligan) and even names them Willard and Ben!  Milligan shot this as a straight werewolf movie but added the rat scenes later to cash in on Willard’s success.  Let’s forget the bad acting and terrible make-up and the fact that the werewolves don’t show up until the 80-minute mark of this 90-minute movie.  The thing that really makes this reprehensible is the scene where a real mouse is tortured, cut up and nailed to the ground.  Not only is this the worst werewolf movie ever made, it’s also the worst killer rat movie ever made.  Lucky theater patrons in ’72 were given a free rat when they saw this.  The ads proclaimed:  “Win a free rat for your mother in law!”  

MILLIGAN MARCH: BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS (1970) * ½

Bloodthirsty Butchers is writer/director Andy Milligan’s version of Sweeney Todd:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  Todd (John Miranda) is in cahoots with baker Maggie Lovett (Jane Hilary).  He slices his customers’ throats in the barber shop, and she bakes the bodies into her famous meat pies.  Problems ensue when customers start finding human hair and boobies in their baked goods.  

With this film, Milligan continues his tradition of starting things off with a bang (in this case, a pretty good hand hacking scene) before immediately letting things get bogged down with a lot of boring soap opera melodrama.  You would think that Sweeney Todd would be a can’t miss proposition for Milligan, seeing as his horror films are often 19th century costume dramas with occasional dashes of gore.  Even though the story is tailormade for Milligan’s sensibilities, he is unable to make it work, thanks in no small part to the frequent dull, talky passages in between the murder set pieces.  Or put another way:  You get a little gore, but it’s mostly a bore.  

It’s been a while since I saw it last, but I forgot that it takes FOREVER before the body parts start turning up in the meat pies.  Heck, Miranda and Hilary don’t even share any scenes together until the last act.  Before that, it’s just a lot of love triangles, rectangles, and pentagons as the young romantic leads’ premarital woes and Todd and Lovett’s marital strife seem to take precedence over the whacking, hacking, and body stacking.  There are ultimately just too many side characters and subplots that gum up the works.  I know he was probably just trying to flesh out the characters (or more likely, pad out the running time), but the further Milligan strays from the central premise, the worse the movie gets. 

Notable Milligan motifs:  Like Nightbirds, Milligan shot the film in England.  As with The Body Beneath and Torture Dungeon, it’s essentially a 19th century costume drama with high school drama level costumes and acting that’s punctuated by occasional gore scenes.  Milligan’s overuse of library music and inexplicable shots of the camera looking straight up the actor’s noses also permeate the film.  As for his stock company players:  Miranda later turned up in The Weirdo and Surgikill, Berwick Kaler was previously seen in Nightbirds and The Body Beneath, and William Barrel also turned up in The Body Beneath.

AKA:  The Blood Butcher.  

Here’s my first stab at reviewing the film, which was originally posted on July 17th, 2007 on my old site.  As you can see, my feelings on the flick haven’t changed:  

BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS  (1970)  * ½

In 19th century London, Sweeney Todd (Happy Days’ John Miranda) cuts hair and throats and makes off with his customer’s valuables.  Meanwhile Ms. Maggie Lovett sells human meat pies to her clueless customers.  They fall in love and kill each other’s respective spouses.  Everyone else seems to be in love with everyone else’s spouses too, so the movie is basically a soap opera with high school drama class production values and costumes.  A couple of choice gore scenes (hands hacked off, a human breast in a meat pie, meat cleaver to the face) and Todd’s speech about “women’s happiness” saves this from being a total loss.  Director Andy (The Ghastly Ones) Milligan returned to the 19th century in The Rats are Coming!  The Werewolves are Here!

MILLIGAN MARCH: TORTURE DUNGEON (1970) * ½

Norman, the Duke or Norwich (Gerald Jacuzzo) is mad with power (and sexual energy).  He wants to become king, but there’s a matter of a couple of pesky relatives who are ahead of him in the line of succession.  Norman soon sets in motion a dastardly plan to kill anyone who stands in his way and take the throne by any means necessary.

One of FIVE films writer/director Andy Milligan made in 1970, Torture Dungeon is less a horror movie and more of a medieval melodrama.  As such, it has way too many characters (although I did like the dotty old “Marriage Counselor” and the one-eyed hag), unresolved subplots, and weird asides.  There’s an occasional gore scene (beheading, crucifixion, stake through the heart, stabbing, pitchforking, etc.) here and there, although they’re nowhere near as graphic as some of Milligan’s other pictures.  

