I reviewed the Blu-ray release of the staggering box set from Severin– The Dungeon of Andy Milligan, but it wasn’t until the other day that I actually held it in my hot little hands. I have to admit I was overwhelmed at how amazing it actually is. It includes 8 discs of his films and a CD of original music by one of Milligan’s actors Hal Borske. The loving restorations of the film are a revelation. It even includes a reel (from Germany) of The Filthy Five (1968), a lost film by Milligan. The 128-page book is a passionately written appreciation by Stephen Thrower, where he says about Milligan: “The films are crazy and bizarre, irregular to the point of lunacy, filled with over-ripe dialogue and ranting extremity.” He also goes on to mention, “I have to be honest: I often find myself joyously amused by Milligan’s films. It’s the laughter of astonishment, borne of a love of excess, and it’s far from judgmental, but it’s not what Milligan was aiming for.”
Andy Milligan churned out twenty-nine movies between 1965 and 1988, everything from sex melodramas like The Degenerates (1967), Kiss Me, Kiss me, Kiss Me! (1968) and Tricks of the Trade (1969) to gory, heavily costumed, period-piece horror films like Bloodthirsty Butchers (1969) and Torture Dungeon (1970). As a cult director, Andy Milligan doesn’t inspire the camp adoration of Ed Wood. “If you’re an Andy Milligan fan, there’s no hope for you,” snipes Michael Weldon, author of the schlock fan’s Bible- Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film. Cheap looking, badly acted, incredibly talky Milligan’s films are often tough to take. But his life represents an era that is forever lost- that of the grindhouse exploitation director who thrived in the seedy pre-Giuliani Times Square.
Andy Milligan was a bit of a monster, which isn’t surprising considering his Tennessee Williams-like upbringing. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1929, Milligan was an army brat. His mother Marie Gladys was an overweight, neurotic, harridan who served as the basis for scores of her son’s characters. Even at her funeral Milligan shouted out: “She was a bitch!”. He joined the Navy and eventually gravitated to New York where he dabbled in acting and opened a dress shop, often berating his own customers. (He designed all the costumes for his movies under the pseudonym Raffine).
A fascinating part of his life is his Caffe Cino days- a small Greenwich Village coffeehouse which served as a hothouse for rising theater talent like Lanford Wilson, Tom Eyen and John Guare in the early 1960s. Andy Milligan brought “a certain depravity” to the Cino and staged productions described as: “fast-paced to the point of mania.”
In 1965, Milligan brought that feeling to his first movie, the gay short The Vapors set in the St. Marks Baths and written by Hope Stansbury, the raven-tressed beauty who would star in his later films. Milligan then hooked up with famed sexploitation producer William Mishkin and made 11 features, all shot with a 16mm Auricon camera on short ends (the unused snippets of film from mainstream shoots).
Many of the early works play like bizarre morality tales where sleazy characters whored, bickered, and got violently paid back for their excesses- Depraved (1967); Seeds (1968) (“Sown in incest! Harvested in hate!”); and my favorite Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1972), about a street-smart New York City hooker (Laura Cannon) who moves in with a transvestite prostitute (played with hilarious gusto by Neil Flanagan).
Milligan bought a Victorian mansion within walking distance from the Staten Island ferry and his house became “Hollywood central” where Milligan was a one-man army- writing, directing and doing the sets and costumes for splatter epics like The Ghastly Ones (1968) shot in “cranium-cleaving color”. His usual stock company (Hope Stansbury, Neil Flanagan, Hal Borske) were often joined by Staten Island locals who were dragged into performing.
Milligan even married one of his actresses- Candy Hammond who starred as “Pussy” Johnson in Gutter Trash (1969). No one took the wedding seriously- Milligan was unambiguously gay, heavily into S & M and an avowed misogynist. The service took place at the Staten Island house which was still decorated for a movie shoot. It was a real circus. “The guests stole all the wedding gifts.” Milligan cruised the gay bars that night to celebrate.
Andy ground out horrors like Torture Dungeon (1970); Guru, The Mad Monk (1970) starring Judy Israel; The Body Beneath (1970) and the riotously titled The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972).
Milligan began having his own health problems and with no insurance, no money, and the era of exploitation films over, his last days (dying of AIDs) are chronicled with painful eloquence by Jimmy Mcdonough, who wrote one of the best books ever about a filmmaker and his life- The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan. McDonough returned to Milligan’s home town for some last-minute investigating and uncovered a whopper of a family secret which really makes you look back on his films in a new light. Playwright Donald Kvares compares Andy Milligan to “an American Bunuel,” and says of his films: “They have this dark funky power- the gutter and blood and stink of hell, but at the same time a kind of sadness or poignancy…”
