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Review

Danger After Dark: As far as Andy Milligan films go, it's 3 stars, but can one really apply a "star" rating to Andy Milligan films in any good conscience?
Psychotronic’s Michael Weldon once famously opined, “If you’re an Andy Milligan fan, there’s no hope for you.” With that in mind, you are invited to join the ranks of the hopeless, and enjoy this DVD which features two of director Milligan’s “best” films, accompanied by a wealth of bonus features which provide insight into this most reviled of 1960’s and 70’s American exploitation filmmakers. Milligan is renowned for staging English gothic period-piece horrors on a total production budget roughly equal to that of the cost of a used car. His films carry titles like Bloodthirsty Butchers, Gutter Trash, and Fleshpot on 42nd Street. His closest friends describe him a sadist and a misogynist with an unquenchable taste for rough-trade pickups. His biographer Jimmy McDonough (who opens his excellent Milligan book The Ghastly One with the confession that he wanted to literally kill the director) writes, “When Andy’s movies are bad, there’s nothing--nothing--worse.” And yet Milligan’s work retains an undeniable fascination for cult film devotees today, for his films are driven by a distinct and unmistakable personal style, a fevered intensity, and a peculiarly nightmarish threadbare quality that is genuinely compelling for anyone interested in independent genre cinema. Something Weird Video has collected two of Milligan’s most fascinating films, the frenetic family inheritance shocker The Ghastly Ones (which Joe Dante once labeled “a home movie from Bedlam”) and the perverse sexual melodrama Seeds of Sin. Once you’ve embraced the cinema of Andy Milligan, there’s no turning back. We dare you.