Gutter Auteur

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 cinéma vérité 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.

Rob Craig has been writing about cult film for more than twenty years. His work has been published in such magazines as Videoscope, Screem and Horror-Wood.

Rob Craig
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 312
Bibliographic Info: 29 photos, filmography, appendix, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6597-2
eISBN: 978-0-7864-9318-0
Imprint: McFarland

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. Raffiné in 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 29

• “Recommended”—Bookgasm
• “Excellent…a must…happy reading”—Plan 9 Crunch