Article – Andy Milligan’s British horror films

For anyone interested, here’s another article by yours truly, this time for Horrified Magazine’s online outlets.

Titled ‘”A tuppence where yer ‘eart should be”: Andy Milligan’s British horror films’, this piece (approx 9000 words) takes a look at fiercely independent cult American filmmaker Andy MIlligan’s quintet of films made in the UK between 1968 and 1970.

This was quite an interesting topic to dig into; there’s little published about Milligan’s work generally, and very little about these five films he made in the UK, so this article is breaking new ground in that regard.

The films discussed and analysed include Nightbirds (1970), The Body Beneath (1970), Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970), The Body Beneath (1980), The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here! (1970) and The Man with Two Heads (1970).

Though made for UK producer Leslie Elliot, these films were never distributed in the UK owing to a disagreement between Leslie, his father Curtis Elliot (who held the purse strings of the production company for which these were made) and Milligan.

FILM DIARY: Blue Jean Monster (Ivan Lam, 1988)

I’d not seen this in an age and had forgotten most of it. Big riffs on ROBOCOP and THE TERMINATOR mixed with some bawdy comedy: Shing Fui-On tests his signs of life, realising he’s come back from the dead, by looking at a jazz magazine that he casually keeps on the bedside cabinet in the bedroom he shares with his pregnant wife (WTF?) than admonishing his penis to ‘get up’ (double WTF?). Then he shocks himself into life by miswiring the electric iron, before the parasitic hoodlum who lives with him (much to the chagrin of Shing’s wife) because Shing saved his life comes in and tries to pull the iron from Shing’s chest; the pair end up tumbling to the floor, and Shing’s wife walks in to see the hoodlum’s buttocks thrusting whilst he yells ‘You excite me’. She naturally jumps to the conclusion that her husband is having a sexual relationship with the hoodlum boarding at their house.

This is riotous fun. I think I’m going to have to put this one in for more frequent rotation in my player.