Here Comes THE BRIDE!

Caught up last night with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s THE BRIDE! (Warner Bros., 2026), which I found to be a truly inspired rumination on THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935). Though it pretends the 1935 James Whale film never happened, it rewrites what might be looked upon as its gatekeeping, in that it silenced its title character all except for her swan-like hiss, which it revives and imbues with a most eloquent voice and insatiable anger. I loved the performances of Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale as the monster and his mate, and followed the story, nuance by nuance, as a contemporary essay on Mary Shelley’s original story, the films based on it, and what we’ve done to it with decades of crazy spin-offs. This is certainly one of the craziest but also the smartest; though it’s set in an alternate 1936, it’s very much about our era and its recent attempts to silence women, and while the story is action-packed and crazed (a nice old-fashioned word) with incident, I felt like I was following a very serious and intelligent essay about cinema at the same time. 

This doesn’t mean I was happy about all of it, though. Gyllenhaal cast her husband (Peter Sarsgaard) and brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) in two key roles, as a compromised detective and as the Monster’s favorite movie star respectively, and I felt both parts were unfortunately miscast. I’ve liked them both in other roles but didn’t feel that either even half-filled the shoes of these important characters, which led to the film feeling off-balance whenever the storytelling shifted over to them. Annette Bening and Jeannie Berlin, however, were on the money as the “reinvigorating” doctor and her macabre maid. 

The other thing that that bothered me is that the early part of the film finds the Monster particularly eloquent (which allowed me to see Bale as an extension of Boris Karloff, if only a spiritual one), and Buckley as a veritable fountain of words, which is shown to connect her to the spirit of Mary Shelley. But once she’s reanimated, both characters seem to lose their sense of poetry as they set off on their rampage. I can see how this was essential to the Bride character, and I can also see how the Monster’s vocabulary might come to embrace her coarseness as they fell in love, but I regretted that such an initial command of language would give way to an inarticulate barrage of salt.

Even so, I find this film an important evolutionary step for these characters and I regret that its mixed critical response didn’t send more people out to theaters to greet it. I suspect, though, that they will find it now that it’s come to streaming and that it will become one of those deceptively zany, underlyingly profound movies that respondents of a special nature will revisit often.

While I’m not sure whether Mr. Karloff would have appreciated this colorful spin-off, I have a feeling that Elsa Lanchester (who recorded an entire album of bawdy Cockney songs) would have embraced it whole-heartedly. 

(C) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

On Criterion's A MAN AND A WOMAN (1966)

I checked into Criterion’s new Blu-ray disc of Claude Lelouch’s A MAN AND A WOMAN last night. It’s a film I tend to revisit every few years, and one I must admit to letting wash over me like a song or an atmosphere. Each time I see it, the actual story - more accurately, the often outrageous turns and details of the story - strikes me as preposterous, but somehow the whole of it always works. It satisfies me.

The extras were illuminating, giving me my first extended exposure to Lelouch, his biographic details, his philosophy, his work methods. He came to the new interview superbly prepared; perhaps he rattles off his success story all the time, but it was new to me and I was impressed. I knew that his approach to filmmaking was somewhat improvisational but the word is somewhat misleading; he improvises (or leaves it to the actors to improvise, often keeping them in the dark about what the other actors have been told to do) within a fixed framework. 

But what really took me by surprise is something which probably hasn’t been as obvious to me since the first time I saw the movie: as he says to a reporter in the making-of, this is a very simple story that is made extraordinary by being told out-of-sequence, involving flashbacks and flash-forwards. There was a scene in the making-of when we see him instructing Trintignant that “this is the first scene after their first kiss, so the feeling between them is very different” - and I had to rack my brain to remember a first kiss. It may be that he was referring to a scene that was cut, otherwise their first kiss takes place in bed. How strange it would for for a movie like this to omit the lovers’ first kiss, but I think it’s possible! 

However, the thing about the film being told out of order was striking because it all happens so effortlessly and understatedly that I never bracketed this film alongside the likes of, say, PERFORMANCE or PETULIA or even WOODSTOCK. I should also mention that, in my own thoughts as I was watching, I expected certain scenes to feature dialogue that did not turn up until later, and the same with unforgettable visual moments like the man walking his dog on the boardwalk of the beach at Deauville.

Shot full aperture for 1.66:1 screening, in alternating color and tinted black-and-white (for budgetary reasons, but handled in the best artistic way), the film looks absolutely lovely and I noticed that fresh work had been done on the sound mix of everything here. The music sounds lush, as it should, even in the vintage documentary shorts. But there are some disappointments with this release: there is no audio commentary, and the booklet is very thin, distinguished only by a Carrie Rickey essay that can be read in full on the film's Criterion page (see URL below). Based on their past aversion to including English dubs of foreign films, I wasn’t expecting one here, though the one done for this film (by Titra, IIRC) was charming and there are times when that is specifically the version I want to revisit. 

Available at: https://www.criterion.com/films/34966-a-man-and-a-woman?srsltid=AfmBOoq6vWkv4sH446ejsrNg58WbdCBJK4bdtTVDID-s02PeIFu0uuDf

(C) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

GUTTER AUTEUR: THE LOST LEGACY OF ANDY MILLIGAN reviewed

GUTTER AUTEUR: THE LOST LEGACY OF ANDY MILLIGAN

1967-1979, Severin Films, $64.95

Severin Films’ new three-disc GUTTER AUTEUR box set (which takes its primary name from Rob Craig’s Andy Milligan critical biography of 2012), is the sort of compendium that we normally dare not dream could be realized. It augments Severin’s previous, near-exhaustive Milligan retrospective (the nine-disc DUNGEON OF ANDY MILLIGAN COLLECTION set) with a literally incredible line-up of previously-thought-lost and/or unreleased titles, none of which has ever been released before on disc.

