The Ghastly One : The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan by Jimmy McDonough

By Jens

When people casually states that Ed Wood Jr. was ’the worst film director in the world’ I always get agitated, cuz it’s complete bullshit, Ed did just fine with the budgets he had and even put a little of his surreal vision into his films. No, to me the title of ’worst film director in world’ belongs Andy Milligan who’s unwatchable celluloid crimes include titles like ”Torture Dungeon”, ”Bloodthirsty Butchers”, ”The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!”, ”Guru, The Mad Monk” and tonsa lost sexploitation films like ”Fleshpot Of 42nd Street” and ”Gutter Trash”. No, it’s the bizarre life of this strange schlock filmmaker who died of AIDS in 1991 I’m really interested in since I’ve read hints here and there of his outrageous and troubled life. Milligan started out by designing women’s clothes, before he in the early 60s moved on to staging violent off-off-off broadway plays in seedy coffee houses like the infamous Caffe Cino in the seedier parts of New York to the shocked crowd of gay hustlers, psychos and junkies. Apparently De Sade had nothing on Andy as actors were beaten to a bloody pulp on stage, and afterwards he went on to rough trade sadistic sex with younger men. Some of his friends at that time included a pedophile who baked pies spiced with sperm of underaged boys! Andy then took on the movie world by creating a string of nasty violent sex flicks for the hungry grindhouses of 42nd Street. The budgets were seldom more than a couple 1000 dollars and he was robbed blind, but kept on making film like a man possessed, many where shot as period pieces in Staten Island with hardly any crew or permission to shoot. In the 80s he had enough of NYC and made a handful of movies in England. The author hints at strange murders that occured near the shootings but nothing was really proved of Andy’s involvement. Jimmy McDonough met Andy when he tried his luck in LA with films like ”Monstrosity” and ”Surgikill”, the author worked as a part of the crew and in small roles and really got to know Milligan and became a close friend. Andy was one fucked up homosexual sadist, and quite a mystery to the author who after Andy’s death went down South to interview his siblings. The last part of the book reveals a sick dysfunctional incest-ridden family that sorta explains the troublesome human being that was Andy Milligan. There are sleazy tell-all movie bio, but ”The Ghastly One” is in a smutty league of it’s own, seldom have I read a book so slimy, sick and depraved that I actually had to take a cold shower afterwards, one of the fascinating filmbios EVER, haha. It’s no surprise that it’s among the fave books of the likes of John Waters and Lux Interior. Jimmy McDonough has written praised bios on Neil Young and Russ Meyer (which I reviewed in Lowcut # 30)
Now try watch some of Milligan’s screen atrocities, I DARE YOU!