NOT Available on DVD: ‘The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!’

Andy Milligan, the Staten Island-based filmmaker best known for a string of micro-budget horror and sexploitation films made in the 1960’s and 70’s, was certainly one of the oddest characters in the New York ‘Grindhouse’ movie industry. Infamous for his sadistic nature towards his actors and the sadistic kink in his gay lifestyle, Milligan is legendary for the inept, technically primitive movies he made. Michael Weldon once wrote in his Psychotronic magazine that “If you’re an Andy Milligan fan, there’s no hope for youâ€� and Tim Lucas wrote in Video Watchdog that “To reach an appreciation of (Milligan’s) work, it may first be necessary to develop a loathing toward traditional forms of cinemaâ€�. It’s true that Milligan’s films are unbelievably atrocious on so many levels yet they’re not without their threadbare charms and interesting scripts. Milligan was a one-man film crew who wrote, directed, edited, photographed and even designed the costumes for all of his films. He’s often called one of the worst directors in cinema history but, given the obstacles he worked with (his largest budget was $13,500), his is a legacy that perhaps deserves more credit than it is given. Sure, his films are lousy but they’re interesting and I have sat through all of Milligan’s horror films. My personal favorite is 1972’s THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! which, in spite of having one of the great gonzo movie titles of all time, is NOT available on DVD (…or is it?)

Andy Milligan is one director whose life story is much more interesting than the films he made and a biography of him, ‘The Ghastly One, the Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan� by author Jimmy McDonough (who also penned the excellent Russ Meyer bio “Big Bosoms and Square Jaws�) is a fascinating story of the filmmaker’s life. As a theatre director in the early 1960’s Milligan was a pioneer in the burgeoning off-off-broadway movement and was famous for bringing graphic sexuality onstage for the works of Jean Genet and other controversial playwrights. Self-taught as a moviemaker, his first film was VAPORS, a groundbreaking, award-winning 32 minute short about gay bathhouses that Milligan showed at experimental film theatres in 1965 (VAPORS is an extra on Image Entertainment’s DVD of Milligan’s THE BODY BENEATH). In 1967 he began a long collaboration with veteran New York-based producer William Mishkin beginning with a series of movies known as “Nudie Roughies�, pre-porn, pre-ratings sexploitation films popular in the 60’s that mixed nudity with rape and violence. Milligan’s THE DEPRAVED, THE DEGENERATES, THE FILTHY FIVE, GUTTER TRASH, and FLESHPOT ON 42nd STREET were among the many mean-spirited sex films that played fleabag grindhouses in their heyday and most are now lost (supposedly Mishkin couldn’t be bothered to pay storage fees and the films were destroyed). Milligan’s first horror film was 1968’s THE GHASTLY ONES, followed by TORTURE DUNGEON, THE BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS, GURU THE MAD MONK, and THE BODY BENEATH all made within a two-year period. Milligan’s talky scripts often address topics of twisted family relationships, repressed sexuality, and physical deformity. Most of the performers were Milligan’s stage friends and they overact, in a highly theatrical way, the gothic melodrama that sometimes seem inspired by the DARK SHADOWS television show popular at the time. All of these are 19th century period pieces with characters wearing ragged petticoats, lace collars and bloomers like a low-rent Dickens (Milligan’s background was in costume design and he owned a clothing boutique at one time) but anachronisms abound with the presence of things like goofy 70’s haircuts, audible traffic noise, visible power lines and electric wall switches. The bloody special effects in these films are laughable and define the term “bargain basement� (Milligan’s idea of a gory prop often seems to be red Play-Doh). The camerawork is often cited as terrible but, as detailed in McDonough’s book, Milligan shot his films with a noisy Auricon 16mm newsreel camera that was completely unsuitable for making feature films. The Auricon had a low-quality direct-to-film optical track so the camera had to be statically locked into place for the lengthy dialog sequences and the camera’s viewfinder was inaccurate so Milligan was forced to guess at his frame compositions. When the camera isn’t stationary, it’s handheld in a clumsy, poorly-focused manner and his films were scored with endless, often inappropriate, library music in attempt to drown out the camera noise.

