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1968 - USA Directed By: Andy Milligan. Starring: Veronica Radburn, Hal Borske, Maggie Rodgers, Anne Linden, Fib LaBlanque, Carol Vogel, Richard Romanus, Eileen Hayes, Don Williams, Neil Flanagan and Hal Sherwood.
Aka
Blood Rites
Current Availability
Available on a US R1 DVD double-bill with Milligan's "Seeds Of Sin" (aka - "Seeds") courtesy of Something Weird Video. The fullscreen print is ropey quality featuring more scratches than a mad cats convention. It is doubtful a film of such lowly pedigree will ever look any better however, and in some ways the scratchy print quality actually adds to the films charm.
Recommended
If you like really trashy exploitation films then yes. Technically this film is dreadful with wretched cinematography, camera work wobbly enough to induce sea sickness, stilted dialogue and laughable gore effects. Yet despite this Milligan gives the film an engaging sense of poverty row charm, making The Ghastly Ones a 72 minute laugh riot for aficionados of trash cinema. If you've never seen a Milligan film before this is perhaps the best place to start.
Review
The fitfully amusing 1968 cheapie The Ghastly Ones remains one of the best known features helmed by infamous trash filmmaker the late Andy Milligan. Hailing from Staten Island, New York, Milligan enjoys and enduring, notorious reputation in exploitation circles often dubbed “the only filmmaker worse than Ed Wood”.
An openly homosexual misanthrope, Milligan found his beginnings not as a filmmaker but as a dressmaker operating out of New York City. Milligan’s profession eventually led him into the world of theatre where he discovered a knack for directing, swiftly earning himself a reputation as a hard-bitten, economical stage director. Milligan soon after made the transition into directing cinematic features beginning his film career with the radical short film Vapors (1963) – a vivid, upfront depiction of homosexuality centering around the infamous gay cottaging venue of St Mark’s Bathhouse.
Vapors was relatively well-received and received some positive critical copy. Encouraged by its success Milligan followed it up with a succession of cheapjack sexploitation pictures for producer William Mishkin (most of which are now lost). It was in 1968 however that Milligan’s career found a sense of direction with The Ghastly Ones, which proved a hit with the horror hungry denizens of New York City’s famed 42nd Street Grindhouse circuit. Settling his focus on the horror genre Milligan followed up The Ghastly Ones with a host of poverty row splatter pictures such as Torture Dungeon, Bloodthirsty Butchers (both 1970) and the hilariously entitled The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972). While all of these films are characterized by Milligan’s staggeringly weak and inept production values they nonetheless all struck a chord with the jaded Grindhouse crowd and through them Milligan became a 42nd Street institution.
The Ghastly Ones boasts a familiar narrative setup which can be traced all the way back to Paul Leni’s old cinematic chestnut The Cat And The Canary (1927). The story centers around grown up sisters Vicky (Linden), Veronica (Hayes) and Elizabeth (Vogel) who together with their respective husbands Richard (LaBlanque), Bill (Williams) and Donald (Romanus) are summoned to a meeting with the girls late fathers elderly lawyer H.H Dobbs (Flanagan).
Dobbs informs the three couples of their late fathers will which states that the dead mans estate will only be settled after al six of them have spent three days in “sexual harmony” at the girls childhood home Crenshaw House located on a private island. After those three days have passed Dobbs will reveal the details of the girls fathers will.
Upon arriving at Crenshaw House the three couples make the acquaintance of the decidedly odd servants including hunchbacked simpleton Colin (Borske). Soon terror strikes as one by one the guests are viciously bumped off by an unknown killer who seems to have an eye on the family fortune themselves.
At risk of attracting a storm of mockery I must admit to finding Andy Milligan somewhat of an inspirational figure on many levels. As completely and utterly untalented as he was (judged by conventional tastes most of his films are completely unwatchable) Milligan up until his AIDS related death in 1991 always soldiered on making films. Displaying a commendable tenacity, Milligan continued to put out features despite personal turmoils, non-existent funding (his highest ever budget was reportedly just $20,000) and the fact that Milligan regularly failed to see as much as a dime for his work due to working for two-bit crooks such as William Mishkin and in later years his scumbag son Lew Mishkin who famously allowed most of Andy’s early work to be destroyed when he refused to pay the storage fees for the negatives. In addition despite their total ineptitude many Milligan films have a mysteriously magnetic, entrancing quality that keeps the trash movie fan watching even when conventional logic dictates one should be hammering the STOP button. Those wishing to learn more about Milligan are strongly advised to seek out Jimmy McDonough’s superb book The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan - a cracking read which tells you everything you could ever want to know (and a few things you probably don’t) about Staten Island’s own answer to Herschell Gordon Lewis.
