Fleshpot on 42nd Street

I sat down to watch this expecting the worst. However, I found it quite surprising. Looking at those living on the fringes of society, director and writer Andy Milligan (who had a rather tragic life) wrote decent dialogue, and utilized actors from New York's off Broadway scene, so the performances are actually not bad (including, of all people, Harry Reems). Shooting with a 16 mm camera and utilizing extreme close ups, it's obvious Milligan actually had some talent. One wonders what he might have done in the main stream.

I thought this was an entertaining grindhouse relic. It was more of a drama than anything, but the characters made it watchable. The lead actress seems ruthless at first, but eventually shows she can gain our sympathy--she is generous to her friends, and just wants a better life. Her transgender friend gets all the best lines. The men are all lumps of crud (and terrible actors)--except Bob. It's not the most complicated story--it's more of a character piece, but I was never bored by it. I don't know if there are different versions out there, but the print I saw was pretty grainy. Also, some of the camera work could make you motion sick the way it shakes around. But I will recommend it for anyone who can overlook technical flaws to find a trashy gem set in 70's New York.

Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1973)

*** (out of 4)

Dusty Cole (Laura Cannon) is a woman living in New York City where she finds herself broke and in a bad place. She agrees to move in wide drag queen and prostitute Cherry Lane (Neil Flanagan) but soon she too is turning tricks for cash. Before long Dusty meets Bob (Harry Reems) and the two quickly fall in love but Cherry puts pressure on Dusty to do one more trick.

I've seen a little over a dozen Andy Milligan movies and I must admit that I rarely give them more than a half a star. The majority of his movies are BOMB rated so obviously I don't think too much of him as a director. At the same time, I understand the cult following that has built around him over the past decade. With that said, I was completely shocked at how good FLESHPOT ON 42ND STREET was. The story itself isn't anything overly original but I thought the film has a certain rawness that worked in its favor and the film also benefited from a terrific performance by Cannon.

Cannon's filmography is mostly porn titles but I must say that she was excellent in the role of this woman who just wants happiness but finds one bad situation after another. I thought Cannon was extremely believable in the part and she brought a certain tenderness that made you care for the character. Flanagan, a Milligan favorite, is also quite good in the role of the drag queen. The line delivery and the way Flanagan can go from good to bad was performed very well. Reems is also good in his supporting part and look fast for Fred Lincoln of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT fame.

Milligan does a fine job building up the story and this is certainly the best movie I've seen from him. I thought he did a very good job at making the film seem very realistic as if you were watching real people. There are some great shots of 42nd Street during its exploitation glory days that fans will enjoy. There's a lot of nudity in the film as well as some sexual violence but it just helps the drama of the story.

There's no question that Andy Milligan's film work was influenced by Andy Warhol. That doesn't downgrade the late Mr. Milligan at all-- no doubt when he was putting together plays in the 1950s, much of the aesthetic seen in VAPORS and FLESHPOT ON 42nd STREET was already intact. It's as if Warhol influenced the film-making, yet Tennessee Williams influenced the content. I thought Milligan's VAPORS (see my review) was a masterpiece, treating loneliness, desperation, and sexual confusion in a bold and honest way. You don't have to be bisexual or gay to find the humanity and universality in such a film. For me, FLESHPOT is equally fine. If VAPORS was reminiscent of early Warhol, when Andy himself was at the camera, FLESHPOT is reminiscent of the Paul Morrissey era. There's no Joe Dallesandro here, but Milligan was never about "stars" the way Warhol was. This is the story of two people who are sexually confused and sexually frustrated, and find that they have to "hustle" on every level of their existence. They may be in the gutter, but they both have somewhere inside them a spark of romance and dreams of a better life...somehow, somewhere. Neil Flanagan (aka "Lynn" Flanagan) brings a lot of depth to the role of queen Cherry Lane--sweet one moment, bitchy another moment; kind and considerate, but then thoughtless. Flanagan is, of course, familiar to any Milligan fan because of playing GURU in GURU THE MAD MONK. Diana Lewis's other credits seem to be mostly porn, but she makes the role of Dusty uncomfortably real. Everyone has known a few Dustys--the person who moves in with someone and basically provides sexual favors in return for room and board and some occasional pocket money. A number of people have BEEN Dustys at some low period in their lives. She is hard-bitten, cynical, knows how to manipulate the gullible, but she too has a dream of a better life that even the sleazy New York underbelly has not snuffed out. Some people manage to find a way out, or move somewhere else and reinvent themselves successfully, but many do not, and this is their story. The jumpy 16mm photography of Milligan's legendary Auricon camera almost becomes a participant in the film, and makes everything alive and moving, the way it does in real life. There's a lot of attention to dialogue in Milligan's 60s and early 70s work--the man may have been essentially a playwright. When it works well, Milligan's dialogue works as well as some of the later, less symbolic, more explicit Tennessee Williams plays. This being an Andy Milligan film, there are no happy endings, but this film would be phony and insincere if it offered one. FLESHPOT ON 42nd STREET is an honest look at characters living in an urban jungle, a place where if you don't take advantage of the next person you meet, that person will take advantage of you. Milligan does not judge these characters; he finds the humanity within them. This is equal to the best of the Warhol-Morrissey films, and in its own right is an impressive piece of work that seems more accurate and more rich the older I get and the more I've lived. Don't wait three decades for someone to proclaim this a masterpiece and one of the most significant "windows" into the early 70's, and for it to be shown at some film festival alongside TAXI DRIVER--score a copy now.

A homeless young woman hops from bed to bed and friend's apartment to friend's apartment trying to find herself and gets into all sorts of trouble with a variety of shady characters until she meets a guy she really falls for.

Sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, and always unpredictable, Fleshpot on 42nd Street goes further than just about any other low budget exploitation cheapie from the era and includes real sex. Oddly enough, the sex scenes don't deter from the film or stop the film cold and only enhance it.