Grindhouse filmmaker Andy Milligan has been the subject of a revealing biography, and boasts a grassroots fan base, but his remarkable work has thus far received no serious critical overview. Working virtually alone, on infinitesimal budgets, often using a used 16mm newsreel camera, Milligan crafted some of the most unique melodramas of the 1960s and 1970s. Often mounted as period pieces, using costumes sewn by the filmmaker, Milligan's gritty, bizarre films come across as inimitable meldings of the avant-garde theater of Jean Genet, the experimental films of Jack Smith, and the random cinema verite of a lunatic with a home movie camera. Yet Milligan's films are anything but random, ruminating at length on profound sociocultural themes of the day, including the emptiness of the sexual revolution. Evident throughout all the films are two pet themes: a rabid deconstruction of the heterosexual paradigm, and a grotesque illumination of the family as breeder of dysfunction.
Author(s): Rob Craig;Foreword by Robert Patrick
Year: 2012
Language: English
Pages: 423
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................ iX FOREWORD BY ROBERT PATRICK ................................... 1 PREFACE ...................................................... 3 INTRODUCTION ................................................. 7 1. Birth of a Misanthrope .................................... 11 2. Andy's Family Values ...................................... 15 3. Contemporaries .......................................... 32 4. Vapors ................................................... 45 5. Lost Souls of Times Square ................................. 52 6. The Master Showman ..................................... 72 7. Sexploitation Revolution ................................... 89 8. Seeds (1968) ............................................. 120 9. The Ghastly Ones (1968) .................................. 133 10. Torture Dungeon (1970) ................................... 146 11. Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970) ............................... 152 12. Guru, the Mad Monk (1970) ............................... 167 13. The Body Beneath (1970) .................................. 179 14. The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972) ....... 189 15. The Man with Two Heads (1972) ........................... 202 16. Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1973) .............................. 221 17. Blood (1974) ............................................. 229 18. Legacy of Blood (1978) .................................... 242
19. Carnage(1983) .......................................... 247 20. Raffinein La-La Land .................................... 252 21. Beasts, by Nature ........................................ 265 FILMOGRAPHY ................................................ 275 APPENDIX: FILMS DISTRIBUTED OR PRODUCED BY WILLIAM MISHKIN ... 283 CHAPTER NOTES .............................................. 285 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................... 293 INDEX ............................ 295