 

The main contents are THE DEGENERATE: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF ANDY MILLIGAN (2025), a new documentary about the cinematic scourge of Staten Island, featuring interviews with several of his past friends and collaborators, and then the newly unearthed and recovered treasures: THE DEGENERATES (1967), Milligan’s second feature and first horror piece; COMPASS ROSE (1967), an abandoned NYC art scene spoof bedevilled with audio problems; KISS ME! KISS ME! KISS ME! (1968), a Milligan work-for-hire adapted from a story by exploitation producer William Mishkin; and his never-completed Southern “epic” HOUSE OF SEVEN BELLES (1979), the ambitious-if-tattered curtain call on his initial body of East Coast work. 

 

THE DEGENERATES

1967, 63:40

While THE DEGENERATES (1962) could never be called a major film, it is nevertheless a major recovery. Three young men from different military outfits - the blunt tool Frank (David Haine), the more sensitive Jim (Robert Burgos), and the misfit GoGo (Vernon Newman), each sent out in search of after-the-bomb survivors - find each other and wander through a no-budget post-apocalyptic landscape, comparing JFK-like stories of where they were when the world ended, when they happen to stumble upon the secluded homestead of five adult sisters.

 

Perhaps with Charles Baudelaire's LE FLEURS DE MAL at the back of his mind, Milligan names them all after flowers: Violet (Bryarly Lee), Daisy (Ann Linden), Lily (Laura Weiss), Iris (Marcia Haufrecht), Rose (Susan Howard) and another, Ivy (VAPORS author Hope Stansbury), who has fled the sick atmosphere of the family farmhouse (which inexplicably retains running water and electricity) for the great outdoors and a diet of scraps and offal. The eldest of the sisters, the well-named Violet, has set herself up as the family drill sergeant; her violent mood swings regularly turn the others’ home lives into a domestic hell. The introduction of men into this scenario, with not enough of them to go around, ratchets up the tensions among the siblings, especially Vi, who is not only a violent schizophrenic but a closet lesbian who’s up for an incestuous lifestyle and will commit any crime known to posterity not to lose the love of her sisters. By the time she has her breakdown and gets her comeuppance, the moral of the story is one of Milligan's perennials: that everyone is fundamentally vile - naming them after flowers isn't going to change the  fact that people basically stink. 

Though it is generally as reckless as Milligan’s later one-man-band work, THE DEGENERATES (originally titled SIN SISTERS 2000 and co-written by Milligan with VAPORS star Gerald Jacuzzo) is an important find that finds the still-novice filmmaker taking some unusual care in a number of departments. First of all, armed with no more than $11,000 and an abandoned property in Woodstock, New York, Milligan had the chutzpah to tell a post-apocalyptic science fiction story with ideas rather than special effects. In telling a futuristic story with next to no means, THE DEGENERATES shares barracks with such adventurous films as Chris Marker’s LA JETÉE (1963) and Jean-Luc Godard’s ALPHAVILLE (1965), while looking forward to Lynn Littman’s TESTAMENT (1983), though it feels like a closer relative to such threadbare productions as Ronnie Ashcroft’s THE ASTOUNDING SHE-MONSTER or Bruno ve Sota’s THE BRAIN EATERS (both 1958), though even these featured some crude form of special effects. 

Contrary to Milligan’s later works, THE DEGENERATES - despite its exploitative title - is unusual in its willingness to express tenderness, and for including love scenes that aren’t exclusively driven by lust or the requirements of exploitation. Here, characters say things like “I love you” or “I need you,” actually taking care as to which transitive verb they say. Remarkably for a film shot on a 16mm hand-held Auricon camera, Milligan (usually the least careful of cameramen) succeeds in managing a surprising number of well-composed shots, indicating the possibility that storyboards may have been done or that he was simply still interested in putting his best foot forward. There are also moments of actual tenderness in the compositions, as in the instance when Milligan moves away from the faces of two lovers speaking to focus on the entwining of their hands; or when a harmonica-playing male characters is killed, the focus lingering behind on the harmonica left in the grass as his body is dragged off-camera; or when Vi is shown spying on a lovers’ tryst from an upstairs window, wistful and envious, only to change as the focus pulls back from outside the window screen to the inside as her hand grabs a knife and stabs the sill repeatedly. The performances are also of a higher-than-usual standard for this filmmaker, especially those of the women. In the first of her many roles for Milligan, Hope Stansbury is outstanding as the feral Ivy, and Bryarly Lee’s unpredictable turns as Violet make the viewer all the more hopeful that her earlier lead role in Milligan’s still-lost THE NAKED WITCH (1967) will someday be recovered. 

The source for this 2K restoration Blu-ray release is the only 35mm print known to still exist, which was located at Cinematek in Brussels, the Royal film archive of Belgium. Alas, this means that both French and Belgian subtitles are burned into the 1.37:1 image when the characters speak. Considering the film’s singular rarity, this is certainly no deal-breaker; it’s sometimes interesting to see how the subtitles vary from the actual soundtrack. (Ivy’s name is inexplicably changed to Irène, and sometimes meaning and nuance are scuttled for the sake of brevity.) There are some unfortunate anomalies in the original source, like a recurring hair in the gate, and the print admittedly has some choppy passages, with the opening and ending of the film only ragged steps away from absentia. Nevertheless, the restoration of what survives is as fine as one could possibly expect. 

Because the running time is about 10 minutes shorter than promised by the film’s pressbook, there has been some speculation that scenes involving sex and nudity have been cut. While commentator Alex DiSanto has the testimony of actor Robert Burgos that at least one such scene was filmed involving him and Ann Linden in the chicken coop (which had to be reshot because the first attempt was overexposed), I’m skeptical that such content was ever actually used, given the way Milligan fades to black in-camera whenever scenes begin to heat up - and then fades up in-camera on separate takes of the mornings after. Given the stories told in the documentary, I suspect that Andy was looking for excuses to see Burgos naked, as he apparently asked him (not Linden) to play the scene fully nude, which the actor refused to do. Furthermore, there are instances of near-nudity, mild cursing, Grand Guignol-type gore, and also a scene involving lesbianism and incest, more than enough to have consigned the film strictly to adult theaters. All of the actresses perform in amusing cave girl-like outfits split up the sides, which reveals that they’re all wearing 1960s flowered panties with pantyhose underneath, which raises reasonable questions about how long such accessories might hold up under post-nuclear conditions.