The movie kicks off with a pretty good decapitation scene before things quickly get bogged down in a lot of soap opera plotting and Renaissance Fair theatrics.  If you can stomach all the palace intrigue shit, you’ll be treated to a head-spinning last minute plot twist/happy ending that is just plain ludicrous.  There are a few worthwhile moments here, such as the extremely awkward wedding night, and the screen’s only menage a trois involving a corrupt Duke, his chambermaid, and his trusty hunchback henchman/lover.  These sequences, taken on their own merits, are kind of fun, but they are no match for the dull dialogue scenes.

Oh, and if you go in expecting to see a lot of torture, forget it.  For a movie called Torture Dungeon, only about a minute or two actually takes place in the titular establishment.  Even then, there’s no actual torture, just a bunch of shots of dudes chained to the wall.  It’s kind of a rip-off if you ask me.  

While all of this is just short of being torturous, it’s definitely a bit of a chore to sit through.   

One thing you can say about Torture Dungeon is that it is an Andy Milligan movie through and through.  It was shot in Staten Island, has cheap gore effects, costumes that look like they came out of a high school play, overly theatrical acting, gay overtones (like The Ghastly Ones and Nightbirds), hunchback henchmen (The Ghastly Ones and The Body Beneath), incest (The Body Beneath), English characters that speak with a Noo Yawk accent,  characters nailed to a wall (The Body Beneath), stock library music, and a family's plot to breed to further perpetuate the bloodline (The Body Beneath).  Plus, the cast is comprised almost solely of Milligan regulars.  

Jacuzzo gets the best line in the movie when he says, “I’m not homosexual!  I’m not heterosexual!  I’m not asexual!  I’m trisexual!  I’ll try anything for pleasure!”

AKA:  Dungeon of Death.   

MILLIGAN MARCH: NIGHTBIRDS (1970) ***

Dee (Julie Shaw) finds Dink (Berwick Kaler) puking in the gutter and buys him a cup of tea.  She’s attracted to Dink, and feels sorry for the guy, so she invites him to stay with her in her ramshackle flat.  Despite their mutual attraction, Dink shrinks away every time Dee tries to initiate sex.  Dink seems to be more into an old biddy named Mabel (Elaine Shore) who reminds him of his mother, which further puts a strain on his budding romance with Dee.  As time goes on, their relationship becomes more awkward and dysfunctional, and it ends with predictably tragic results.  

Nightbirds is a fascinating, stark, and realistic drama from writer/director Andy Milligan.  If you just know him from his cheesy horror movies, this will be a pleasant surprise.  It almost feels like a ‘60s skin flick directed by Ingmar Bergman.

The first portion of the film with Dee and Dink meeting and testing the sexual waters is riveting stuff.  Many scenes are awkward and painful to watch, but when you’re dealing with characters that have so much emotional baggage, it rings true, and almost unbearably so at times.  It becomes a little less effective once the peripheral characters are introduced, but whenever Milligan is exploring Dee and Dink’s gloriously messy relationship, it’s equal parts captivating and heartbreaking.  Ultimately, they are two pieces of different puzzles trying hopelessly to fit together.  

I’m only a few films into this box sex, but I feel confident in saying Nightbirds is one of Andy Milligan’s best.  Although it often feels stage bound due to the fact it mostly takes place in one apartment, the acting and staging feels much more natural than Milligan’s typical theatrics.  Both performers are excellent, especially Shaw (who unfortunately only appeared in a handful of films in her short career) whose character yearns for love but settles for companionship.  Kaler is also memorable as Dink, who often appears uncomfortable in his own skin, particularly when anything sexual is about to go down.  

Like The Body Beneath, this is one of the movies from Milligan’s England era.  It also features many cast members from that film including Felicity Sentence, Susan Heard, and Kaler.  And as with many Milligan pictures, it features a character that has a domineering mother.  (Milligan had one in real life.)

MILLIGAN MARCH: THE BODY BENEATH (1970) ** ½

The creepy Reverend Ford (Gavin Reed) and his weird, whispering wife Alicia (Susan Heard) purchase Carfax Abbey with the intent of fixing it up.  If you ever saw Dracula, the mere mention of Carfax Abbey should send off the warning bells that these two are actually vampires.  Unlike most screen bloodsuckers, these two can only drink from members of their family tree.  They can also only mate with each other, which has severely weakened their bloodline over the years.  Because of that, the duo, along with a little help from their hunchback servant Spool (Berwick Kaler), kidnap distantly related relatives Susan (Jackie Skarvellis) and Candace (Emma Jones) and use them for feeding and breeding purposes.  

