preppy-3 This takes place in the early 1900s (for no earthly reason I can think of). Three sisters and their husbands go to their late fathers estate located on a remote island. They all seem to get along but soon a masked killer is going around and killing everybody but who and why? Believe me this film is so badly made you won't care! Terribly directed film by the "legendary" Andy Milligan. He was known for making no budget horror films with threadbare scripts, terrible actors (most of who never made another movie) and gore effects that are so bad you won't believe what you're seeing. For some reason this man has a following. Why?????? The films aren't bad enough to be good (like Ed Wood films) and the acting and gore is just laughable.Anyways this film is, as I said, terribly directed. The camera wanders all over the place not seeming to know where to go. Most of the film is shot in tight closeups--probably to cover up the cheap sets. The production design is threadbare--the costumes actually looked pretty good but the rooms are small and cramped. One room has wallpaper (which I don't think existed back in the early 1900s) that will make you dizzy! The script is OK but full of things that don't add up. Early on it's made clear that two characters--Richard and Walter--were lovers...and then NOTHING is done with it! Then why tell us??? The acting is surprisingly not bad. No one is fantastic but no one is really bad either. They all say their lines with conviction. There's a few flashes of female nudity and some pointless sex scenes. Still this is a bad film with terrible direction, threadbare sets and gore that is so lousy it staggers the imagination. Stephen King said this was made by morons with cameras. Mr. King is 100% right. A 1 all the way.

Michael_Elliott Ghastly Ones, The (1968) 1/2 (out of 4) Three couples spend the night in an old dark house so that they can collect an inheritance but a killer is running loose. This is my first Andy Milligan film and it's really no worse than countless other exploitation films that were out at the time. Everything about the film is bad, especially the sex scenes, which are probably the worst I've ever seen in a movie. The director does try to build suspense but this here comes off rather laughable but then again, everything here comes close to laughable.

dbborroughs Milligan period piece about murders for an inheritance. Shot in that tight Milligan style where people seem to hug each other so they remain in frame (due to his camera being beyond poor). This is a dreadful movie that has a certain amount of brain dead charm. Its a bad movie in the I can't believe they actually released this sort of way. Again as with most Milligan films, little more than a home movie (stuff I shot looked like this and I couldn't release it) this is the sort of thing only masochists and bad movie lovers dare watch. Certainly better than Seeds of Sin, the color and the period nature some how defuses the desire to put this on the unredeemable list. Come on how can one not enjoy-as with most Milligan period films- the desire to see the errors in continuity with objects from different eras mingling as if there was nothing wrong. There's a drinking game (and alcohol helps these films) in spot the error.

thomandybish THE GHASTLY ONES is a brainboiler of a cheap horror film. The plot involves three sisters and their husbands travelling to their isolated childhood home to hear the reading of their late father's will, but someone is willing to kill to keep the money all to themselves. Director/producer Andy Milligan attempts a 1905 setting for his film despite something like $20.00 for a budget, although its highly unlikely that women from that era wore see-through black negligees to bed. Along with the wobbly period details, there's stabbings,decapitation, mutilations with hacksaws, and live rabbit eating. Ole! Ten years later, Milligan remade this flick as the somewhat more competent(and narratively coherent)LEGACY OF HORROR. If you're looking for a laughable, confused mess, go with THE GHASTLY ONES. If you want a more understandable film that offers characters whose motives are revealed during the course of the story, go with LEGACY OF HORROR. Calm me old fashioned, but I prefer the latter, because the reasons revealed for some of the characters' behavior makes the resulting carnage all the more chilling. And the simpleton brother is show as an abused, sad waste of human potential, not a ghoulish geek. The scene where he sits in his dank basement room, battering a teddy bear while grunting the word "stupid" over and over is more chilling than a dozen disembowelings--something that I think Milligan was not conscious of. Okay, so maybe I overanalyze, but I like to see the psychological underside of these characters. After all, a psycho doesn't make himself crazy, does he?