 

Extras include a full commentary by Alex DiSanto, a lengthy talk about the film by Stephen Thrower, an interview with actress Laura Cunningham, a lobby card gallery, and footage of Jimmy McDonough's introductions of the two recovered features at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.

 

COMPASS ROSE

1968, 73:00

Sharing the disc with THE DEGENERATES is COMPASS ROSE, a relentlessly shrill, only intermittently effective satire of the Off-Off-Broadway scene. It focuses on Dewey (Anthony Moscini), a NYC hustler who is making most of his cash from Miss Gloria (supposedly Anne Linden, but I doubt it - more later), a former movie star who is not especially old but has receded into private life where she is regularly administered with blood transfusions and “pounds of morphine” by Dr. Feist (Hal Borske) and two vampiric sidekicks. Dewey’s closest friends seem to be Allen (Gerald Jacuzzo, giving a BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS-worthy performance), an alleged playwright whose chemical self-abuse knows no bounds; Olive (Candy Hammond), an infantile, chronic nudist who fauns over him; and another of his idolators, Asa (played by an anonymous Sally Kellerman type), who lives to take acid. The near-plotless film follows a date night for Dewey and Miss Gloria, which consists of a night of Off-Off-Broadway theater-hopping while, back at Dewey's apartment, Olive decides to commit suicide in his empty bed. (So he can look forward to that after the night he’s going to have, though we don’t get that far.) The date starts out at a German cabaret-themed joint presided over by Maggie Rogers in Nazi regalia, which is presenting the drag playlet “The Death of Linda Darnell,” then moves over for a compassionately brief visit to another room specializing in “psychedelia, the young thing”, and finally a literal trip to a club called The Orifice, which is actually the basement where two murder scenes in THE GHASTLY ONES were filmed, where a pie fight turns into a vast orgy which climaxes with a spectacle of projectile blood-vomiting and death erupting in the midst of it all. 

Of all of Milligan’s available films, COMPASS ROSE is the closest to something that might have come out of the Andy Warhol Factory, yet it fails at achieving the heights of Paul Morrissey’s work because it’s all so one-note, so blinded by disdain for the scene he’s satirizing that he comes up empty when a competent, responsible playwright would show some compassion for the failures in his story. Still, one imagines that - had Milligan made more films such as this (and maybe he did with the still-lost DEPRAVED, THE FILTHY FIVE and GUTTER TRASH) - he might have been taken more seriously by others in the NYC art scene. But seeing how he felt about them, this was likely not his goal. One gets the impression that Milligan may have been much more interested in filming Moscini in his underwear through most of the film than giving him actual work to do. Moscini, who looks like a young David Johansen in a Beatle Paul wig, does a decent job and there are other noteworthy performances from Asa and Miss Gloria. Speaking of Miss Gloria, she is often identified as early Milligan regular Anne Linden but clearly is not; this woman’s eyes are dark, she has a nobbier nose, a rounder jaw, and much deeper grin lines. Something that I did not notice about her until they reach the Nazi theater is that she's also wearing some kind of cosmetic spackle to superficially cover an unsightly skin problem around the sides of her mouth and the skin of her upper throat. 

This disc presentation has two advantages over the tapes which have been circulating among fans since sometime at the turn of the century, one of which originated from a VHS shared with me by Hal Borske. It originates from the only surviving film element - a 16mm answer print - and has been subtitled, which is a big help toward following the challenging soundtrack, though it doesn’t get everything quite right. One of the story's several alleged playwrights, Morris (John Borske), is subtitled as “Kvares,”while a Sergei becomes “Sergay,” Dr. Feist becomes “Dr. Faust”, and a dead silent passage is described as “unintelligible,” all of which should give you an idea of what the transcriber had to deal with. 

The only extra for COMPASS ROSE is a healthy half-hour of Stephen Thrower discussing it, and he does a good job of discussing its origins, its historical value as the only filmed record of the Caffé Cino, and assessing what is and isn’t there. 

KISS ME, KISS ME, KISS ME

1968, 78:28

Named after a song heard in the film (composed by Harry Huret and performed by The Facts of Life, and which sounds somewhat loosely modeled on “Ain’t Misbehavin’”), this is hybrid, almost work-for-hire Milligan film though very much still imbued with his personality. Most unusually, the script by Josef Bush was based on an original story by exploitation producer William Mishkin, which could pass for something ghost-written by Hubert Selby Jr.. Natalie Rogers stars as Jean Pernofsky (perhaps not the way it’s spelled but definitely not Novak, as claimed on the IMDb), a ditsy and probably schizophrenic wife and mother whose narcissistic whirlwind ways pull the viewer aboard for one hell of a ride. 

Living with her husband Stan (Don Williams) and four-year-old son Jimmy (Sean Martin), Jean’s self-obsession allows for daytime drinking and flirtation with other men but has no time for cleaning her claustrophobic, cock-a-roach-infested efficiency apartment or providing a positive role model for her off-the-rails kid, whom she appears to feed only candy. She complains to Stan (whose mother is dying) about not living in a “nice” place, shifting the blame from herself, and gets reinforcement from her nearly-as-crazy bestie Lurlene (Angela Peters) for her alcoholism and duty-dodging. The main crux of the story's first act involves Jean’s determination to seduce Stan’s best friend Eddie (Peter Ratray), who has come over for dinner and a few rounds of gin on an evening when Stan has had to bail to look after his mother. When the clothes start to come off, to the tune of the title theme (a cocktail club sung by Peter Ratray’s wife Ann Willis, also heard to no end in a squawky instrumental rock cover throughout the picture), we cut to the New Jersey home where Stan and his nurse sister Ellen (Joy Martin) are on death watch. There, life is just as batshit-crazy, with the makeup-wizened mother receiving bedside ministrations from a questionable, Grady Sutton-like doctor. The old lady has managed to save $4,000 and wants Stan to promise it will be divvied up between Stan, fed-up brother Ray (Gerald Jacuzzo) and particularly the saintly Ellen, but when the idea is floated of having Ellen move into Stan and Jean’s hell-closet until the day she finds a husband - well, Jean accepts for purely mercenary reasons, while Stan’s suppressed incestuous feelings for his sister begin bubbling under the surface.

