The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan

by Jimmy McDonough

Overview

One of the most acclaimed film director biographies ever published. The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan is back in print in paperback, following the run-away Sold Out success of its large format slipcased limited edition.

Andy Milligan, perhaps the most compelling lone wolf in cinema history, gets his due in this definitive work. A dressmaker, actor and puppeteer, Milligan cranked out explosive titles like Bloodthirsty Butchers, The Body Beneath, and The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! on threadbare budgets. Biographer and journalist Jimmy McDonough’s book serves as a history of not only the shadowy New York City sexploitation business, but also of the Caffe Cino – a tiny storefront café many consider to be the beginning of Off-Off Broadway theatre in America. Starring a cast of unforgettable, elusive characters, the gripping narrative turns grimly personal, and it’s told with unflinching honesty. Hilarious at times, deeply unsettling, and ultimately heartbreaking, THE GHASTLY ONE will haunt you long after the last page is turned.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913051150
Publisher:	FAB Press
Publication date:	10/04/2022
Series:	Nicolas Winding Refn Presents
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jimmy McDonough is a biographer and journalist. He has also written biographies of Neil Young, Tammy Wynette and Russ Meyer. Time magazine declared his Milligan biography The Ghastly One “a masterpiece” and John Waters repeatedly names it one of his all-time favorites. McDonough has also authored profiles on Jimmy Scott, Gary Stewart, Hubert Selby, Jr. and Link Wray. Jimmy's recent books include Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green. Jimmy is Editor-In-Chief of Nicolas Winding Refn's acclaimed website byNWR.com.

Read an Excerpt

From 1965 to 1988 Andy Milligan churned out twenty-nine movies, countless plays, even a TV sitcom. Although he started out in the rarefied avant-garde atmosphere of Greenwich Village theater, he made a name for himself in the gutter: New York City's 42nd Street. Largely a long city block in the heart of Times Square, the Deuce was full of garish theaters catering to a predominantly male crowd on the prowl for thrills that seemed to grow more depraved with each new triple bill. Lurid posters and banners sucked you into dark slime pits you half-expected to be violated in.
Andy's movies deliver a different kind of jolt from what the tawdry, colorful one-sheets promise. Milligan's no-budget films are a world unto themselves, possessing a grim, grimy reality not unlike a novel by Hubert Selby Jr. or Louis-Ferdinand Celine. A sadist, street person, and misogynist, Andy made films of the heart in a milieu where the only art was that of the con. Casting ancient character actresses, non-acting antique dealers, and whatever piece of rough trade Andy had slept with the night before, Milligan made sexploitation pictures, gore shockers, even preposterous medieval and Civil War costume “epics.” Working out of New York City, London, Hollywood, and Staten Island, Andy thrived on laughable budgets—many hovering in the $10,000—$20,000 range—and utilized ragtag equipment silent filmmakers would have rejected. Andy Milligan literally did everything in his movies except star in them. Against all odds he persevered, churning out plays and movies with the frenzy of a maniac.
In recent years there has been a kind of nostalgia applied to exploitation films. Dewy-eyed acolytes devoted to so-called “bad” films have somewhat robbed them of their forbidden appeal, relegating them to the same quaint collectible pile inhabited by obscure rockabilly records and wacky fifties lamps. The apotheosis of this impulse is perhaps Tim Burton's 1994 hit homage Ed Wood (itself a sweetly naive but watered-down Hollywood treatment of a much bleaker work, Rudolph Grey's biography Nightmare of Ecstasy).
But unlike Ed Wood Jr., and such other exploitation “icons” as Russ Meyer or Herschell Gordon Lewis, Andy Milligan, until recently, had virtually no following, barely even a cult. And after putting the magnifying glass to Andy's tortured films and life, I doubt that casting will begin for the cable miniseries. Milligan still disturbs.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Monstrosity 8

Part 1 The Caffe Cino, 1957-1968

1 Seeds 18

2 Do What You Have To Do 28

3 Gentleman's Handshake 40

4 Cukaya 50

Part 2 Times Square, 1965-1969

5 Tight Fingers 70

6 All Sizzle, No Steak 83

7 Swirl Camera 101

8 See Candy in Action 126

Part 3 London/Staten Island/NYC, 1969-1984

9 Trisexual 139

10 The Mad Bomber 180

Part 4 Hollywood, 1985-1991

11 The Happy Organ 207

12 Roses, Just Roses 218

Part 5 St. Paul, 2000

13 Taught by Masters 229

14 Epilogue Dear Andy 238

Film and Plays 240

Sources 246

Selected Bibliography 248

Acknowledgements 250

Index 252

Editorial Reviews

An appalling pocket of cinematic history, delightfully explored and obsessively researched. Andy Milligan is one scary man... this feel-bad book makes me feel good by asking the all-important question, “Can a genius be untalented, too?” — John Waters

Brilliantly researched, powerfully written, and suffused with a deep humanity, this is exploitation as art and art as exploitation. Magnificent and strangely moving. — Bob Mehr, author of Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements

A showbiz bio as cantankerous, big-hearted, and unstuck in time as its subject. The Ghastly One
celebrates the transcendence and grace that’s sometimes hidden in the most disposable grade-Z cultural schlock. I read it in one sitting and so will you. — Patton Oswalt

You can’t put it down! The question now is... what will the nice people be doing while you’re reading The Ghastly One? — Lux Interior, The Cramps

From the Publisher