Surgikill

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

ANDY MILLIGAN was the wrong director for SURGIKILL. He didn't understand comedy as being anything other than people falling all over each other. The amateurish quality of the overall production was the fault of certain behind the scenes persons who butted in when they weren't needed. Andy was weakened by his disease, but hardly in the "FINAL THROES OF AIDS". I understand that his overall approach to SURGIKILL as farce was due to his sickness and the desire to do something non-horror. He lived 2 years after SURGIKILL and continued to produce plays at his own theatre until he was too sick to continue. The project had great potential, but too many people seemed to give up on it, and just slough off their work. The pervasive stupidity of the final release has no counterpart in the original script. I know, because I wrote SURGIKILL. It was not an original Andy Milligan project. He was hired to direct it. That was the first mistake. Anyone who is interested in Andy's career should consult the series on his life and work as published in Video Watchdog. The book published on Andy, THE GHASTLY ONE, is, to put it most kindly, defective.

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.

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.

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.