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The wife's out tonight watching The Vines
and Jet peddle their re-heated Estrus riffs, so it's me and
the dogs for the whole night. So what am I doing? Not enjoying the
unsavory fruits of Hollywood. Not wasting my money on records. Not
watching the four-hour Christy Canyon compilation I just found
under a bookcase. Shit, I'm not even reading a book. No, I'm watching
three solid hours of Andy Milligan movies! Back to back, even!
The things I do for you people!
"He sometimes gets quite violent, you know!"
 It's never explained exactly who The Ghastly Ones are in
Andy's turn-of-the-century horror-thriller (his first in color), but there
are certainly enough people in the cast on which one could hang the title.
There's money-hungry Victoria Crenshaw (Anne Linden) and her
lawyer husband Richard (Fil La Blaque), who has some sort of
unsavory past with his en fuego priest brother (co-scripter Hal
Sherwood). There's her sister Elizabeth (Carol Vogel)
and her booze-allergic husband Donald (Richard Ramos, who
may be Richard Romanus of Mean Streets and
brother of Robert "Damone" Romanus from Fast Times at
Ridgemont High). And there's also the littlest Crenshaw,
scatterbrained Veronica (Eileen Hayes) and her old man
Bill (Don Williams).
All three sisters and their spouses are summoned to New York for the
reading of their father's will. Once there, the ancient Lawyer Dobbs
(Milligan vet Neil Flanagan, Guru the Mad Monk
himself, hamming it up in old age makeup with prominent nasal hair that
makes his head look like a sprouting potato) informs the group that in
order to collect Dad's sizable inheritance, they must spend three days in
"sexual harmony" at the old family home on remote Crenshaw Island. Seems
that Ma and Pa Crenshaw had a joyless marriage, and the presence of the
three happily married girls will bring love to Crenshaw House for the
first time. At the end of the three days, Dobbs will show up with the
loot; however, should anything unforeseen befalls any of the family
(insert suspenseful music sting here), the dough will be distributed to
the survivors--should there be any!
Well, all sorts of unforeseen business starts happening from the second
the Crenshaw party sets foot in the family estate (in reality, Staten
Island property owned by Andy). Problem Number One (or so it seems) is
Colin (Hal Borske), the barely human brother of house servants
Martha and Patty (Veronica Radburn and Maggie
Rogers). Earlier in the film, we see Colin hack up a happy-go-luck
couple with a cleaver, and minutes after the Crenshaws arrive on the
island, he's grabbing rabbits and eating them alive.
Problem Number Two is a mysterious figure in a hood who's stalking the
house and marking items with a bloody X, which means that moments later,
one of the family is going to check out of the movie in a shower of gore.
And for the next 50 minutes or so, that's what we get: Richard is hung
upside down, Donald gets sawed in half, Bill catches a pitchfork in the
neck, and Elizabeth's head is served up on a plate as the main course at
dinner. Pretty soon, it's just Veronica and Victoria shivering in their
very non-1890s nightgowns and the three crazy servants--but, oh, there's
still a terrible and long-hidden secret to be revealed, and someone to be
set on fire, and someone else earning a cleaver in the head before the
curtain can rise and the lights can come up on this freakshow. Most people
just get drunk and say mean things to each other at family reunions. In
Andy Milligan World, those are the least of your worries.
"I'm sure that dead rabbit was someone's idea of a bad joke."
Everything you need to know about the late Andy Milligan's horrible and
fascinating life and work can be found in Jimmy McDonough's
astonishing biography The Ghastly One, but one can also get
a good idea of how his feverish mind worked from his movies. Andy was
vehemently anti-family, having endured a home life that combined the worst
of Charles Dickens and V.C. Andrews, and he wasn't too keen
on organized religion or any kind of sex that didn't involve verbal abuse,
choking, spitting or heavy restraints. Andy's engine drove on unfiltered,
40-weight hatred, and he used his movies to vent his bilious spleen onto
unsuspecting grindhouse patrons. The murder mystery framework is just a
rickety means for Andy to achieve his ultimate goal: to attack the
hypocrisy and barely-concealed animosity inherent in all families. On the
surface, the Crenshaws seem like decent people--the three couples look
healthy, happy, and clearly in love, but once the prospect of money and
power enters the picture, the masks come off and out come the wolves:
Victoria is a cold-hearted bitch prepared to screw over her sisters to get
the entire loot, happy-go-lucky Richard can't get it up unless he forces
himself on Veronica, and so on. In almost all of Andy's movies, his
characters act this way: miserable, self-serving, uncontrollably perverse
and so completely entangled in their own long-simmering neuroses and
hatreds that they end up doing irreparable damage to themselves and
everyone around them. If there's a cast member left standing by the end of
a Milligan movie, it's a miracle.
