SATURDAY, MAY 2: SEEDS OF SIN
FRIDAY, MAY 15: SEEDS OF SIN
SATURDAY, MAY 16: THE BODY BENEATH
FRIDAY, MAY 29: THE BODY BENEATH
…
There is no director like Staten Island’s own Andy Milligan. Made under extreme conditions, with miniscule budgets, Milligan makes seemingly simple horror flicks into nightmarish melodramas seething with rage, lust and hatred. Do they look cheap? Does everything seem entirely real? No? PAY ATTENTION. Milligan’s camera moves in ways so deeply foreign to viewers, and develops storylines closer to his early work staging Lord Dunsany and Jean Genet plays, that it’s no wonder he’s got his fair share of detractors (Stephen King said of The Ghastly Ones “the work of morons with cameras”), but over the years a small but fanatical following has formed, willing to look deeper into these films. Assisted by the late, great Mike Vraney of Something Weird, a tireless collector of Milligan original prints, and given deeper personal context thanks to Jimmy McDonough’s heartbreaking book The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan, the time is long overdue for a reconsideration of his work (thankfully recently begun in the UK by BFI as assisted by Vraney and director Nicholas Winding Refn), and with our Milligan Midnights series, we hope to bring a series of his films to Spectacle Midnights in the hope that Milligan himself might crack a rare smile from his unmarked grave somewhere in LA.
“I don’t see how anyone can write off Andy Milligan as just an exceptionally strange exploitation hack when his films are full of these beautiful eerie moments contained in these compositions that can last for a minute + or just a second because his weird camera is always moving and twisting and making your eyes travel in ways you’d never have expected them to…I can’t think of anyone else who’d have filmed a scene in which a woman lets her vampire cult leader into the house to have his minions bite her husband this way!” –Zynab Hashim
SEEDS OF SIN
Dir. Andy Milligan, 1968
USA, 84 min.
SATURDAY, MAY 2 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MAY 15 – MIDNIGHT
“Sown in Incest! Harvested in Hate!”
Carol Manning takes the liberty to invite her siblings to a Christmas dinner at her familial home much to her mother’s displeasure. The members of the Manning family have not seen each other in years due to the resentment they have for each other. The only “love” that exists amongst them is limited to the incestuous affairs that they engaged in behind their mother’s back as children. The only tie between the siblings is the hatred they feel for their mother Claris. Claris is an aging widow who has survived many marriages and has amassed a large fortune as a result. She “dislikes” her children very much would rather not see any of them ever again. She feels that her children are like vultures flying overhead awaiting for the first sign of her death so they can swoop in and pick her pockets clean! Fortunately for the vultures, death is lurking just around the corner! For there is a murderer on the loose in the Manning estate! This shadowy figure is killing off members of the Manning family by orchestrating a series of “accidents”. Who could it be? Will Claris’s fortune survive? Who will reap THE SEEDS OF SIN?
SEEDS OF SIN has all of the trappings of a gothic tale. There is a stately familial home, dark secrets, incest, rape, murder and to top it all off there are beautiful roses featured throughout the entire film! Yet, unlike a “traditional” gothic tale, Seeds focuses on a Matriarchy instead of a Patriarchy. The story features several dominant female characters. These female characters greatly exert their power over the male characters in the film. It is a truly refreshing twist to the gothic “formula”. Think of it as a version of “Fall Of The House Of Usher”, but with more sex and violence and a lessened threat of being buried alive!
SEEDS is one of Andy Milligan’s greatest and most personal films. Andy is telling us the story of a broken family that is eerily similar to his own. He is breathing through his wounds in every frame. The overwhelmingly dominant female theme which is often explored in his work is presented here in full bloom in the form of Claris who is very similar to Andy’s mother. The character of Buster is like Milligan as a young man. The weak and down trodden paternal figure is a mirror image of Andy’s father. Seeds literally is Andy Milligan’s horrific family life scarred into celluloid. Sadly, SEEDS, like many other Milligan films has been tampered with badly by the greedy little hands of producers who wanted to make a buck selling sex. There are several “hardcore” scenes that have been edited into the film so that it would be more profitable. As a result certain scenes that were shot by Andy have been lost. Luckily, there is a trailer for the film that has pieces of some of the “lost” scenes from the film.
Always remember “Nothing can kill a bitch like momma!” Long Live Andy Milligan!
THE BODY BENEATH
Dir. Andy Milligan, 1970
UK, 82 min.
There is no director like Staten Island’s own Andy Milligan. Made under extreme conditions, with miniscule budgets, Milligan makes seemingly simple horror flicks into nightmarish melodramas seething with rage, lust and hatred. Do they look cheap? Does everything seem entirely real? No? PAY ATTENTION. Milligan’s camera moves in ways so deeply foreign to viewers, and develops storylines closer to his early work staging Lord Dunsany and Jean Genet plays, that it’s no wonder he’s got his fair share of detractors (Stephen King said of The Ghastly Ones “the work of morons with cameras”), but over the years a small but fanatical following has formed, willing to look deeper into these films. Assisted by the late, great Mike Vraney of Something Weird, a tireless collector of Milligan original prints, and given deeper personal context thanks to Jimmy McDonough’s heartbreaking book The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan, the time is long overdue for a reconsideration of his work (thankfully recently begun in the UK by BFI as assisted by Vraney and director Nicholas Winding Refn), and with our Milligan Midnights series, we hope to bring a series of his films to Spectacle Midnightd in the hope that Milligan himself might crack a rare smile from his unmarked grave somewhere in LA.
“I don’t see how anyone can write off Andy Milligan as just an exceptionally strange exploitation hack when his films are full of these beautiful eerie moments contained in these compositions that can last for a minute + or just a second because his weird camera is always moving and twisting and making your eyes travel in ways you’d never have expected them to…I can’t think of anyone else who’d have filmed a scene in which a woman lets her vampire cult leader into the house to have his minions bite her husband this way!” -Zynab Hashim
SATURDAY, MAY 16 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MAY 29 – MIDNIGHT
“Tonight is the yearly meeting. We must have the sacrifice.”
We begin with THE BODY BENEATH, a film Milligan made during his time in the UK. First-timers may find the film “talky” or “chatty” — that’s Milligan, and you’ll either get into it or you won’t. There’s a hypnotic slowness to Milligan’s films, which is one of the main reasons the “let’s see some boobs and blood” crowd never took to him, no matter how much green-faced nightgown action we get. And we get a LOT of it, with vampire lord Reverend Algernon Ford (played by Gavin Reed) realizing his pure bloodline was dying out after centuries of inbreeding. He seeks to find the non-vampire members of his bloodline and convert them, all of which sounds about right for a midnight, but it’s Milligan’s teeth-grinding misanthropy which brings us to a different level, so far from the laughable kitch it may at first seem. With one of Milligan’s best actors, Berwick Kaler, playing the hunchback Spool and a (comparably) larger budget than his earlier films, plus a jaw-dropping orgy of cannibalism that must be seen to be believed, It’s arguably one of the best entry points to his work. We have a slew of other Milligans coming up, so don’t sleep! Ever! MILLIGAN MIDNIGHTS SHALL NEVER DIE!
“Few filmmakers can boast of having a recognisable style, but when you see a Milligan movie, you are in no doubt whose film it is. He was sort of a Douglas Sirk figure – there’s so much subtext in his movies. And the more you get into them, the more you realise that they were made by someone who was very tormented, and very intelligent; a sensitive man who used film as an artform to express his views on life.” -Nicholas Winding Refn