Andy Milligan in London (Part I of II)

NIGHTBIRDS (1970)

THE BODY BENEATH (1970)

Berwick Kaler and Julie Shaw play strained lovers in the avant-garde NIGHTBIRDS. Their entanglement illustrates Andy Milligan's perennial view of the sexes: how passive men are manipulated by women.

DESCRIBED by Tim Lucas in Video Watchdog as "horror's unwanted weirdo," Andy Milligan was more derogatorily pigeon-holed by Psychotronic's Michael Weldon, who said that if you were a Milligan fan, there was no hope for you (Stephen King also famously dismissed his 1968 opus THE GHASTLY ONES as "the work of morons with cameras.") Most of the Minnesota-native's movies were made for under $15,000, and he was virtually a one-man production company. Not only did Milligan write, direct, photograph, edit and design costumes, he was also a make-up effects supervisor using Grand Guignol techniques (this garish style put him on a similar plain to Tod Slaughter). Dying in 1991 from AIDS and buried in an unmarked grave, Milligan was not an open homosexual, rather an S&M addict relying on fantasy to exorcise his personal demons.

Milligan's filmography of open scars shows a venomous disdain for the church and dysfunctional families; in particular, the home is a cesspit, and relatives are endlessly judgmental. These onscreen complexities mirror his real-life upbringing, as his mother was an overweight alcoholic who allegedly was physically, mentally and sexually abusive to all her children and husband. Although close to his father, Andrew Milligan Sr was a US Army officer, which meant further pressures due to frequent relocation. On set Milligan had a reputation to be demanding and bad-tempered; colleagues also relate to emotional and sexual manipulation, raising speculation that he suffered similar (untreated) health problems to his mother. To typify his chaotic life, one of the filmmaker's few long-term partners was Vietnam veteran Dennis Malvasi, who was a convicted abortion clinic bomber.

THE BODY BENEATH promised "sexually rampant ghouls, depraved souls and blood-red roses filmed in the graveyards of England." In fact, Andy Milligan shot in Highgate Cemetery without permission.

Milligan's residence in London produced NIGHTBIRDS, THE BODY BENEATH, BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS, THE MAN WITH 2 HEADS and THE RATS ARE COMING - THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE. Although known as a horror director, NIGHTBIRDS - similar to his 1965 debut short VAPOURS - exists in a contemporary setting and aspires to be an arthouse stage play. NIGHTBIRDS tells of Dink (Berwick Kaler) and Dee (Julie Shaw), who have run away from their mothers and are struggling to survive in a not so swinging London. A slow-burning character study, the fragile, virginal and possibly gay Dink is in direct contrast to the resourceful, strong-willed but unbalanced Dee. Kaler and Shaw - both impressive first-timers - force along the paper thin plot, until the true nature of Dee is revealed in the final reel (in which syphilis and the abandonment of her dying child doesn't stop a calculating demeanour).

Behind the nonsensical title THE BODY BENEATH, this is Milligan's most accessible film and illustrates his loathing of clerical figures. Reverend Ford (Gavin Reed) and his silent wife Alicia (Susan Heard) are 400-year-old vampires residing at Carfax Abbey, aiming to restore their incestuous bloodline after years of outsider marriages. Aided by three ghoul brides and hunchback with a heart Spool (a returning Kaler), Ford captures relatives Susan (Jackie Skarvellis) and Candace (Emma Jones) for his carnal needs. The production is best remembered for its delirious Undead Gala climax, where the Vaseline-smeared, red-tinted lens captures the cannibalistic conference (we learn that even Julius Caesar and Elizabeth I are members of the bloodsucking clan).

Chiefly, THE BODY BENEATH takes place in the Neo-Tudor mansion Sarum Chase near Hampstead Heath (Milligan would return for THE RATES ARE COMING - THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE). The nudie short MISS FRANKENSTEIN RIP was also shot there, as well as being photographed for the sleeve of The Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet.

It could generously be said that Milligan modernised vampires before Hammer's DRACULA, A.D. 1972, and played with lore akin to CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER. For example, the ghoul women politely say hello before biting their victims, although they don't have fangs. In further quirks the undead use chloroform, as well as having blood pressure reduced by leeches and being able to move around in daylight thanks to an injection that counteracts the sun. Painfully ponderous and talkative, the washed-out look adds to the Gothic austerity, with Reed revealing in the madness (and certainly getting the best lines).

"It's in the trees ... it's coming!"

NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957)

Despite being book-ended by appearances of a crudely
animated monster, NIGHT OF THE DEMON
is an effective exercise in atmosphere.

