The Ghastly Ones

Now, this is the type of wonderfully bad B-Movie I like - It's glorious. Even the poster is superb in its ambiguity. Because what you get in this motion picture is a pretty decent whodunit with plenty of red herrings to keep the audience guessing.

Don't get me wrong, this is a bad movie. Shaky camera work, terrible direction, the acting ranges from poor to average, and the special effects at times are laughable. But in some strange way, this only adds to its likability.

I should have hated it but just couldn't, because everybody who took part in the movie really did their best. Neil Flanagan who played Lawyer Dobbs is obviously much younger than his portrayed character, though this didn't stop him from doing his best with the part, even though the makeup people only covered his face in white talcum powder and put a raggedy old scarf over his head, to make him ancient.

What little budget they had for the film was spent on the few 1800's dresses. However, when they get frisky, especially Vicky (played pretty decently by Anne Linden), then they take to wearing see-through nylon teddy's.

The most endearing thing about the film is the feeling the actors being real-life friends who had an idea to make a movie.

This isn't the best but it does have heart. At least worth a viewing for all the lovers of bad movies. Who knows, maybe it will find a place in your heart.

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?

A couple frolic in the countryside just outside an abandoned house. They are stalked by a monstrous-looking man. The man attacks the couple, ripping out the man's eyeball. As he rolls around on the deck with the man, finishing him off, we hear director Andy Milligan shout "cutting away, move". And so begins "The Ghastly Ones", a dismal splatter-attempt from infamous director Andy Milligan. Shot on a budget of around $2,000, the film is widely loathed and was even described by Stephen King as being "morons with cameras". Old Stephen wasn't far off there. The camera work is absolutely shocking. It shakes up and down and looks for all the world like found-footage. Milligan was extremely inept when it came to making films. He hadn't a shred of talent. There are a few gory scenes that got this the credit of being a Video Nasty, but the aforementioned camera work is so bad it's a wonder that the censors could even make out what was happening. The story sees three sisters and their husbands invited to hear their late-father's will. In it, he instructs that they are to live in "sexual harmony" - seriously? - on the island where the house is situated for a couple of days before it is revealed what they inherit blah blah blah. While there they become the next victims of some crazed lunatic going around chopping people up. Milligan, for reasons I can't understand, remade this film in 1978 and titled it "Legacy of Horror" or "Legacy of Blood" as it's also known as. I actually seen that one before the original, which is why the rather generous rating of three stars. He somehow managed to make a nearly scene-by-scene remake worse than this amateurish, back-yard shoot. That was so bad that when I watched "The Ghastly Ones" I felt like I was watching a better film.

People who totally dig micro budget see-it-to-believe-how-bad-it-is schlock will probably enjoy Andy Milligan's "The Ghastly Ones". Supposedly a period piece, it brings together three couples in an old house for the reading of a will, where they will exist "in sexual harmony" for three days. Unfortunately, a brutal psycho has other ideas - first "marking" them by painting X's in blood, and then offing them. While technically quite a short movie (running approximately 72 minutes), it feels longer than it is, with a lot of talk. It may require some patience on the part of some viewers, therefore, in order to get to the good stuff, such as it is - with oh so tacky bargain basement gore (A Sno ball stands in for an eyeball!), a dose of (rather tame) sex, a priceless supporting character in the form of Hal Borske's half wit hunchback Colin (whose idea of fine cuisine is amusing, to say the least) and a not particularly compelling "Who is the killer?" mystery, which some people may well figure out early on. The characters are insipid and inspire appropriately insipid performances. (It's worth noting, though, that one actor in this bunch had a pretty good career for himself after this: co-star Richard Romanus's next film was Scorsese's "Mean Streets"!) That doesn't mean, however, that they aren't entertaining in their own way. Neil Flanagan, the star of Milligan's subsequent movie "Guru, the Mad Monk", is a riot as the aged, gnarly old lawyer. The movie itself is likewise inept enough to prove itself a real hoot. In fact, one can even hear Milligan calling out directions in the background; when a character is set afire, he can be heard saying, "Get down!" Milligan himself supplied the costumes, having ran his own clothing store named Raffine. Even while somewhat sluggish, this movie does deliver some good entertainment for bad movie buffs and some real laugh out loud moments. Five out of 10.

Whether you love Andy Milligan's films or hate them everyone is in agreement; they are a genre unto themselves! You know you are in some paralell universe in the opening minutes of this film when a mad killer attacks a couple having a picnic on a private island. The maniac gouges out the eye of the man and then turns to the camera holding up a tennis ball sized object that is meant to be the eye! If you listen carefully during the murder scene you can even hear Andy Milligan's voice calling out "Cutting away, move!" to the actors! When I met Andy in the late 70's he confided to me that whenever an enucleated eye was needed he found Hostess Sno-Balls not only filled the bill nicely but also provided an impromptu snack for his performers. The plot involves the gathering of heirs on a lonely island to hear the will of the rich, eccentric father. Andy knew that plot had a long white beard well before 1969 so he loaded his movie was sado-masochism, marital rape, homosexual incest, a hooded killer that you'd have to be deaf and blind not to know was stalking you, and of course the bargain basement gore that made him so (in)famous to the people who gathered at drive-ins to watch his movies. THE GHASTLY ONES was his first gore film. After doing soft core movies like THE NAKED TEMPTRESS, GUTTER TRASH and FLESHPOT he saw the market movie away from soft to hardcore and decided to move into the terror genre. Actually this film offers some interesting things. Neal Flanagan, one of his stock company, plays a withered ancient lawyer who appears to have stepped out of a Charles Dickens novel. Haal Borske,a writer and director of several plays, plays the first of many idiot characters in Andy's films. His character of Colin appears to have been the killer in the opening scenes and he looks perfectly normal (apart from being a total sociopath, that is) yet later in the film he has becomes a hunchbacked, snaggletoothed halfwit who eats raw meat. Maggie Rogers also appears in SEEDS OF SIN and TORTURE DUNGEON and her acting is actually several notches above what is expected in a Milligan film. Gore is very . . .well . . .unusual. Bloody scenes include a pitchfork to the throat, a man cut in half with a bandsaw, a hand chopped off, a head in a roasting pan and wait'll you see what happens to the killer at the end! Andy remade this movie a few years later as LEGACY OF BLOOD with a different cast but the same plot and effects. To further confuse matters there is another movie called LEGACY OF BLOOD that stars John Carradine, Faith Domergue and Rex Reason that offers a similar plot but more sex and better effects. Don't worry it will be impossible for you to confuse these movies; an Andy Milligan film is like no other. Back in '69 THE GHASTLY ONES played on a double bill with Kent Bateman's HEADLESS EYES. If I had not been only 4 back then I sure would have paid to catch a programme like that!