The Ghastly Ones is no exception--the Crenshaw sisters and
their husbands never stop bitching or clawing at one another long enough
to figure out who's picking them off (and they don't seem particularly
distraught when someone dies). And when we do find out the identity of
the killer and the maelstrom that follows that revelation, there's still
no rest, no resolution, no happiness, no breather. It's all a mess, from
womb to tomb, says Fun Boy Andy, and all the horror starts at home. And
though Andy delivers this viewpoint in the most hysterical tone possible,
anyone who's ever endured a major family malfunction will hear a faint
ring of truth in it. This fact doesn't make sitting through The
Ghastly Ones or any of Andy's movies any easier, but it does make
the 72-minute running time a uniquely unsettling experience.
Oceans of ink have been spilled about Andy's legendary technical
ineptitude, and his camerawork here (Andy was essentially a one-man crew,
handling the direction, cinematography, editing, set construction and even
costumes for all of his films) won't convince you otherwise. All of the
Milligan touches are present-the claustrophobic framing, the nauseating
camera movements, the out-of-focus shots, and of course, the infamous "SWIRL
CAMERA," which was just that-Andy whirled the camera around
spastically in violent scenes to both disguise and imitate the actor's
frantic flailing. Having said that, The Ghastly Ones isn't
as glacially paced as some of Andy's later films-some of the dialogue is
trying (most notably the "cute" yes-it-is-no-it-isn't bit between Veronica
and Bill), but for the most part, he keeps the story moving and the camera
active. Even if you don't know what the hell's going on half the time, at
least something's happening on screen in The Ghastly Ones.
Extra points for: Colin's opening thrillkill, which has him pulling an
eyeball the size of a tennis ball from the guy's head and later hacking
fitfully on a clay-covered mannequin's leg; Hal Sherwood's
five-alarm performance as Walter, Richard's brother with "abnormal
tastes"; the three sisters' costumes during the luncheon scene, which
takes place in a completely empty restaurant set, while the soundtrack
suggests a bustling eatery full of diners; the hooded figure standing
about a foot away from Bill, then ducking down when he turns-and Bill not
seeing him at all; and best of all, the "SWIRL CAMERA" moment
during Bill's pitchforking, in which Andy accidentally reveals a crew
member crouching beside Bill and catching the guts as they're "pulled"
from Bill's torso. No points subtracted.
The DVD includes a fascinating and hilarious commentary track with Hal
Borske and Basket Case director Frank Henenlotter;
with his gentle voice and sailor's mouth, Borske offers a unique
behind-the-scenes look at Milligan on set and off, and for Milligan
obsessives and exploitation fans in general, this commentary track is
priceless. The Ghastly Ones' theatrical trailer is also
included ("Into this house came the mawnsters of slawtah!"), along with
Guru ("Lust was his religion!"), Andy's early arthouse hit
Vapors ("The new leader in underground filmmaking-Andy
Milligan") and many others.
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"You
ruined by life, and I've just ruined your dinner! So go ahead and eat--AHAHAHAHA!"