While it’s recognizably Milligan’s work, his attitude toward the material (which I imagine he tweaked a bit) is noticeably neat and respectable; it’s like "Andy-wears-a-tie-to-work" day. As always, he photographs and directs, and his 16mm handheld work is surprisingly competent within the tight confines of the apartment - which is then replaced, in the second act, to a larger apartment following Ellen’s arrival. He even shows a room being furnished in a series of time-lapse exposures. The second act focuses on Jean’s attempts to get Ellen hooked-up with Eddie, in a purely selfish effort to get him back into her own bed, and Stan’s resistance to this idea for his own reasons. The nagging rock theme holds together a very lengthy dating montage, in which Eddie manages to court Ellen with lame French and phony-sounding “aint’s”, until his sexual insistence threatens a good thing. In some ways, the film is a showcase for Natalie Rogers' performance, which annoys its way into one’s heart. She breaks any number of boundaries (even breaking the fourth wall and asking “What are you looking at?” when she alienates everyone else onscreen) in a mad rampage to avoid any and all Mother of the Year awards.

KISS ME, KISS ME, KISS ME is one of Milligan’s most coherent pictures (like FLESHPOT ON 42nd STREET) because it manages to document a form of madness without entirely succumbing to madness itself. After what threatens to become an orgiastic finale, it lets off some steam with an outstandingly calm, sane dialogue scene involving Ellen and Lurlene before dealing its last melodramatic blows, with Stan finally turning on Jean with the memorable line, “It’s about time I put you in the hospital!” Obviously, this can be very amusing to watch, in the manner of a John Waters hoot, and the fact that it’s amusing to watch (not unlike WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?) makes the viewer feel complicit in the dark turns it takes near the end. It's tempting to count among Milligan’s best pictures, though it’s a definite  a hybrid among his usual hothouse flowers. I can't help but wonder, though, if a making-of documentary showing how he managed to shoot the thing in such constraining quarters wouldn't have been more entertaining.

The extras for this title include an audio interview with Milligan, conducted by French journalist Stéphane Bourgoin in October 1995, which runs just over 50 minutes under KISS ME x 3 and is surprising. Milligan has a very listenable voice and doesn't sound at all chaotic or angry. Along the way, he reminisces about his different films, points out which are his favorites, and offers some very canny contract advice for filmmakers who want to hang onto their rights or sell their product outright. He also reveals that the crazy families in his various film are sometimes thinly-veiled portraits of his various producers. Also on the disc are video interviews with Natalie Rogers (15:13) and Peter Ratray (17:12, both interesting and illuminating), an informed mini-lecture on the film by Alex DiSanto (14:09), and a longer and meatier one by Stephen Thrower (32:16), who is eloquent and tongue-in-cheek about the picture and has done his research into the production and its peculiar, delayed release with all due diligence. There is also a trailer (3:55, promising “An Orgy Like You’ve Never Seen Before EVER!”).

 

HOUSE OF SEVEN BELLES

1979-1981?, 92:45

We read about it in Jimmy McDonough’s biography THE GHASTLY ONE, Nicolas Winding Refn acquired it for his BYNWR website, and at last we finally have it on disc. What is it? It’s a feature-length bounty of not-necessarily-properly-edited material from Milligan's long-aborning, unfinished project, HOUSE OF SEVEN BELLES. Set in the months following the Civil War (because he felt that period films were less likely to date than contemporary ones), it haphazardly documents the ways of the LeFleur family - demented by pride, probable inbreeding, and feeling forced into premature decline by those damn Yankees. Making their situation worse is the family's longtime feud with the Lawsons (“They shoulda named them all after weeds!”), a similarly once-powerful and influential family who are actively conspiring to either acquire Transfloria (the LeFleur ancestral manor) or otherwise benefit from its coming destruction as a national railway line plans to run a railroad right through it. But this is an Andy Milligan film, where everyone is either crazy, dangerous, stupid, or “just one big hate,” and the feud goes up a notch when one character is suddenly decapitated off-camera and has their severed head bowled into the middle of a gossipy henfest plotting a bake sale. 

Since what we have here is feature length, one feels a critical assessment of what’s here should be possible, but there is both too much film here, and not enough. Hard as I tried, I never could get a fix on how many family members were in the Lefleurs; I counted two in the end credits I’d never heard mentioned in the movie, and found at least a couple I remembered who were missing. An hour passes between the first and second murders, the bulk of which are then squeezed in quick succession into the last 15-20 minutes. While almost all the murders are left to the gloved hands of a hands-on killer, one of them is left to Hekebah, a cackling old witch who smokes a pipe and spends most of her time in a rocking chair on her front porch, who uses magic to levitate death-dealing props and do away with someone in a manner anticipating Milligan’s own less-interesting poltergeist movie CARNAGE (1984). Ultimately, the film has far too many characters, some of whom are barely touched on, like the youngest LeFleur, Daisy-May, who dotes on dead animals and seems to live in the wild - not unlike Ivy in THE DEGENERATES. Meanwhile, there are scads of others who lend nothing but an anecdotal presence to the story, or perhaps a handy corpse, as when it ventures outside Transfloria to take in the local color at a tavern called The Cracker Hole, like Milligan regular Hal Borske as Judd, who stutters around a word until he changes it, like Porky Pig. Very often, the pointless scenes are where the film becomes most entertaining, as it does outside a local church (the same one seen in GURU THE MAD MONK, 1970), where a dozen women in cumbersome dresses with billowing petticoats get into a street brawl. Stephen Thrower (who contributes the sole extra here, a rewarding 29:46 talk) estimates that the film features no less than 59 different Civil War-era dresses and undergarments, all designed and made by Milligan’s longtime alter ego, Raffiné (!). 

