The Ghastly Ones

Well well, at last a view of this underrated flick. But you can't find a good copy of it, terrible copy full with green drops, the editing isn't syncronized, the sound do has sometimes that terrible hiss and sometimes you even can hear the camera recording. Overall it's too dark, a waist of time you should say but it isn't. It's a bit slow, the first half part of the movie it's all talking and making love to each other. It is even still weird that the girls in movies from the 60's never wear any bra's. When they enter the sleeping room it's full glory. Anyway, banned in the UK since 84 and still on the video nasties list. The reason is simple, it's gory for their time being. It really has some nasty dismemberement's and it's creepy in some way due the fact that it is filmed handycam way. So every shot the image is moving, things they do these days with the steadycam. The Ghastly Ones could have been better if the quality of the film was better but still better then other films of the time like Schoolgirls In Chains.

Milligan period piece about murders for an inheritance. Shot in that tight Milligan style where people seem to hug each other so they remain in frame (due to his camera being beyond poor). This is a dreadful movie that has a certain amount of brain dead charm. Its a bad movie in the I can't believe they actually released this sort of way. Again as with most Milligan films, little more than a home movie (stuff I shot looked like this and I couldn't release it) this is the sort of thing only masochists and bad movie lovers dare watch. Certainly better than Seeds of Sin, the color and the period nature some how defuses the desire to put this on the unredeemable list. Come on how can one not enjoy-as with most Milligan period films- the desire to see the errors in continuity with objects from different eras mingling as if there was nothing wrong. There's a drinking game (and alcohol helps these films) in spot the error.

This film was released in the UK under the name Blood Rites. It was banned outright and never submitted again for release.

As The Ghastly Ones, it was supposedly a hit with the horror hungry denizens of New York City's famed 42nd Street Grindhouse circuit. If you are looking for some bloody horror, then you will find it in this film.

Unfortunately to see the developmentally disabled Colin (Hal Borske) chomp down on a live rabbit, you have to put up with shaky 16mm camera work that makes Ed Wood look positively marvelous.

Three sisters are to spend three days in the family homestead with their husbands before the old man's money is disbursed. Naturally, in such a situation, people start dropping dead. Family secrets are exposed and lots of blood is spilled, especially during a gruesome dismemberment.

Maybe it was the bunny bit that the Brits objected to, I know I did.

A couple frolic in the countryside just outside an abandoned house. They are stalked by a monstrous-looking man. The man attacks the couple, ripping out the man's eyeball. As he rolls around on the deck with the man, finishing him off, we hear director Andy Milligan shout "cutting away, move". And so begins "The Ghastly Ones", a dismal splatter-attempt from infamous director Andy Milligan. Shot on a budget of around $2,000, the film is widely loathed and was even described by Stephen King as being "morons with cameras". Old Stephen wasn't far off there. The camera work is absolutely shocking. It shakes up and down and looks for all the world like found-footage. Milligan was extremely inept when it came to making films. He hadn't a shred of talent. There are a few gory scenes that got this the credit of being a Video Nasty, but the aforementioned camera work is so bad it's a wonder that the censors could even make out what was happening. The story sees three sisters and their husbands invited to hear their late-father's will. In it, he instructs that they are to live in "sexual harmony" - seriously? - on the island where the house is situated for a couple of days before it is revealed what they inherit blah blah blah. While there they become the next victims of some crazed lunatic going around chopping people up. Milligan, for reasons I can't understand, remade this film in 1978 and titled it "Legacy of Horror" or "Legacy of Blood" as it's also known as. I actually seen that one before the original, which is why the rather generous rating of three stars. He somehow managed to make a nearly scene-by-scene remake worse than this amateurish, back-yard shoot. That was so bad that when I watched "The Ghastly Ones" I felt like I was watching a better film.

Ghastly Ones, The (1968)

1/2 (out of 4)

Three couples spend the night in an old dark house so that they can collect an inheritance but a killer is running loose. This is my first Andy Milligan film and it's really no worse than countless other exploitation films that were out at the time. Everything about the film is bad, especially the sex scenes, which are probably the worst I've ever seen in a movie. The director does try to build suspense but this here comes off rather laughable but then again, everything here comes close to laughable.