Like the majority of writer/director Andy Milligan’s movies, The Body Beneath gets bogged down at several junctures.  Fortunately, there aren’t as many extraneous, awkwardly acted, longwinded dialogue scenes here compared to the rest of his oeuvre.  That’s due to the fact that Milligan delivers a handful of surprisingly effective sequences.  The opening scene, which signals the appearance of the Reverend’s three blue-faced vampire brides is especially memorable.  In fact, any time they are on screen, it’s a damned good time as their appearance and trancelike state make them look like extras from a dime store version of a Jean Rollin flick.  Heck, even the “Vampire Gala” finale has a cool, dreamlike Rollin feel to it.  

Fans hoping for another gore movie may be a tad disappointed as it’s not as grisly as some of Milligan’s other efforts.  (Vampires by their very nature don’t exactly lend themselves to a gore flick.)  However, it still has its moments.  There’s a good knitting-needles-to-the-eyes scene, a leeching, and a crucifixion.  This is the only area in which The Body Beneath suffers comparison to something like The Ghastly Ones.  Despite that, it’s a significant improvement in just about every other way.  

Sure, there’s still all the things here that make a Milligan movie a Milligan movie.  Namely, overly theatrical and amateurish acting and staging, scuzzy sex scenes, soap opera plotting, and costumes right out of a high school play.  This is also one of the films Milligan made during his London period and it feels a lot more authentic than the usual Staten-Island-standing-in-for-London shenanigans.  It also continues the theme started in The Ghastly Ones of relatives being lured into a home under false pretenses and being trapped by someone with a deformed manservant.  

AKA:  Vampire’s Thirst.

MILLIGAN MARCH: THE GHASTLY ONES (1968) *

Three sisters and their husbands go to a lawyer for the reading of their father’s will.  He stipulates they all must go to a mansion on an island in the middle of nowhere and have lots of sex.  (Unfortunately, they don’t really follow through on that.)  Little do they know the servants’ brother is a deranged, rabbit-eating psychopath.  Could he be the one in a black robe that’s sneaking around at night and bumping the family members off?

The Ghastly Ones is a prototypical work of writer/director Andy Milligan.  It contains many of his hallmarks, namely soap opera plotting, Staten Island locations, amateurish acting, and cheesy gore scenes.  Milligan was certainly more ambitious than many of his gore film contemporaries as a lot of his horror movies were period piece costume dramas.  While that doesn’t necessarily make them “good”, it makes them uniquely Milligan.

Milligan often served as his own cinematographer, and for this film, his camerawork is all over the place.  Some indoor scenes are lit and shot like a strange Avant Garde play with odd angles and characters standing against black backgrounds.  The outdoor scenes are kind of funny as the characters are often lumped together into frame so that the modern-day buildings and architecture doesn’t show in the background.  

Like many a Milligan movie, The Ghastly Ones is a bit of a chore to sit through.  There is a little bit of nudity and the occasional gore scene to ensure you don’t fall asleep, but even then, I came quite close to nodding off at several junctures.  Ultimately, the gore (which includes eyeball ripping, stomach slashing, and a severed head, among others) just isn’t good (or bad) enough to make it memorable, and all the boring drama in between tends to get downright insufferable at times.  

In short, The Ghastly Ones is ghastly all right… just for all the wrong reasons.   

AKA:  Blood Rites.  AKA:  Blood Orgy.

MILLIGAN MARCH

The past few months have brought us celebrations of cult directors such as Doris Wishman, Ray Dennis Steckler, and Jess Franco.  Now it’s Andy Milligan’s turn to have an entire month devoted to him.  Throughout the month of March, I’ll be diving into Severin’s The Dungeon of Andy Milligan Blu-ray box set.  As with the other director columns, if I come to a movie I have already reviewed, I will repost the old review and include a few notes I made during this latest rewatch.  If I previously wrote a small capsule review on a particular film, there’s probably a good chance I will go ahead and write a brand new one just for this column.  But enough of my yacking.  The Dungeon awaits!