Shot in 35mm color, which has slightly faded, the cinematography was shot from a tripod, making it look steady and more skilled than in Milligan’s early hand-held, “swirl camera” days. Even the uneaten food shown on a buffet table looks edible - not his usual thrown-together raw chicken and rhubarb shafts. The soundtrack sometimes falls silent during transitions, and some of it features cross-talk or indistinct dialogue, so (as with COMPASS ROSE) I found it helpful to watch with the subtitles activated. This also led me to discover some discrepancies; for example, one character’s historically plausible use of the N-word gets diffused to the word “negro” in the subtitles.

Though it can’t be held to the same standards as completed work, this work-in-progress is pure, demented pleasure and how lucky we are that Severin Films were able to include it. It’s food for thought - reason to mourn what it never became, and to appreciate for how much it still takes after its father. 

Overall, GUTTER AUTEUR is a one-in-a-thousand release, in terms of the rarity and revelations of its contents. While none of the contents exceed what I have found most embraceable about Milligan’s other work, they add considerably to my own understanding and appreciation of those other films - I can now see the ghosts of Caffé Cino in the orgiastic nightmare of THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS, and the loud face of Andy's mother is now firmly superimposed over much of the pain I find in his collected works - which is why I consider this an essential purchase. My only problem with the set is that, as seriously as the scholarly contributors take their research, there seems to be an unspoken consensus among them that the films themselves are little more than reckless, entertaining lunacy, and the extras tend to approach the subject as opportunities for anecdotes, speculations, and sly gossip. While there is also acknowledgement of their novelty as gay-coded work, no attempt is really made to examine Milligan’s output in terms of what it says, or to take it at all seriously or analytically, or to trace it back to which films and filmmakers (or theatrical work) inspired his particular cocktail of extremism. It’s true that this particular grouping of films is mostly (though not entirely) non-horror, which leaves out the more obvious inspirations behind that group of films, but to discuss any group of films solely from the circumstances of their filming, how little they cost, and how the people involved met and got along, is to leave the films themselves out in the cold. But, fortunately, there is still one more film in the package.

 

THE DEGENERATE: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF ANDY MILLIGAN

2025, 101:42

This documentary by Grayson Tyler Johnson and Josh Johnson (no relation) is the first disc in the set, and I took this as a suggestion of where to begin. I have to say I felt somewhat disappointed by my first viewing, but far more satisfying on second viewing, after absorbing all of the newly-uncovered Milligan films supporting it. It is “narrated”, to an extent, by the same Milligan audio interview included in its entirety (and with less distortion) elsewhere in the set, and held together with photographs, film excerpts, NYC and Staten Island location visits and especially on-camera reminiscences of numerous friends and collaborators, including his biographer Jimmy McDonough. 

 

It’s here that we finally get the real emotional dividends tied-up in this filmography, as well as personal testimonies to dig into the matter of Andy’s mental health and volatile temper, which consensus tells us took a sharp, hateful turn after the making of LOVE ME, LOVE ME, LOVE ME and its handling by William Mishkin, which resulted in the picture’s apparent suppression for the better part of two years. Hope Stansbury shares some personal mementos, Sam Sherman reminisces about the role he played in creating campaigns and new titles for THE DEGENERATES and THE GHASTLY ONES (“There were ones and they were ghastly,” he explains), Stephen Thrower and Alex diSanto offer historical details and occasional critical comments, and McDonough brings his first-hand observations to the latter Los Angeles years and films, concerning their collaborative adventures as well as more personal memories, such as the dinner date to see Cathy Rigby in PETER PAN when Andy first confided to Jimmy that he’d contracted AIDS. He and BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS alumnus John Miranda became his caregivers during his last days. 

By far the most valuable contributor is Gerald “Jerry” Jacuzzo - Andy’s longtime friend, roommate, companion, co-writer and actor - who comes forth with the open heart and insights necessary to the success of any documentary. As the garbled soundtrack of COMPASS ROSE declares, “pain is the compass rose” of life, and by extension this is also true of his roiling, railing filmography. This is the primary reason why my hackles are raised when people are drawn to this body of work mostly to mock it, to condescend, to make sport of its technical incompetence, which pours salt into those wounds Milligan sought to exorcize. Of course, there's no overlooking the outlandish melodrama of it all, or the deliberate humorousness and overplayed inhumanity of the characters and caricatures he intended to mock; but what has always fascinated me about his work - chaotic and convulsive as it is - is its accidental/autodidactic modus operandi, which only achieves true mediocrity after the move to California, which says something important about the singularity of the earlier work. Despite the plentiful evidence to the contrary, Andy Milligan was an artist and the existence of this release indicates that his infamous marginality may be diminishing, whether he would like that or not. 

(c) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Brian, Roger, David - Where Did They Go?

Sitting here on a Saturday listening to John Cale’s “Mr. Wilson,” his 1974 ode to Brian Wilson, and realizing that in a short time we’ve lost Brian Wilson, Roger Corman, and David Lynch - among many others, of course, but just those three losses represent an immeasurable deduction from the American psyche.

Looking back, I think the full measure of these losses didn’t get through to me at the time because I go through life now pretty much knocked off-center and the news shocks me every goddam day. One gets inured to it. And no, I’m not forgetting Udo Kier… Somehow the news of his passing penetrated the steel wool I’ve gathered around my barest nerves; I couldn’t write a proper farewell post in his honor because the loss was too immense, too unreal - the measure of what a difference his work (and I think especially, his humor) made in my life. 

