The Ghastly Ones

Ghastly Ones, The (1968)

1/2 (out of 4)

Three couples spend the night in an old dark house so that they can collect an inheritance but a killer is running loose. This is my first Andy Milligan film and it's really no worse than countless other exploitation films that were out at the time. Everything about the film is bad, especially the sex scenes, which are probably the worst I've ever seen in a movie. The director does try to build suspense but this here comes off rather laughable but then again, everything here comes close to laughable.

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?

This film was released in the UK under the name Blood Rites. It was banned outright and never submitted again for release.

As The Ghastly Ones, it was supposedly a hit with the horror hungry denizens of New York City's famed 42nd Street Grindhouse circuit. If you are looking for some bloody horror, then you will find it in this film.

Unfortunately to see the developmentally disabled Colin (Hal Borske) chomp down on a live rabbit, you have to put up with shaky 16mm camera work that makes Ed Wood look positively marvelous.

Three sisters are to spend three days in the family homestead with their husbands before the old man's money is disbursed. Naturally, in such a situation, people start dropping dead. Family secrets are exposed and lots of blood is spilled, especially during a gruesome dismemberment.

Maybe it was the bunny bit that the Brits objected to, I know I did.

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!

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.