Surgikill

Let it be known I am not a quitter, but I'll be damned if Andy Milligan's cinematic swan song didn't want to battle me to the death. Full admission: I actually enjoy Milligan's 1980s output like Carnage, Monstrosity and The Weirdo. Something about his "style" then really captures the era. So foolish me went into the gloriously titled Surgikill thinking I was going to get Milligan's take on the hospital-set slasher subgenre. Nope! Turns out this is his attempt to do a zany (emphasis on the Zzzz) Police Academy style spoof set in a hospital. Woe is me. I tried to get through this twice before and couldn't make it past the first ten minutes. How bad is it? The first five minutes feature two scenes where people get bed pans dumped on them. You won't find many (any?) laughs in this story about Dr. Grace Goode (Bouvier, not sure if she had earned a one name moniker) trying to save her hospital from a debt collector. The comedic highlight is a building argument between Dr. Goode and Dr. Fine the ends with the following exchange:

Dr. Fine: "Well, that's just fine, Dr. Goode!"

Dr. Goode: "Good, Dr. Fine."

As the theme song says, "Tell me where it hurts." If you thought horror wasn't Milligan's strong suit, watch this.

Director Andy Milligan's last film before he died of AIDS in 1992, "Surgikill" proves he was no more adept at "Police Academy"-style comedy than he was with Grand Guignol horror. What a mess! A drag queen nurse whose makeup changes from shot to shot, a hospital administrator less hygenic than your typical bag lady, orderlies on speed doing third-rate comedy club celebrity impersonations are all shoveled all vie for scenery chewing time. No one will confuse this with a good film.

A mad killer goes around bumping off the staff of a hospital set to be closed for development. That's the wafer-thin plot for a series of gags and no-budget special effects with that "Milligan touch."

Reportedly filmed while the director was in the final throes of his disease, this "horror comedy" can be seen as his very jaundiced comment on the medical profession.

The jury is still out IF this really was an Andy Milligan movie or they just used his name... Assuming it is indeed his film, it makes all his earlier so-bad-they're-great movies seem like masterpieces. Milligan who turned out some truly fun low budget movies in the early 1970's like BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS, THE GHASTLY ONES, SEEDS, TORTURE DUNGEON, CARNAGE, THE BODY BENEATH, THE MAD MONK, and arguably his best film FLESHPOTS OF 42nd STREET (which you can watch on Xhamster) ALL these movies had a truly unusual fun crazed element which made them uniquely Andy's movies. THIS MOVIE "SURGIKILL" HAS NONE OF THOSE ELEMENTS! It shows no signs whatsoever of being an Andy Film. No Nudity, No Cheap Gore, No Controversial Hate in Plot, No Strange Library Music, No Weird Costumes, No Fun Whatsoever.. It is like a high school home made video shot entirely on a cheap Walmart cell phone. We know Andy died of Aids shortly after making this. So perhaps he wasn't himself in any way. But regardless... This is worst than sitting through your own root canal.

Andy Milligan's last gasp before he bought the farm was this criminally unamusing slasher-genre lampoon which finds a hospital violently beset by an unidentified serial killer. The eccentric but loyal staff does everything possible to keep the situation under wraps while a bumbling police investigation is underway.

This painfully unfunny dark-humor pasquinade won't likely appease the small-but-avid coterie of Andy Milligan enthusiasts. In most cases, Milligan's monogram directorial flourishes evince a bizarre, dissentient singularity...an unpremeditated aspect with considerable appeal to a niche viewership. Critically speaking, these films are indisputably wretched. To a discriminate audience, however, they transcend critical assay by virtue of their waywardly off-center peculiarities. SURGIKILL is lacking in this distinction, however, as failed attempts at comedy rarely outshine their deficiencies with abstract or specious incidental charm. This film is an improficient blaze of inanity which is entirely non-evident of professionalism in any facet of its lazy fructification. Quite simply put, SURGIKILL is possibly the worst comedy I have ever seen. An unfortunate final coda to a career as diacritic and fascinating as it was inglorious.

Saul Bellow once said..."Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately." These words could have been a fitting inscription on Andy's grave-marker.

1.5/10

It's blatantly obvious Andy Milligan is not to blame for this awful flick. He was used as a (believe it or not) promotional tool. His name appears no less than eight times on the VHS box. There's even an unflattering picture of him on it's spine.

None of the usual Milligan trademarks are to be found here at all..none of his usual themes or caricatures. He was a hired hand working with someone else's (Sid Caplan and Sherman Hirsh) awful screenplay. It's almost like the writers where looking for someone to blame even after trying to cash in on his name....read the review titled "SURGIKILL should have been better. Andy Milligan does not deserve all the blame" written by someone who claims to be Sherman Hirsh. I have no reason to doubt he is who he claims to be, after all who would fake it?

While it's true that Milligan may not have been the best director, or technically savvy filmmaker, this film goes far beyond that. You just can't make chicken soup out of..well..you know the rest. Even Steven Spielberg couldn't have helped the almost painfully bad script and screenplay.

The worst part of it all is that this was the last film to have Andy Milligan's name attached to it..even if it's not really his film. Admittedly it would be hard to tarnish his image (after all he had to work with the limitations of extremely low budgets..often under $10,000..during his entire career), but this film managed to do just that. I think he deserved to go out on a much higher note than this. It's a shame really.