The loss of Roger is more mixed-up with my personal memories of him and Julie; he was real to me as well as a pillar of my moviegoing, so I miss the person he was more than the monument. But the losses of David and Brian I still haven’t been able to acknowledge to myself on some level. They were both among my top cultural heroes. I still believe that David Lynch is out in LA, cooking up something new and mind-bending. I suppose I’ll feel his loss when his films begin to look old to me, but that still hasn’t happened with his earliest work.

As for Brian, I’ve read a lot about him of late in back issues of Paul Williams’ CRAWDADDY and, while it’s been insightful and properly laudatory, it has also reinforced my feeling that he was too pampered and overindulged by those closest to him and his outstanding followers and interpreters. His illness has been lionized in too many films and documentaries as much as his great talent. I don’t ever want to hear his life story again, frankly, but I’ve got all his music (even his recording sessions) and someday I need to go through it all again in a mindset that is apart from his earthly struggles and purely embracing of his transportive gifts. 

All three of these men I have mentioned I see as the discovers of California as we know it today. 

(C) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

BATMAN (1966) 50th Anniversary Original Soundtrack

Limited to 3000 units, La La Land’s newly expanded CD of Nelson Riddle’s BATMAN follows and adds three new tracks to the previous limited-edition release by Film Score Monthly from 2000. It is not to be confused with Riddle's highly-recommended BATMAN - EXCLUSIVE ORIGINAL TELEVISION SOUNDTRACK ALBUM (issued in October 2014 but still findable); this is a 50th Anniversary issue of the music which Riddle composed and orchestrated for Leslie H. Martinson's 1966 feature film, which has since become a perennial cult favorite.

Listening to this fun and lively score, divorced from its imagery, it’s remarkable how well the music and instrumentation (hybrid orchestra and rock) evoke and enlarge all the highlights recalled from the movie. Some of the music is distinctly (albeit colorfully) “Mickey Mousey,” in that it was intended to shadow and comment on the onscreen action and suspense, but Riddle’s various character themes are remarkable in terms of how fully they flesh-out and lend larger-then-life menace to the various personalities, especially the villains - the Joker, the Penguin, Catwoman and the, um, Riddler. Especially notable: 20th Century Fox contract player Lee Meriwether played Catwoman for the first and only time in this feature (she's my favorite), temporarily replacing Julie Newmar who essayed the role on television, and she is given her own unique arrangement of Riddle's mewing Cat-theme, which is here more suggestively lethal and erotic. The flamboyance of the respective villains, the nautical themes (Schmidlapp yacht, Penguin sub), the woozy Dean Martin-like quality of the romantic schmaltz (even the Giovanni Martini source song “Plaisir d’amour” is included) are wonderfully evocative, and the various Bat-themes are so exciting that they lend Adam West all the alacrity, dynamism, armor, and might that later Batmen had to make literal. It’s a remarkable and endlessly enjoyable document. 

With a running time of 72:13, the disc presents the mono score as it is heard in the film; in fact, one of the cues included here - "Submarine Attack" - had to be reconstructed by restoration expert Mike Matessino, working from the existing Blu-ray of the film. Also included is a full-color illustrated booklet with liner notes by John Takris, which focus as much on telling the background story of the ABC series as on the film in question. I was particularly pleased to lift the disc from the casing to find a full list of Riddle’s session musicians listed beneath. I’ve often wondered if any of the players on these sessions had been part of the legendary Wrecking Crew, and the answer is... apparently not. But the drummers Riddle hired for this session really swing and could easily pass for the likes of Hal Blaine or Eddie Hoh in my ears. 

Where to order:

https://lalalandrecords.com/batman-the-movie-1966-re-issue/

 

(c) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

The Recurring Faces of Shame in Terence Fisher’s Films

Viewing STOLEN FACE a second time, I was reminded of how many moments in the films of Terence Fisher we get glimpses of people (and creatures) who are made pitifully aware of how abhorrent they have become to others. I doubt this a complete list, but I believe it is a compelling one. It's a point he made again and again. 

(c) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

 

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN: Christopher Lee.

 

 

                         THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH: Delphi Lawrence, Hazel Court.

 

THE MUMMY: Yvonne Furneaux, Christopher Lee. 

 

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA: Martita Hunt.

         

                     FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN: Robert Morris, Susan Denberg.

 FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED: Freddie Jones.

Thoughts on STOLEN FACE (1952)

Last night I watched Terence Fisher’s STOLEN FACE (1952), just released on 4K/Blu-ray by Hammer. It looks fine - absolutely fine, but nothing extraordinary - yet what stands out about the film is how it interlinks with other films thematically. In this story, an eminent plastic surgeon falls in love with a woman already betrothed and decides to pursue happiness with a badly-scarred, criminally-minded patient to whom he gives the face of his lost love. 

This notion of a man grooming a woman to replace a lost love naturally takes us back (or rather, forward) to Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (1958), but - in a much more rewarding and interesting way, to Fisher’s own FOUR-SIDED TRIANGLE (1953), THE MUMMY (1959) and its reincarnation angle, FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967), and arguably even THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1961), which somewhat inverts the formula by splitting the man/lover into his own criminal opposite in hopes of regaining the love of a straying wife. I daresay this must be the most insistent theme to be found in Fisher’s work and we can even follow the thread deeper into the two versions of Barbara Shelley found in DRACULA - PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1965) or the pathetic bifurcated monster in FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969). I watched the video extras, which touch on VERTIGO and other crime pictures involving plastic surgery subplots, but overlook how this theme is stressed in much of Fisher’s other work. I’ve yet to listen to the two commentaries included, so I hope they’ll find and explore this important vein of thought and discussion.

