“I’m trisexual — I’ll try anything for pleasure!”

Any movie that has this line, no matter what happens in it, has something good in it.

Norman (Gerald Jaccuzo) is The Duke Of Norwich. When his half-brother is killed, he gets closer to the throne, which makes him filled with a need for power. He sets his other half-brother Albert (Hal Borske) up with a commoner named Heather MacGregor (Susan Cassidy) with plans to take control of their child and therefore, the throne. But there’s also the dead half-brother’s pregnant wife Lady Jane (Patricia Dillon), a hunchback named Ivan (Richard Mason) — who even gets into a threesome — and a woman with one eye.

I can’t even imagine what people unaware of Andy Milligan think when they saw this. It could still be happening now thanks to streaming, as someone sees the poster art and the title and thinks. “I’ll try this” before they’re confronted by Staten Island being a foreign country and costumes that look like they came from a Christmas play. Will any of them make it to the end? Or will they just be upset by what they have seen?

You can watch this on Tubi.

One of five movies that Andy Milligan was to shoot for British distributor Leslie Elliot — before the falling out with Elliot’s father, who was his business partner — Nightbirds was written on the plane to England.

It’s not the normal — well, was anything he did normal? — horror movie that Milligan was getting known for. Dink (Berwick Kaler) and Dee (Julie Shaw) meet, hook up and he moves into her attic apartment. Then they grow so obsessed with each other that the outside world no longer matters. Their worship game is one of trying to outdo the other, trying to make the other the victim when it should be about lovemaking. It’s not, but you already knew that going in.

Like Vapors, this is an intimate film and not one of blood and horror. Well, you could say that there is horror but not the supernatural kind. I read someone once who said they wondered what Milligan’s career would have been like if Warhol had paid him instead of Paul Morrissey and I bet he’d have ruined the opportunity sooner than later, but just dream of what could have been.

Making his way to England instead of Staten Island, Andy Milligan created a vampire movie in which Rev. Alexander Algernon Ford (Gavin Reed) has an entire family of vampires — a wife who doesn’t speak, three green-skinned vampire women and a hunchback named Spool — living in Carfax Abbey.

Inbreeding is destroying this vampiric brood, so he calls out to America for more family members to add to the DNA and increase their chances of survival.

To get this on film, Milligan handmade costumes and smeared vaseline all over the lens. As always, he also had everyone scream at the top of their lungs.

Spool is abused throughout the movie, even when he’s trying to do the right thing and save the victims.

A lot of people seem to hate this movie and you know, maybe I have Stockholm Syndrome because I watched so many Andy Milligan movies all in the same week, but I am not seeing the same movie that they have. I kind of fall into a drone dream when I watch these, letting them wash over me and take away the world that I don’t want to be in. I feel sad for others who can’t use these movies in the same way.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Released as a double feature with Torture Dungeon, Bloodthirsty Butchers finds Andy Milligan making another one of the classics. Sweeney Todd to be exact.

Sweeney Todd (John Miranda) and Maggie Lovett (Jane Hilary) come together to kill off their customers, steal their money and valuables, and give the bodies to Tobias Ragg (Berwick Kaler) to disposal. After a few kills, they start getting way into murder, so they decide to start using the bodies to make meat pies, including one that has a woman’s entire breast in it.

Shot in London, this actually feels like it could be in its time period, unlike the New York City Milligan movies where you can see modern buildings and hear the traffic. Milligan made five movies in 1970 alone — Torture Dungeon, Nightbirds, Guru the Mad Monk and The Body Beneath are the other films — and it’s pretty wild that he was doing so much so often. Then again, to the casual viewer, these movies are overly melodramatic films made by a lunatic who can’t even use a tripod, but to those who love these movies, well, they’re also overly melodramatic films made by a lunatic who can’t even use a tripod. Perspective is important.

TV Guide said that Bloodthirsty Butchers was a “gory and typically cheap retelling of the Sweeney Todd legend.” One star.

I may have ranked it much higher.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Church of Mortavia needs cash, so Father Guru does what he can, which means getting dead bodies for medical students to experiment on. This may mean stabbing churchgoers in the eyeball or working with vampires and hunchbacks. And while this is all supposedly set in the Middle Ages, it was really shot in New York City’s St. Peter’s Church, which means that you just may hear the sounds of modern traffic.

Shot for $11,000, this is yet another Milligan film where the director Milligan wrote, directed, built sets and sewed costumes for a film made up of mainly off-off Broadway actors and Staten Island locals. How else would you populate a prison colony of Catholic sinners who were all waiting to be served sentences that are all being wiped out by an insane priest?

This was made as part of a double bill with another of Milligan’s movies, The Body Beneath. It’s around 55 minutes long and has some gore, but in no way does it have as inventive of a title as Milligan’s best-named film, The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here!