Andy Milligan’s sixth horror film, THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE!, was originally filmed as a straightforward period werewolf movie to be titled CURSE OF THE FULL MOON. It and THE BODY BENEATH were actually shot on location in England instead of Staten Island and almost all of the film was shot in one castle. When producer Mishkin saw the end result, he thought it was dull and needed new scenes to spice it up. WILLARD and BEN, two Hollywood films about killer rats were huge box-office hits at the time so Mishkin asked Milligan to shoot new footage with actress Hope Stansbury holding and talking to some rodents (she actually refers to two of them as Willard and Ben!) in hopes of cashing in on the brief rat craze. The plot of THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE!, concerns the Mooney clan, an Adamsesque Family of Brits cursed with some type of genetic lycanthropy. The relatively normal daughter Diana, has been sent off to medical school in order to help save the family and returns with her new husband Gerald. The family disapproves, especially Diana’s loathsome sister Monica (my favorite line: “She hates everything and everybody. She’s just one big hate!â€�), and spends most of the movie trying to convince Gerald to abscond. Diana’s bed-ridden father warms to Gerald once he learns that Diana is pregnant, because a normal baby could save the family bloodline. The deranged Monica whips her horse, and torments her simpleton brother who she locks up in his room and drips burning candle wax on. Monica buys a pack of man-eating rats from a disfigured old man (played by Milligan himself, the only time he would ever appear in one of his own films) to kill her sister and her husband but the rat subplot is dropped after three scenes of Monica babbling baby talk to the rodents and killing one by driving a nail through it’s body . The incestuous Mooneys fight and argue endlessly until the confusing climax when they finally transform into werewolves and chase each other around in the fog.

Andy Milligan fans (and there are some) would probably not rate THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! as one of his best. It’s talky and stagebound even by Milligan standards and it’s PG rating meant no nudity and less ghoulishness and gore than usual (except for that abused rat who’s stabbed with scissors then nailed to a window ledge, a scene made more shocking because it’s obviously real!) It’s my favorite because in the summer of 1975 Harry Bone, a friends dad, hauled us in his Ford Fairline to the I-44 Drive-In theatre in Valley Park, MO where we saw THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! at the end of a triple feature. It was preceded by THE FOLKS AT RED WOLF INN (1972, a regionally made, bloodless cannibal comedy also MIA on DVD) and THE LEGEND OF SPIDER FOREST (a 1971 British shocker directed by Hammer vet Peter Sykes available on DVD as SPIDER’S VENOM) and the evening was so memorable because it’s the first time I can recall seeing a “bad� movie and having fun with it. I can remember yammering on about THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! for years to anyone who would listen and I’ve got the original one-sheet movie poster framed and hanging on the wall in my den over my computer. The poster’s a lurid doozy, featuring some of the schlockiest movie poster art of the 70’s, and it just screams “Grindhouse�!

Andy Milligan made a few more horror films with Mishkin in New York before moving to L.A. in the 80’s where he made slicker but equally terrible movies such as CARNAGE (1983), MONSTROSITY (1987), and THE WEIRDO (1988). Milligan died of AIDS-related illness in 1990 but his films, for what they’re worth, live on. THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! was released on VHS on the “Midnight Video� label in a gorgeous jumbo cardboard box decorated with the original poster art. I’ve cheated this week as THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! actually did have an official release on DVD. A company called Video Kart released a decent transfer on disc double featured with THE BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS (Milligan’s wretched 1970 take on Sweeney Todd) in 2003. The two-disc set had a very limited pressing and is currently out-of-print but can be found used at Amazon or on ebay though it’ll cost ya (and I can swear the aforementioned rat-nailing scene went on longer when I saw it at the I-44 Drive-In than it does on Video Kart’s DVD). Netflix doesn’t have it but does offer Milligan’s THE GHASTLY ONE, THE BODY BENEATH, and GURU THE MAD MONK. Any of these would make a good introduction for anyone curious about the strange world and demented psyche of Andy Milligan.