Andy Milligan

Andrew Jackson Milligan Jr. was born on February 12, 1929, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and died on June 3, 1991. A playwright, screenwriter, actor, and filmmaker, he directed 27 movies between 1965 and 1988. He was a self-taught filmmaker who handled cinematography, costume design, set construction, and writing on nearly all of his productions.

Milligan's father, Andrew Milligan Sr., born February 17, 1894, and died October 25, 1985, was a U.S. Army officer who served for more than 50 years and retired in the mid-1960s holding the rank of captain. Because of his father's military career, the family relocated frequently throughout Milligan's childhood. His mother, Marie Gladys Hull, born June 10, 1900, and died November 12, 1953, struggled with severe physical and mental health problems and alcoholism, and family members described her as physically and mentally abusive toward her children and husband. Milligan maintained a close relationship with his father, who called him "Junior," while his relationship with his mother was troubled. He had an older half-brother, Harley LeRoy Hull, born July 10, 1924, and died February 17, 1998, and a younger sister, Louise Milligan Howe, born May 27, 1931, and died January 2, 2021.

After completing high school in 1947, Milligan enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served four years before receiving an honorable discharge in 1951. He then settled in New York City, where he pursued stage acting and opened a dress shop. His Broadway career included an appearance in 1954 in The Girl on the Via Flaminia. Following that brief acting career, he became involved in the off-off-Broadway theater movement during the late 1950s, directing productions of plays by Lord Dunsany and Jean Genet at the Caffe Cino, a Greenwich Village coffeehouse that also nurtured theater figures such as Lanford Wilson, Tom Eyen, and John Guare. He additionally directed productions at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. During this period he operated a clothing boutique called Ad Lib and applied his dressmaking skills to costuming theatrical productions.

In the early 1960s Milligan transitioned into filmmaking, recruiting some of his early actors from the Caffe Cino community. His first released film was Vapors, a 30-minute black-and-white 16mm short drama from 1965, set in the St. Mark's Baths and depicting an emotionally awkward encounter between two strangers. He was subsequently hired by exploitation film producers, most notably William Mishkin, to direct softcore sexploitation and horror features. His films explored themes of transgression, dysfunctional family relationships, repressed sexuality, homosexuality, and physical deformity, and titles from this period include Depraved! (1967), The Ghastly Ones (1968), Seeds of Sin (1968), Torture Dungeon (1969), Guru, the Mad Monk (1970), Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1973), and Blood (1973), among others. Most of his early works are currently considered lost films.

In 1966, Milligan established his residence in a Victorian-era mansion in St. George, Staten Island, within walking distance of the Staten Island Ferry, which he called "Hollywood Central" and used as a filming location for several productions. He shot his early movies using a single hand-held 16mm Auricon sound-on-film news camera, a technique he credited to the influence of Andy Warhol. Working frequently with budgets under $10,000, he used short ends — leftover reels of 16mm and later 35mm film acquired from other productions — to minimize costs. His tight framing helped conceal budgetary limitations, particularly in the period pieces that comprised most of his horror output.

In 1968, The Ghastly Ones marked his first color film and his entry into gore-effects horror. In 1969, after completing Torture Dungeon, he traveled to London to work with producer Leslie Elliot, directing Nightbirds and beginning work on The Body Beneath before that partnership ended. He then collaborated again with Mishkin to produce three additional British-set period horror pictures — Bloodthirsty Butchers, The Man With Two Heads, and The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! — all shot in 1969. Returning to Staten Island in 1970, he directed Guru the Mad Monk, his first production shot on a 35mm Arriflex camera, filmed inside St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Chelsea, Manhattan.

On October 27, 1977, Milligan moved to 335 West 39th Street in Manhattan, a four-story building purchased for $50,000, where he founded and operated the Troupe Theatre, an off-off-Broadway venue. He lived in a third-floor loft above the theater until he left New York City in March 1985. He relocated to Los Angeles, where he briefly owned a dress shop on Highland Boulevard from late 1985 to early 1986. He then directed three additional independently produced horror films — Monstrosity, The Weirdo, and Surgikill — in 1987 and 1988, and operated a theater and production company called Troupe West, which ran until early 1990.