Why the notorious Drive director paid £16,000 on eBay to buy up Milligan's films and bring them back to life
When I was about 12, I tricked my mother into buying me my first book about film: Splatter Movies, by John McCarty. That's when I became aware of Andy Milligan and started looking for videos of his films – such as Gutter Trash (1969), Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1973), Guru, the Mad Monk (1970) and The Naked Witch (1967).
When I finally saw them I was taken aback – first by their crudeness, and then by how difficult it was to sit through them. But, at the same time, I realised that here was a man who made films his own way, on his own terms. He used the medium as something he could streamline his consciousness into, and I found that fascinating.
I had moved to New York, aged eight, in 1978, too late to experience anything of the real Times Square.
When I was about 12, I tricked my mother into buying me my first book about film: Splatter Movies, by John McCarty. That's when I became aware of Andy Milligan and started looking for videos of his films – such as Gutter Trash (1969), Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1973), Guru, the Mad Monk (1970) and The Naked Witch (1967).
When I finally saw them I was taken aback – first by their crudeness, and then by how difficult it was to sit through them. But, at the same time, I realised that here was a man who made films his own way, on his own terms. He used the medium as something he could streamline his consciousness into, and I found that fascinating.
I had moved to New York, aged eight, in 1978, too late to experience anything of the real Times Square.
- 6/15/2012
- by Nicolas Winding Refn
- The Guardian - Film News
Andy Milligan, the Staten Island-based filmmaker best known for a string of micro-budget horror and sexploitation films made in the 1960’s and 70’s, was certainly one of the oddest characters in the New York ‘Grindhouse’ movie industry. Infamous for his sadistic nature towards his actors and the sadistic kink in his gay lifestyle, Milligan is legendary for the inept, technically primitive movies he made. Michael Weldon once wrote in his Psychotronic magazine that “If you’re an Andy Milligan fan, there’s no hope for you” and Tim Lucas wrote in Video Watchdog that “To reach an appreciation of (Milligan’s) work, it may first be necessary to develop a loathing toward traditional forms of cinema”. It’s true that Milligan’s films are unbelievably atrocious on so many levels yet they’re not without their threadbare charms and interesting scripts. Milligan was a one-man film crew who wrote, directed,...
- 7/22/2009
- by Tom
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
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