The Ghastly Ones (1968)

Director:

Andy Milligan

Writers:

Andy Milligan (screenplay)
Hal Sherwood (screenplay)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

A Gruesome Orgy of Human Mutilation!

Plot:

Three married couples are forced to spend the night in a Victorian-era house where they start getting killed off by a deranged psycho who's bent on claiming an inheritence they are all entitled to.

Plot Keywords:

Mansion | House | Rabbit | Psycho | Pitchfork

Cast

Veronica Radburn	...	Martha
Maggie Rogers	...	Hattie
Hal Borske	...	Colin Trask
Anne Linden	...	Vicky
Fib LaBlaque	...	Rich (as Fib La Blaque)
Carol Vogel	...	Liz
Richard Romanus	...	Don (as Richard Romanos)
Eileen Hayes	...	Veronica (as Eileen Haves)
Don Williams	...	Bill
Hal Sherwood	...	Walter
Neil Flanagan	...	Lawyer Dobbs (as Niel Flanagan)
Ada McAllister	...	Ada
Robert Adsit	...	Robert

Also Known As:

Blood Rites

Runtime:

81 min | USA:72 min (DVD version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:R | UK:(Banned) | Canada:16+ (Quebec) | USA:Not Rated

Filming Locations:

Staten Island, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

ASA Productions

Trivia:

Film debut of Richard Romanus.

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: In several of the fight scenes of the film, the crew and their cameras and sound equipment are visible. There are also moments when the director can be heard softly reminding the actors of their lines.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in A Night to Dismember (1983)

Cheap, laughable fun

THE GHASTLY ONES is a brainboiler of a cheap horror film. The plot involves three sisters and their husbands travelling to their isolated childhood home to hear the reading of their late father's will, but someone is willing to kill to keep the money all to themselves. Director/producer Andy Milligan attempts a 1905 setting for his film despite something like $20.00 for a budget, although its highly unlikely that women from that era wore see-through black negligees to bed. Along with the wobbly period details, there's stabbings,decapitation, mutilations with hacksaws, and live rabbit eating. Ole! Ten years later, Milligan remade this flick as the somewhat more competent(and narratively coherent)LEGACY OF HORROR. If you're looking for a laughable, confused mess, go with THE GHASTLY ONES. If you want a more understandable film that offers characters whose motives are revealed during the course of the story, go with LEGACY OF HORROR. Calm me old fashioned, but I prefer the latter, because the reasons revealed for some of the characters' behavior makes the resulting carnage all the more chilling. And the simpleton brother is show as an abused, sad waste of human potential, not a ghoulish geek. The scene where he sits in his dank basement room, battering a teddy bear while grunting the word "stupid" over and over is more chilling than a dozen disembowelings--something that I think Milligan was not conscious of. Okay, so maybe I overanalyze, but I like to see the psychological underside of these characters. After all, a psycho doesn't make himself crazy, does he?