The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Miligan (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Milligan's greatest films were The Orgy at Lil's Place, The Naked Witch, Fleshpot on 42nd Street and Monstrosity (a violent, bloody rape revenge fantasy that was a cross between Frankenstein and The Golem). Shooting on budgets that hovered around $10,000, Milligan who turned out 29 movies between 1965 and 1988 was infamous; his movies were appallingly shot, often ludicrously plotted shock films that played in 42nd Street grind houses, drive-ins and avant-garde film festivals. No easy subject for a biographer, Milligan, who died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 61, was drawn to (in no particular order) drugs, violence, s&m sex, misogyny and general weirdness. McDonough's verbatim interviews, which form the spine of the book, reveal a man who could be alternately brutally honest, obstructionist, deceitful and quite kind. McDonough (who has written for the Village Voice and Spin) is careful to add well-researched, nuanced context. His portrait of Milligan's importance to the famous Caffe Cino, for example, considered to be the beginnings of Off-Broadway, are startling, notable additions to theater history. Although McDonough is a loyal fan he even worked with Milligan's production team as part of his research he maintains a critical eye and provides a worthy historical overview of both the aesthetics and business of exploitative cinema. Students of popular American culture, film, as well as of gender and gay and lesbian studies, will relish this intelligent portrait. 91 b&w photos. Agent, Jeff Posternak/Andrew Wylie.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The Marquis de Sade had nothing on filmmaker Andy Milligan, who between 1965 to 1988 cranked out a prodigious number of plays and 29 sex-and-exploitation films, many of which are now lost, with such sleazoid titles as The Filthy Five, Gutter Trash, Fleshpot on 42nd St., and Torture Dungeon. It would be (sl)easy to dismiss Milligan, who died of AIDS in 1991, as a grindhouse auteur, but that, as journalist and biographer McDonough so wonderfully and effectively explicates, would be an egregious mistake. Juxtaposed with Milligan's story, told with the help of a cornucopia of interviews, including trenchant commentary and extended passages from Milligan himself, are the colorful and significant tales of the developing Off Broadway scene, the birth and rise of the exploitation film industry, and that Ber-nude-a Triangle of "all sizzle, no steak" celluloid called the Deuce, or 42nd Street. Chock-full of movie stills, lurid poster art and advertisements, and some great excerpts from Milligan's film scripts, McDonough's book succeeds overwhelmingly in making the respectability case for Milligan. Undoubtedly, it will also lead many to seek out Milligan's work; may y'all have better luck than this reviewer had at your local video store. Clearly, this title will not be everyone's bowl of borscht, but it is enthusiastically endorsed for all large public and academic library film and American studies programs. Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press; 1st edition (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556524269
• ISBN-13: 978-1556524264
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,750,313 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Milligan every bit as ghastly as the title implies., November 8, 2002

By	Chadwick H. Saxelid "Bookworm" (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Jimmy McDonough does a superlative job of bringing the fascinating life of the late and almost completely unmissed misanthropic sexploitation/schlock horror movie maker Andy Milligan to light. Reader be warned, this is an unflinching look at life in the nightmarish rough trade underworld of New York. Milligan started in amateur theater before helping to create the boiling milieu that birthed the Off-Broadway Theater movement in the early sixties. Then he moved to the 42nd street grindhouses, making exploitation 'classics' that are eye scalding in their badness and impossible to forget, no matter how hard you try. Yet McDonough continually points out that, as bad as Milligan's movies were, they could only be made by Andy, being infused with the writer/director's utter contempt for women, family, and just about everything else humanity offered. Being a recalcitrant and secretive subject for McDonough, Milligan (as the author warns) sometimes fades from the narrative, but never from the world he inhabits. By the time Milligan leaves theater for the exploitation movie business we can fully understand why McDonough found Milligan such a hypnotically fascinating figure. For fans of exploitation movies, The Ghastly One is an essential book. Highest recommendation.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love 'em or Hate 'em, February 16, 2007

By	nikita88 (point of entry, venus) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan (Paperback)

andy milligan made the kinds of movies that leave the watcher scratching his head and wondering 'what the hell...?' movies made in the most primitive of 'do it yourself on whatever you can find' equipment and on ridiculous budgets- that a good 30% of them are lost should come as no surprise- the surprise is that ANY of it was saved- and that is thanks to film buffs and historians.

sooner or later people will recognize that the value in these 'guerilla' film makers lies in the documentation of urban locales that would be lost if not for the denizens who frequented them and documented them so well. there will always be those who call bukowski a genius and fail to see people like andy milligan as anything more than a hack. the irony.

i personally found this book a treat- though it's subject matter was unsettling most of the time- and jimmy mcdonough's treatment of cafe cino and the deuce is worth ther read on it's own just for it's historical value alone. reading the book didn't make me stronger, and i still can't wash some of it off- but it was a dynamite read, and definitely worth the time i put into reading it.

if the merit of a biography is to interest the passive reader into delving further into it's subject matter, then jimmy mcdonough has succeeded where other biographers fail.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Look at Sordid Chapter in Film History, October 4, 2001

By	"djdklinger" (Jersey City, NJ) - See all my reviews

This is a beautifully written, brutally honest, well-researched, wholly unsentimental, and non-judgemental portrait of low-budget sexploitation filmmaker Andy Milligan. While some of the violence and depravity displayed by Milligan and his players is portrayed in such graphic detail as to occasionally make the reader feel thoroughly soiled, McDonough's book is like a particularly devastating car wreck-it's a horrifying spectacle from which it's impossible to turn away. After having read this, I have no desire to see a single scene from an Andy Milligan movie, but found this book to be an incredibly rewarding look at the seamy underbelly of low-budget American cinema, as well as the fascinating putative beginnings of New York's off-Broadway theater.

McDonough does a remarkable job chronicling the offbeat, the eccentric, the forgotten, and I'm now especially eager to read the author's long-time-forthcoming biography of Neil Young.