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

Rating:
Summary: A MASTERPIECE
Review: ...since when are biographies required to provide HEROES? If you are interested in film, art, people, sex, insanity, the politics of pornography and 42nd Street, BUY THIS BOOK. It is unforgettable and even made me cry at the end. A TRUE CLASSIC. Rarely has an artist (however "bad") gotten such an incisive, loving--yet brutal--tribute.

Rating:
Summary: haunting/brutal/honest
Review: As a straight male I could have done without some of the gay passages, I could have also done without some of Milligan's stepbrother's sick and twisted admissions--and yet, having said that, what was the author supposed to do? Cover up the less than pleasant parts of his subject's background? I think not. It's a facinating tale that will haunt you long after you have finished the book. Extremely well done; unputdownable. If you're interested in low-budget filmmaking and appreciate what these filmmakers have to go through to make their dreams happen on zero budgets...this is the book for you. The other would be on Al Adamson, and, of course, Ed Wood.

Rating:
Summary: Milligan every bit as ghastly as the title implies.
Review: 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.