Milligan is a fascinating character study, probably moreso than his films to be perfectly honest. He was considered one of the worst directors of all time until his movie Fleshpot on 42nd Street was rediscovered by Something Weird Video and his theatrical efforts were unearthed. In some strange universe, his work as a queer filmmaker found a better audience than maniacs like me who watched his movies like The Ghastly Ones.

Frantic Friar

• 1.5 oz. Frangelico
• .75 oz. lemon juice
• .75 oz. lime juice
• Maraschino cherry

1. Pour Frangelico and juices into a shaker with ice.
2. Scream at it like you’re in an Andy Milligan movie while shaking, then pour in a glass and top with a cherry.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Traveling Executioner was on the CBS Late Movie on January 9, 1974 and April 9 and August 21, 1975.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey, Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he contributes to Drive-In Asylum. His first article, “Grindhouse Memories Across the U.S.A.,” was published in issue #23. He’s also written “I Was a Teenage Drive-in Projectionist” and “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover” for upcoming issues.

One of the classic tropes of American cinema is that of the snake-oil salesman, traveling the South at the turn of the last century in a medicine wagon and touting god-knows-what in a bottle that will cure everything from piles to anemia. The Traveling Executioner, an obscure, oddball film from 1970, subverts that trope into an unforgettable existential character study.

In 1918, Jonas Candide, an ex-carny and ex-con, played by Stacy Keach in the performance of a lifetime, travels the Deep South with his own electric chair. (Don’t question how a portable electric chair without a way to charge its generator would work; just go with it.) Acting as a private executioner, Candide sends convicts to the next life for $100 a pop. Candide is not a bloodthirsty villain but rather a charming rogue whose greatest gift is his ability to put the condemned at ease in their final moments. Before throwing the switch, he spins a story of how he was contacted through a medium by a man he executed who told of how wonderful the afterlife is—fields of Ambrosia. Hearing this story, the condemned pass on with a smile on their face, soon to go to a better life.

Candide is good at what he does, and all is well until one day he learns he’s scheduled to execute a German brother and sister convicted of murder. He falls head over heels in love with the sister played by Drive-In Asylum favorite Marianna Hill. From that moment on, Candide hatches as many schemes as he can in to save his love from his traveling chair. As you can imagine for a movie from the 70s, in E.C Comics fashion, it doesn’t end well.

The Traveling Executioner is one of the oddest, yet most unforgettable movies I’ve ever seen. Everything about it stamps it as a classy production. It was the only screenplay written by 21-year-old University of Southern California film student Garrie Bateson. And while the screenplay has a whiff of film-student earnestness and an ending that you’ll see coming early on, it nonetheless makes a serious impression. Directing with a sure hand was journeyman Jack Smight, who has Frankenstein: The True Story, The Illustrated Man and Damnation Alley among his credits. The dusty, depressing look of the film was the work of ace cinematographer, two-time Oscar nominee Philip Lathrop. Maestro Jerry Goldsmith supplied the score. Adding to the film’s cache are nice early supporting turns by M. Emmet Walsh, as a warden, and Bud Cort, as a mortician and Candide’s assistant. Things look and play like a late-period Western without the gunfights.

But the real joy here is watching the stage actor Stacy Keach giving it his all in an early film role. He’s a sympathetic protagonist even when he resorts to unsavory measures in the name of love. For me, Keach, later to make his mark on TV as the definitive Mike Hammer, has always been an underrated talent. Casting him in this role was a masterstroke.

MGM had no clue how to market The Traveling Executioner, which everybody describes as a “black comedy.” It’s not. At its heart, it’s a serious art film with some exploitation trappings. Indeed, the gauche, heavy-handed ad campaign promising unbridled fun did nothing to sell it to audiences. But then again, I can’t think of how any ad campaign could capture the film’s unique tone. Despite a few good reviews, it had a short, disastrous theatrical release in the fall of 1970. Afterward, apart from a few showings on The CBS Late Movie, it vanished and was almost impossible to see for decades. It finally became available on a DVD burn from Warner Archives in 2011, but it has yet to find its own fields of Ambrosia, a cult following. I wish Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary would feature it on the Video Archives podcast. It’s a great film with a singularly great central performance awaiting rediscovery.

Epilogue. Unbelievably, in 1993, The Traveling Executioner was adapted into a stage musical, The Fields of Ambrosia. Despite some good reviews, the 1996 London show closed after only 23 performances. Déjà vu.

EDITOR’S NOTE: House of Dark Shadows was on the CBS Late Movie on July 16, 1976.

Dark Shadows was a phenomenon. The kind of big cultural deal that needed to be cashed in on is why producer and creator Dan Curtis started pitching a feature-length TV movie from 1968 onwards.

The original idea was to edit together old episodes of the show, but soon, the idea to tell the entire Barnabas Collins saga—complete with bloody bites and gore—took over. Several actors were written out while the TV series was still on the air. A writer trying to use the vampire for a biographical novel trapped Barnabas in a coffin for 28 episodes. Other characters were replaced in the 1970 parallel world story arc.