The Ghastly Ones is fairly typical of the Milligan oeuvre boasting production values so bad they make Ed Wood cheapies look like Martin Francis Ford Coppola films in comparison. As with many of his features Milligan shot The Ghastly Ones using the single-system 16mm Auricon sound-on-film camera – an antiquated piece of equipment which was once upon a time used to shoot newsreel footage but was generally – and correctly I hasten to add – considered as much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle for shooting cinematic features. Predictably the onscreen results of its usage are tantamount to torture on the poor eyes of the viewer as the film is crammed with completely misframed shots and in “dramatic” scenes the camera whirls around as if it was being wielded by an Irish knavvy inebriated on cheap gin. Meanwhile another Milligan patented cost-cutting measure of shooting on discarded left over ends of film stock instead of using more expensive fresh reels, results in editing so jagged the viewer could cut themselves on it. The soundtrack is just as sloppy with the casts dialogue invariably muffled or alternatively drowned out by misappropriated, generic library musical cues. In a few scenes if the viewer listens hard it is also possible to hear Milligan’s exasperated instructions to his cast which are hilariously audible on the soundtrack.
Yet despite being terribly made on every technical level The Ghastly Ones has a certain inane charm about it and Milligan sneaks in several unique and subversive social and sexual perspectives which increase the film – albeit fleetingly – to a greater number than that of the sum of its parts. The largely amateur cast are actually surprisingly competent in their roles despite the total inanity of the stilted dialogue passages they are forced to recite in order to pad the film out to feature length. Milligan regular Hal Borske who had worked with the Staten Island auteur since Vapors is particularly amusing, delivering a hysterically hammy turn as the murderous hunchbacked simpleton Colin who sports the funniest fake teeth in cinematic history. I was also especially amused by young Colin’s charming habit of greeting houseguests by devouring live rabbits in front of them! Borske aside the only notable individual presence amongst the cast is that of Richard Romanus who later gained a measure of note via a key supporting role in Martin Scorcese’s classic Mean Streets (1973).
In addition The Ghastly Ones features intriguing instances of characterisation which can be read as being blatantly indicative of Milligan’s own jaded views on sexuality. An early example is the heavy insinuation of homosexual incest between Richard and his rich brother Walter who comes across as a sinister, insecure, effeminate cottager – a stereotype Milligan probably knew all too well. The Ghastly Ones is also characterized by its surprisingly frank perspective on sexual relations between married couples. However, Milligan is fairly wry, acerbic and mocking in his view of heterosexual relationships and skirts upon misogyny when Bill opts to rape his wife Veronica just for the sheer hell of it in a highly uncomfortable scene that seems to crop up out of nowhere.
Of course the real selling points of The Ghastly Ones however are very obviously sex and violence. While hardly a parade of bare flesh the amount of topless nudity on display is fairly heavy for the films era. It is the same story on the gore front. While the onscreen killing is actually quite sparing Milligan certainly doesn’t skimp on the graphic bloodshed and sadism when the blood does start throwing. This is apparent from the tacked on pre credits sequence in which a young couple visiting the Crenshaw House island are brutally slain by a rampaging madman (played by Borske without his phony hump). The brutality of the attack is shocking as eyeballs are yanked out, hands lopped off and bare legs slashed at in a bloody knife-stabbing frenzy. The gore highlight however comes late on when one unfortunate fella is stretched out, disemboweled and then gruesomely bisected at the torso with a gigantic handsaw. While the effects work is typically shoddy (the ridiculously oversized eyeball torn out in the pre credits scene resembles a boiled egg soaked in stage blood) this is offset by the shaky camerawork, lack of sound (library music aside) during the attacks and shadowy cinematography which lends the killings an uncomfortable snuff reel sense of verisimilitude despite the ineptness of their execution. One noteworthy figure not impressed by the grue on display was Stephen King who viciously attacked Milligan’s film in his pretentious non-fiction horror genre study Danse Macabre, citing The Ghastly Ones as a prime example of the horror genre at its worst. King’s sentiments were also shared by certain parties in the United Kingdom where The Ghastly Ones was banned as a so-called “Video Nasty” following its early eighties uncut VHS release under its alternate title Blood Rites. As of the time of writing The Ghastly Ones is still yet to receive a legitimate UK release. Meanwhile Milligan was seemingly impressed enough with the results of his endeavors to remake The Ghastly Ones himself some ten years later as the slightly more upscale and near bloodless Legacy Of Blood (1978), a film that also enjoyed a UK pre-certificate video release (under the title Legacy Of Horror), but unlike its predecessor was not banned.
Lets not pull any punches here, by and standard of conventional judgment The Ghastly Ones is terrible, terrible cinema featuring woeful cinematography, haphazard editing, ridiculously stilted dialogue and totally unconvincing gore effects. Yet despite this The Ghastly Ones possesses a certain homely charm, its use of poverty row cinematic techniques and prevailing sense of amateurishness lending it the feel almost of a home video, only one featuring live rabbit eating and graphic saw dissections! Also where else but in an Andy Milligan film will you find the plot stop abruptly to take in sordid minor subplots concerning incestuous homosexuality and marital rape? Simultaneously amusing yet grubbily unpleasant and at times even slyly subversive The Ghastly Ones sure might not be a low budget filmmaking masterclass but it sure makes for a jaw-dropping viewing experience for trash cinema fans whose retina’s can stand up to the challenge!
Also Try… Legacy Of Blood (1978, Andy Milligan) / Bloodthirsty Butchers / The Body Beneath / The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! / Torture Dungeon / Blood Feast / Headless Eyes.
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