IN 1957, British horror cinema exploded into life with the garish, Eastmancolour THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Terence Fisher's box office sensation was the starting point of Hammer's domination, but Jacques Tourneur's NIGHT OF THE DEMON - which started filming on the same day as Fisher's classic - was shot in black and white, and unlike Hammer's emphasis on physical violence, owes more to the power of suggestion. Tourneur's stylish project - an adaptation of M.R. James' Casting the Runes - predicted an anti-Hammer stance in the early 1960s that produced a triumvirate of successful monochrome horrors based on works of supernatural fiction: THE INNOCENTS (from Henry James' Turn of the Screw), NIGHT OF THE EAGLE (from Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife) and THE HAUNTING (from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House).

Scenes such as the storm invoked by black magician Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), dressed in clown's makeup for a children's Halloween gathering, are genuinely unsettling, and this garden party suddenly interrupted by demonic intervention anticipates THE OMEN. As in that film, the leading protagonist is an American - here, Dr John Holden (Dana Andrews) - coming to terms with what he initially sees as bunkum. This theme of the modern, rationalist American adrift in a world of superstition can be traced through several films, including AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and even back to Universal's cycle of the 1930s and 1940s, were settings were often in generic old Europe.

Columbia's 2002 R1 DVD of NIGHT OF THE DEMON was sold as a "double feature" with CURSE OF THE DEMON, the film's Americanised, truncated version which cut fourteen minutes from the running time.

Screenwriter Charles Bennett crafts a meditation on the conflict between science and superstition, embodied by the personality clashes between Andrews' psychiatrist and MacGinnis's occultist. One of James's most important achievements was to redefine the ghost story by dispensing with many of the Gothic trappings of his predecessors, and replacing them with more realistic, contemporary settings. By using this trait cinematically, NIGHT OF THE DEMON sometimes seems somewhat dry, but this is a small price to pay for a movie that takes its subject matter with an utter conviction rarely seen.

Tourneur was a master of implied terror, his visual style the perfect film equivalent of James' prose; Holden's eerie encounters alone in forests, empty hallways and desolate farmhouses evoke a paranoid atmosphere. Ken Adam's production design is an effective blend of British antiquity and modernism, rendering library corridors and railway carriages as endless passages which need to be conquered. It has become a cliche to point out that Tourneur cut his directorial teeth on three of producer Val Lewton’s brooding 1940s horrors (THE CAT PEOPLE, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, THE LEOPARD MAN), but NIGHT OF THE DEMON seems to be Tourneur's attempt to recreate the Lewton formula: the emphasis on solid scripting, the use of shadows, and belief versus skepticism. But none of the Lewton-produced films ever endorsed the supernatural; in fact, such beliefs were often equated with mental illness. Holden is not portrayed as a man sinking into madness; in fact, acting on his new-found knowledge saves him from death, and it is interesting that Andrews' wooden performance loses up as he gets closer to supernatural enlightenment.

Video Watchdog #93 (March 2003) featured a "duelling critics" piece where Kim Newman and Bill Cooke assess Columbia's DVD release, as well as detailed analysis by Cooke of the cuts made to produce CURSE OF THE DEMON.

A 1960s Mad magazine article pointed out that movie heroes and villains often act against type: villains are courteous, charming and open-minded, while heroes are bad-tempered, bigoted and thuggish. NIGHT OF THE DEMON illustrates this theory expertly. James' Karswell is a melodramatic character akin to George Zucco, but MacGinnis plays the Devil-bearded disciple with a touch of Celtic whimsy, treating his enemies with exaggerated politeness. The odd relationship between Karswell and his mother (Athene Seyler) is one of the many off-beat aspects of the film, suggesting that the magician is an insecure mother's boy who shows none of the insidious interest in the opposite sex so commonly demonstrated by screen devil worshippers. This hint of homosexuality doesn't progress further, leaving Karswell as a paunchy, balding character whose resemblance to Aleister Crowley is closer than any other actor.

Tourneur crafted NIGHT OF THE DEMON to exist in a shadow world which would evoke feelings of dread through expressive lighting and sound rather than any sensationalised effects such as a man in a monster suit. Bowing to pressure from executive producer Hal E. Chester, the director agreed to reveal the demon for a few frames in the finale. Much to Tourneur and Bennett's horror, Chester re cut the film so that Karswell's fire demon (a combination of a puppet, suit and a mechanical bust influenced from medieval woodcuts) was shown extensively at the beginning and end of the feature, and was on all publicity materials. For decades, the debate has raged whether Chester's use of the demon cheapens or enhances the overall product. Dubbed as a "monumental blunder" and "atrocious," the monster is over-used at the climax, but overall beneficial to the narrative though not perhaps the overall facade.