With a budget of $750,000 — that was probably enough for 750 episodes of the actual series — and on-location shooting at the Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown, New York and that town’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (as well as the Lockwood–Mathews Mansion in Norwalk, Connecticut), this movie looks gorgeous. And it’s a joy to see so much of the original cast come back and play modified versions of their roles.

However, what takes years on the soap opera now takes moments. It’s a bit disconcerting.

Like his entry on the show, Barnabas (Johnathan Frid) is found by handyman Willie Loomis (John Karlen) and, within moments, introduces himself as a long-lost European relative while taking bites out of almost every female cast member.

Daphne Budd? Bitten. Carolyn Stoddard? She gets a bite. Maggie Evans? Yep, her too.

Barnabas is also transformed into a human by Dr. Julia Hoffman, but she falls for him and jealously transforms him into his true age. No worries — actual bites from his chosen bride, Maggie, bring him back to vitality.

The only part you may not enjoy is Willie turning on Barnabas and the titular vampire succumbing to a crossbow to the back. That said, his bat flies away — Curtis was doing end-credit teases way before the Marvel movies — in a nod to a projected sequel that never happened, Curse of Dark Shadows.

There’s also a moment when Quentin Collins’ theme is heard, but he doesn’t show up. I’m sure many young ladies were crushed by this.

This is a fun movie if you haven’t watched the original episodes. If you have, you may be upset that they are glossed over. Regardless, I saw it at the drive-in, paired with its spiritual sequel, and I enjoyed it.

BONUS: We discussed this movie on our podcast.

Want to see something cool? The Collinsport Historical Society has an article about the Viewmaster from this movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Losers was on the CBS Late Movie on October 3, 1975 and October 8, 1976.

Also known as Nam Angels, this Jack Starrett-directed film (he also made Run, Angel, Run!, Race with the Devil and Hollywood Man, among others) has a great high concept: a biker gang called The Devil’s Advocates is sent to Cambodia to rescue an American diplomat because they are the only ones who can get the job done.

They’re led by a Vietnam vet — and the brother of the Army Major who has recruited them — Link Thomas, played by the always dependable William Smith. They’re under the orders of Captain Johnson (Bernie Hamilton, who was Captain Harold Dobey on Starsky and Hutch) and include fellow vets Duke (Adam Roarke from Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Frogs) and Dirty Denny, as well as Limpy (Paul Koslo, Vanishing Point) and Speed (Eugene Cornelius, who was Space in Run, Angel, Run!).

They head to Vietnam,  but come on, we all know it’s the Philippines because the mechanic who works on their bikes, Diem-Nuc, is played by Vic Diaz. It doesn’t matter because by the time you start trying to figure out locations*, our heroes are doing wheelies and blowing things up with rocket launchers and machine guns while they do wheelies.

This movie does have some basis in reality. Sonny Barger, the Maximum Leader of the Hells Angels, sent LBJ a telegram offering the skills of his club in the Vietnam War. That inspired Alan Caillou, who originally wrote that The Losers would live. Starrett and Smith rewrote the script to the ending we know now.

If you watch Pulp Fiction, you can see a scene from this movie being watched by Butch’s girlfriend the day after his fight. When he asks what she is watching, she says, “A motorcycle movie, I’m not sure the name.”

*They’re reused from Too Late the Hero.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Scream and Scream Again was on the CBS Late Movie on March 22 and August 23, 1974.

Based on the novel The Disorientated Man by Peter Saxon*, this Amicus film boasts the best line-up potentially ever in a horror film. It features the iconic Christopher Lee, the legendary Peter Cushing, and the master of macabre Vincent Price, all delivering stellar performances.

The film opens with a man jogging, collapsing, and waking up in a hospital, missing his leg. He screams, and then the same scream repeats as he loses every appendage. Meanwhile, an Eastern European spy named Konratz (played by Marshall Jones, Cry of the Banshee) is on a killing spree, targeting his superiors, including Cushing. In another subplot, someone is killing young women in London, and it appears that Keith (Michael Gothard) is the murderer, a blood-drinking super-strong weirdo.

Price shows up as the sinister Dr. Browning, and it all ends up being a conspiracy movie that owes a fair deal to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. However, that movie didn’t end with much of its cast falling into acid.

According to Lee, the villains of this movie were going to be revealed as aliens, but that was cut out for some reason, leaving a lot of the movie unexplained.

This was directed by Gordon Hessler (Pray for Death; Scream, Pretty Peggy; Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad).

Team Price, Lee, and Cushing appear in only one other movie: House of the Long Shadows. They barely appear in any scenes together, though.

*A house pen name for multiple authors at Amalgamated Press; the Saxon that wrote this story is Stephen Frances, edited by W. Howard Baker.

Source

Film Still Scream and Scream Again Peter Cushing Christopher Lee 1970 – Richard Thornton Books. https://richardthorntonbooks.com/product/film-still-scream-and-scream-again-peter-cushing-christopher-lee-1970/