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.   

TUBI CONTINUED… NAUGHTY NEW ORLEANS (1954) ** ½

After a brief travelogue tour of New Orleans, the plot begins.  Burlesque dancer Julianne (herself) gets a surprise visit from her boyfriend, who has no idea she’s a stripper.  She tells him she has to “go to work” and says they’ll get together later in the evening.  While kicking around the city, he wanders into a Burlesque house where Julianne is the star attraction and he learns the hard way his girlfriend is “The Baby Doll of Bourbon Street”.

Of course, the “plot” is secondary (tertiary?  quaternary?) to the Burlesque acts.  If anything, Naughty New York exists to replicate the experience of going to a Burlesque show.  The mildly amusing host (“Pat Patrick”) does a stand-up act and announces the dancers, who take off most, but not all, of their clothes.  (Most of them wear panties under their panties and bras under their bras.)  Sometimes, a third-rate Abbott and Costello comedy duo come out for some lame sketches.  There’s also an African American tapdancing duo in there too.

Honestly, the real reason to see it is for the strippers.  There’s a French girl, a can-can number, and a Mexican spitfire, just to name a few.  The most memorable act is a tassel twirler who even has a tassel on her ass.  Julianne is the closer, and no wonder as she does the most energetic and feisty striptease.  

Naughty New Orleans is kind of review-proof in a way, especially if you know what you’re getting yourself into.  It contains 20% plot and 80% Burlesque show.  Anyone hoping for a different ratio of plot to Burlesque acts is going to be severely disappointed.  The brief running time (it’s just over an hour long) certainly helps too.  Sure, the comedy duo sketches are the weakest part (the train station sketch goes on far too long), and there isn’t any actual nudity to be found.  However, as an archeological relic of a bygone era, it’s relatively amusing.

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.)

TUBI CONTINUED… GIALLO IN VENICE (1979) ** ½

When you watch as many Italian exploitation movies as I do, you’re bound to watch something get hopelessly lost in translation sooner or later.  Take for instance the hero in Giallo in Venice (or “Gore in Venice” as it is listed on Tubi).  We’ve seen hardboiled detectives in thrillers for decades, but this might be the first detective who eats hardboiled eggs in nearly every scene.  Whether he’s investigating a crime scene, talking on the phone in his office, or questioning witnesses and suspects, he’s either cracking, peeling, or eating a hardboiled egg.  Heck, in one scene he produces a salt shaker from his pocket and salts his egg before shoving it in his mouth.  I’d hate to see this guy’s cholesterol levels.  

Anyway, our detective hero (played by Jeff Blynn who looks like Richard Harrison dressed up like George Harrison) is trying to solve the brutal murder of a pair of horndog exhibitionists.  Flashbacks reveal the husband’s sexual proclivities (he can’t even eat a plate of mussels without making it look dirty), and how he often had to goad his prudish wife into increasingly risky and kinky games in public.  Pretty soon, more people wind up dead, and it’s up to our egg-eating hero to find the murderer.  

While Blynn is fun to watch in the lead, it’s guest star Mariangela Giordana who steals the show.  She was unforgettable as the hot mom in Burial Ground, and she’s super sexy here playing a potential victim who receives threatening phone calls.  Leonora Fani is also quite smoking as the wife who grudgingly gives into her husband’s kinky desires.  

Despite the alternate title, this isn’t really all that gory.  Despite the onscreen title, there aren’t many sustained sequences of suspense that are hallmarks of the giallo genre.  (The killer is pretty weak too and he wears a pair of cheesy sunglasses instead of the usually accustomed black gloves.)  Despite being neither fish nor fowl, it's still pretty entertaining thanks to the goofy hero and a bevy of hot babes.  (EDIT:  According to several sources, the recent Blu-ray version clocks in at 99 minutes.  The version I saw on Tubi is 74.  There’s a good chance there WAS a lot of gore here.  Even without the gore, I kind of liked it.  If I wind up seeing the unrated cut somewhere down the road, I may watch it again, and if my thoughts change, I may re-review it then.  That’s my only real complaint with Tubi is that they often show cut versions.  There’s no reason in this day and age to show movies that have been edited for content, especially on a streaming service.) 

AKA:  Gore in Venice.  AKA:  Mystery in Venice.  Thriller in Venice.  

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.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE HORROR OF IT ALL (1983) *** ½

Here’s an excellent documentary/clip show package about the Golden Age of horror movies.  Narrated with authority by Jose Ferrer, The Horror of It All chronicles the birth of horror movies from the German films of the silent era to the Hammer horror of the ‘50s and ‘60s.  Since it was made in 1983, it’s a bit of a relic itself, which is a real treat.  Watching a documentary on classic horror that is forty years old is neat because they sometimes focus on aspects that you wouldn’t normally see in a modern documentary.  I mean, how many horror docs have you seen lately that have an entire segment devoted to Lionel Atwill?

It’s only an hour long and nearly half of that is spent on the German silent films like The Golem, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Nosferatu.  The ‘30s are represented by Svengali, The Vampire Bat, and King Kong, and the ‘40s focus on The Mad Monster, Bluebeard, and The Body Snatcher.  The ‘50s are kind of glossed over a little too quickly, with the Atomic Age movies being represented by Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (a movie that came out in the ‘60s), but there are still clips from Horror of Dracula and The Curse of the Demon.  Finally, films like Black Sunday, Dementia 13, and The Masque of the Red Death are featured during the segment on the ‘60s.

The on-camera interviews are more insightful than expected too, and the subjects make a lot of interesting points I never really thought about.  Psycho author Robert Bloch says King Kong was a reaction to the Depression and that poor moviegoers relished seeing Kong tear apart New York City, the symbol of wealth in America.  Martine Beswick talks about how embracing her dark side helped her nab several villainess roles.  The best footage comes from the Roger Corman interview where we get a terrific peek behind the scenes at New World Pictures.  Other interview subjects include John Carradine, Curtis Harrington, and an enthusiastic Herman Cohen.  

There are some oversights, to be sure.  They obviously couldn’t get the rights to show scenes from the Universal classics, so they are mostly represented in the form of publicity stills and movie posters.  Still, even these moments are fun as they feel like one of those old Crestwood horror books come to life.  There’s also some random filler in the form of grainy footage of a haunted house amusement park.  These scenes almost look like a snuff movie.  That is to say, they’re awesome.  

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.