Another thing: in Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ otherwise very interesting essay, she refers repeatedly to the Paul Henreid’s character’s “sexual obsession,” but I see nothing sexual in his portrayal. I can understand how a modern viewer could watch the film and think that his giving Lizabeth Scott’s face to another woman was a way of getting into her pants, but Fisher never depicts his reasoning as anything more primal than a “romantic” obsession. Henreid has dreams of what his life might have been with the original of Scott, but anything concerning his sex life with either woman is glossed over in the manner of the period the film was shot. It’s important to remember that audiences of 1952 were not as bombarded by sex in the media as they would start to become in the 1960s. Sexual realities had no place in cinema, especially in what might be considered “women’s films,” and I personally find a more female (than male) basis in STOLEN FACE, perhaps because it involves two women and one man, and because Henried’s protagonist is depicted as a somewhat isolated romantic without much worldly experience, not as a prowling sexual pragmatist.

If we look at the film in this way, it is easier to accept Henreid’s behavior, because a romantic fantasy is unrealistic by definition and we can clearly see where the roadster of realism takes the wrong exit. A sexual obsession is more dangerous because it’s rooted in reality, and we can’t see how it grew to such extremes because the film could not go there. I see Henreid’s obsession as one of Fisher’s many “failed experiment” tragedies; it takes a step too far, but there is a road back. (The last image in the story, if I saw it correctly, actually frames this road back next to a train literally stalled outside a tunnel.) VERTIGO, on the other hand, takes a step beyond even the book on which it was based, to show us a protagonist who is actually sick, and it leaves us (and him) hanging, cutting off before he can decide whether or not to seek help. 

STOLEN FACE is now available from Hammer (and other outlets like Amazon and Diabolik DVD) as a region-free 4K/Blu-ray double disc set with numerous extras and a 116-page illustrated booklet of essays. 

(C) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

ISLAND OF THE DOOMED reviewed

 

ISLAND OF THE DOOMED

1967, Mondo Macabro (BD ABC), 88m 13s

aka LA ISLA DE LA MUERTE (Spain), MANEATER OF HYDRA (US TV), THE BLOODSUCKERS (UK), BARON VAMPIRE (France)

Actor Mel Welles, primarily known for his 1950s work with Roger Corman and Lord Buckley, migrated with his family to Italy in the early 1960s, where he acted in films, more lucratively became a dubbing director. and later served as an assistant director to the young Michael Reeves on his debut feature THE SHE BEAST (1965). He also got the opportunity to direct a handful of films in Italy and Spain, but the only one much seen prior to 1972 was this delirious Spanish horror/science fiction hybrid, theatrically released in America by Allied Artists. It then became part of a widely syndicated AIP-TV package under the new title MANEATER OF HYDRA. Though badly cropped and miserably panned-and-scanned from its original 2.35:1 Techniscope ratio, with an Anton García Ábril soundtrack that sometimes warbled like something waterlogged, the film nevertheless proved irresistible in its lurid eccentricity. Cameron Mitchell, cast as the deranged and reclusive botanist Baron von Weser, has his privacy compromised when a group of stranded tourists take over his villa and, after embarrassing themselves in different ways, begin to be knocked off by one of his more ambitious man-eating plants.

 

Ever since letterboxing was introduced, this film has been near the top of my list of most-desired widescreen titles for restoration and now, at last, I have it - and so can you. Mondo Macabro’s release—issued first as a limited edition Blu-ray (1200 copies, now OOP), with pre-orders for a standard edition due to start being accepted soon—opens with an apologetic card explaining that, as the film's original camera negative remains lost, the following 4K restoration had to be compiled from the best parts of two surviving 35mm theatrical prints. While one can imagine the image being slightly sharper, the composite offered here is in ripely colored, gorgeous condition with only minimal, easily forgiven scratching. The opening establishing shot—a mere throw-away on old TV prints—is a stunning, nearly 3D camera dolly shot past an arrangement of shrubs and layered, parked buses, proving that DP Cecilio Paniagua (CUSTER OF THE WEST, PATTON) was fully invested from the get-go in the film’s visual possibilities. 

 

 

This is very much one of those “busload of tourists” horror films so familiar from the early years of Italian Gothic (PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE, BLOODY PIT OF HORROR) but there is something earthier, grittier about this Spanish manifestation that was not yet so familiar when it first came to television, its only real precedents being Jesùs Franco’s THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (1964) and DR. ORLOFF’S MONSTER (1965) - both in black-and-white and not so easily seen in America after their theatrical releases. Welles’ own persona - I knew him, so I can assure you he was an interesting cocktail of wry intelligence, lofty pride, disdain and ironic humor - also finds its way into the English dubbing of the picture, over which he also presided; the collective characters—which include a bland hero (George Martín), a sweet innocent girl that he can end up with (Elisa Montés), a handsome tour guide-cum-early victim (Riccardo Valle, who played Morpho in Jesús Franco’s THE AWFUL DR ORLOF, 1962), a philandering drunk (Kai Fischer), her suffering cuckold of a husband (Rolf von Nauckhoff), a gibberingly eccentric fellow botanist (Herman Nehlsen) and Myrtle Callahan (Mathilde Sampietro), an older woman who loves nagging and taking pictures and sounds like she was dubbed by Anne Meara—are clearly a bouquet arranged by a man who loved people and suffered them, as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

He didn't need to, but Mitchell brings his best game to this picture. He's believable as an obsessed scientist, an aesthete remote enough from others to venture into irresponsible research, and he gives us so many interesting stops along the way to his ultimate fate. We get to see his prowess on a bicycle; we see him turn coldly asexual when he finds himself in the arms of a libidinous woman; and apologetic and respectful when circumstances cause him to commit a murder himself (he instructs his servant to handle the body with respect - “he was a nice man”). And his ultimate fate is a real show-stopper, with Mitchell shifting into Shakespearean soliloquy mode after failing to fend off hero George Martín's intended axe blows against his "baby," what Allied Artists' ad campaign reasonably called a “vampire tree,” which for most of the film’s running time is creepily presented from our own POV. When the thing is finally shown, the special effects prop holds up remarkably well, though Welles had nothing but complaints about the artists when I interviewed him for VW #78, back in 2001. A tentacled tree, each of its blooms opening like vaginal fissures to reveal astonishingly graphic, erect, veinous, honey-dripping, blood sucking stamens—it’s the screen’s most blatantly sexual monster since the “boy and girl” aliens concocted by Francis Coppola for his BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1962), a decade’s head-start on Body Horror proper, and it’s all the more effective for looking biologically sound and believable. I was also surprised to see a couple of bloody inserts that I never noticed on TV, showing a much younger hand than Mitchell's clinging to one of the plant's protuberances as it can't decide to drink in or spit out.

