Remembering the born angry grindhouse director.
By Alyse Wax · @alysewax · May 11, 2021, 5:22 PM EDT Andy Milligan (credited as Charles Richards) in LEGACY OF BLOOD (1978).
Sex, murder, mayhem and monsters. All common – even expected – visions in the grindhouses of New York’s legendary 42nd Street. But while directors like H.G. Lewis, Russ Meyer and Frank Henenlotter have all achieved a modicum of success (or at least notoriety) since the Disney-fication of 42nd Street in the early 1990s, there is one director who was never quite able to escape the Deuce: Andy Milligan.
I like to call Andy Milligan “The Ed Wood of 42nd Street.” He churned out cheap slashers and sexploitation flicks by the dozens – twenty-nine in twenty years. Milligan was writer, director, cinematographer, editor, set decorator and costume designer for his films. Sometimes he even processed the film negatives. While he often estimated the budgets of his films at upwards of $20,