Seeds of Sin opens on a miserable
note, with crippled, boozing Manning family matron and all-around hellwitch
Claris (Maggie Rogers) pitching a world-class conniption fit
when daughter Carol (Candy Hammond, who was briefly Mrs. Andy Milligan)
informs her that she's invited her brothers and sisters home for
Christmas. The news upsets Claris enough to require a blood transfusion,
which seems a bit unnecessary-until we get an eyeful of the rest of the
Manning clan. There's Carol's mouthy bitch of a half-sister Margaret,
who's married to sadistic greaser ape Jonathan; doughy tramp Barbara
(Susan Cassidy), who's got the hots for her depraved priest brother (Neil
Flanagan, who's only visible in one scene-more on that later); there's
jackass brother Drew, who's first seen forcing a screaming girlfriend to
submit to a hatpin abortion; brother Michael (Robert Service) and his
frigid wife Susan (Eileen Hayes), and last but not least, baby brother
Buster (Gerry Connolly), a screeching sack of uncontrollable erotomanias
who's been shipped around to various military schools to hide his penchant
for homosexual assault, arson, etc. And if you're looking for a little
relief in cute, Pat Benatar-shaped Carol, forget it-she likes rubbing
muscleman mags on her chest and is eager to kickstart the nightly fuck
session she and brother Michael indulged in throughout their teen years.
Add to this psychotic stew a pair of scheming servants who can't keep
their hands off each other, and a mysterious killer who's bumping off
family members faster than you can remember their names (sound familiar?),
and what do you get? A Very Andy Milligan Christmas, everybody!
Ho-ho-oh-my-God!
"Nothing can kill a bitch like Mama."
Though filmed in black-and-white, Seeds came a year after The
Ghastly Ones, and like most of the Milligan films that followed it,
borrowed its basic family-slaughter storyline but ramped up the crazy talk
and explosions of sexual deviancy. In a way, the fact that the characters
in Seeds start out at their breaking points and topple off their mental
cliffs from there is a saving grace, because the absurd pitch of the
performances and the characterizations offer a buffer of absurdity against
the relentless tide of hatred and loathing that pours from Milligan's
dialogue. In The Ghastly Ones, a few of the characters are damaged, but
here, every living soul on screen acts as if they've just escaped from the
asylum and plan to take everything in sight down with them. Everyone is
two steps above animal, snarling, slashing at each other-even the sex is
vicious (Jonathan to Margaret: "I love you so much I could kill you!")
Claris' dressing down of Buster is one of the most brutal scenes on film
I've ever seen; Buster's contorted face issues forth a torrent of misery
at his mother, who retorts by bellowing the letters of dismissal from his
various schools. Unable to take this anymore, Buster runs into the woods
and gouges open his wrists with a broken bottle, laughing and crying and
screaming all at the same time. That's just the half-way point.
Image and SWV's presentation of Seeds is a bit of a historical
event, as it offers the most complete version of the film to date. Andy
made the movie for Allen Bazzini, a restaurant owner who took one look at
the final product, saw that there was almost no sex in the film, and sold
it off to Aquarian Production (most likely, 42nd Street distributor
Terry Levene of Aquarius Releasing). Aquarian cut out a good-sized chunk of the
film-including nearly every scene with Neil Flanagan and Susan Cassidy-and
tacked on some interminable softcore scenes with acid-rock library tracks
instead of Andy's creaky old LPs. This version, titled Seeds of Sin, was
the only way to view the film until SWV dug up not only an unfinished
trailer but Andy's original 16mm workprint, both of which featured a
number of scenes missing from the revised version. Both are presented as
extras on the disc, and in them we get to glimpse a lovely scene of Susan
Cassidy spitting into Neil Flanagan's mouth, Carol seducing Neil ("Ask for
forgiveness!") and his subsequent suicide, and a longer alternate opening
and ending. As with the Borske commentary, this footage is the Holy Grail
for Milligan-ites, and once again fuels the hope that a print of his many
lost films (about half of the movies he made are considered gone for good)
will be located. Will that be a good thing or a bad thing?
Extra points for: the aforementioned Buster and Claris screamfest, with
Buster's "The world is sick!" soliloquy a highlight; Eileen Hayes' death
scene, which has her waffling over stabbing herself (she's just learned
that husband Michael used to fuck sister Carol), and just before she gives
up, the door she's standing next to flies open and slams the knife into
her chest; and Andy's offscreen vocal cameos, heard throughout the
workprint ("Great, great!"). He can also be heard twice in The Ghastly
Ones, most notably when Hal Borske is set on fire. The crew member who was
supposed to put Hal out fled the scene, leaving him to flail about while
Andy, ever the footage-conscious director, caught the whole thing on film,
screaming at him, "Get down! Get down!" A real sweetheart, that Andy. No
points subtracted.
Next up: more Milligan! God help me!
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