 

 

 

Seeing the film on TV as a child, many times, I was most impressed by the rain which coincides with the bloody dismantling of the Baron’s hungry infant. It seemed to me at the time that the sky was actually raining blood, in a kind of purgative ceremony akin to the flames that always arose to engulf the final reels of Roger Corman’s Poe pictures. As seen on this new disc release, I don’t see the same effect, which must have been a lie fostered by the image’s compressed TV image, but it is even more effective; the once-mashed-beyond-recognition close-up of Mitchell’s face is now perfectly rendered and shows a still-respectable makeup job. Most importantly, in the correct 2.35:1 widescreen ratio, we can also finally see the full size of the macabre plant as it prepares to reach out, unseen, for its final victim. Also saved is the closing shot, a high-angle view of the tree and its various victims, which is here unscrambled to preserve a Grand Guignolesque closing shot that recalls nothing less than the final shot of Paul Morrissey’s FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1973). As you can see from the compositions in these frame grabs, Paniagua’s work on this picture is nothing short of masterful, and Mario Bava may well have been aware of the film as he insisted to producer Alfredo Leone that Paniagua was the only Spanish DP he could trust to shoot LISA AND THE DEVIL. (And so he did, to beautiful effect, though it led to complaints about how much time was needlessly wasted on his old-school lighting techniques.)

 

 

 

 

 

What most surprised me about seeing the film for the first time in its intended ratio is how well it conveys abundant nature as something both beautiful and savage—indeed, something with its own personality, which can turn on a dime. Filmed in the Costa Brava rural area outside Barcelona, ISLAND OF THE DOOMED manages to feel akin to the Italian Gothics while at the same time conjuring up a unique flavor of its own.

 

Viewers will notice that this flavor is quite different in its Spanish-language version, which is included with subtitles that likewise vary from the English dub in subtle and curious ways. It's a less humorous viewing option, leaning in tone more toward the courtly and hubristic, which also has the surprising effect of enhancing the quality of the horror scenes, which become more seriously chilling rather than "wildly entertaining" (to quote Mondo Macabro's introductory card. Its presence on the disc reminds us that ISLAND OF THE DOOMED (or, rather, LA ISLA DE LA MUERTE) is one of the earliest Spanish fantaterror titles, predating the works of Paul Naschy and even José Antonio Nieves Conde's THE SOUND OF HORROR (EL SONIDO DE LA MUERTE, 1966) with Ingrid Pitt and Soledad Miranda. Unlike quite a number of later Spanish horror titles, this one does not revisit the well-worn locations found in Jesús Franco's GRITOS EN LA NOCHE/THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (1962) and EL SECRETO DEL DR. ORLOFF/DR. ORLOFF'S MONSTER aka DR. JEKYLL'S MISTRESSES (1964), which underscore its originality and have kept its appeal fresh and independent. Speaking of underscoring, I'm also happy to report that Anton García Ábril's creepy and moody score, with its pleasing romantic and adventurous themes, has been thoroughly refurbished and adds to a general feeling that this film has not been able to view in such superb condition in 60 years. Indeed, I was in touch with Mel Welles at the time of his death and can attest that seeing this film in its intended form once again was one of his highest priorities. It saddens me that he didn't get to see this, or to know that future generations would. 

 

Sadly, Mel did not leave behind enough work as a director to have carved out a niche for himself among horror directors, but I think it can be broadly characterized as alternately gregarious and misanthropic with a dark sense of humor. He took credit for suggesting the classic moment in Michael Reeves’ THE SHE BEAST in which a sickle, just used in a murder against a Communist worker, was tossed aside to fortuitously cross with a hammer on the floor of a garage, which is one of my favorite moments in the picture. But his only other really notable directorial effort was 1971’s LADY FRANKENSTEIN, which (much to Mel’s annoyance) was chopped-up by his old friend Roger Corman “like so much salami” for its US drive-in release. It can now be found on Nucleus Films Region 2 Blu-ray in a nicely restored version, but I strongly feel that ISLAND OF THE DOOMED was his finest effort—and Mondo Macabro’s restoration reveals something even bigger and better than I ever realized it was. It’s an incredible rarity in that it was made with noticeable style and taste, yet what lingers most in the memory is what fun, how entertaining it is—for a very special kind of viewer. Like me, like Mel, like you.

Mondo Macabro's region-free disc is a limited edition of 1200 copies. Also included is a pleasing commentary by David Flint, companionable and well-observed; Xavier Sánchez Pons' hour-long video essay on the life and career of Jorge Martín (perhaps slightly more than was needed, as Martín is this film’s weakest point, dubbed - I think - by Rodd Dana); and a comprehensive talk by the always-welcome Ángel Sala (uncredited on the packaging) about the history of films (like this one) which were shot in the Costa Brava area. Tucked inside is an illustrated booklet with text worth reading by Ismael Fernandez which offers additional production information, and also mini-replicas of the US release’s colorized lobby cards.

 

In case the point has been lost on you, I love this disc, unreservedly. If you missed the limited edition, keep your eyes peeled for pre-ordering the standard edition at www.mondomacabro.bigcartel.com.

 

 (c) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.