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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Andy Milligan's mystery/gore film worth a look at, 12 January 2001
Author: gypsykoenigbill

THE GHASTLY ONES is one of Andy Milligan's films that delt with mystery combined with the slasher film genre. Well made with some heavy atmosphere, THE GHASTLY ONES succeds in being a good low budget film. The plot is pretty simple. Taking place in the Victorian period, three couples go to an island off the coast of New York to recieve an inheritence from their fathers mansion. Inhabiting the house is two old maids and a hunchback. Soon grisly murders take place and the question is "Who is the killer?"

Milligan supplies the good photography on his 16mm camera while the acting is convincing. And for a film on a $10,000 budget, that is saying alot! The gore is also on the level from convinving to just plain silly. Brutal killings involve a pitchfork shoved up someone's neck, a victim being sawed in half, a head on a platter, meat cleavers cracking skulls, and other bizare occurences.

THE GHASTLY ONES was filmed for J.E.R. Pictures for Jerry Balsam in 1967. J.E.R. would also distribute Milligan's DEPRAVED! and THE DEGENERATES during that same year. Also, THE GHASTLY ONES played on a double bill in the early 1970's with THE HEADLESS EYES.

Milligan was probably unhappy with the results of THE GHASTLY ONES, so he tried it again in his film SEEDS (1968) and LEGACY OF BLOOD (1978).

I recommend THE GHASTLY ONES to true Andy Milligan fans. And I am one of them.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Just bad enough to be good, 26 August 2007
5/10
Author: dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York

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.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Truth in Advertising?, 16 October 2004
Author: TheatreX from Louisville, KY

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Hey now, yep, this is pretty ghastly all right, especially the lurching camera work and editing. So this was made in 1968 on a shoestring budget and it's made as a period piece (with a few inaccuracies as to what the ladies are wearing, at least as far as undergarments go). Three sisters go to their childhood home for the reading of their father's will and at that home are two creepy housekeepers and your requisite creepy deformed handyman, who of course couldn't possibly be the one doing any of the nasty killing and all. No way, uh-uh. And this is a very confused jumble of bad camera work and period costumes and bloody messes, all presented for your delight by the late schlockmeister, Andy Milligan. It's worth seeing at least once just to say you saw it, but it's not something I'd get a yearning to ever see again. Definitely drive-in material for those not interested in the movie.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
The first gore film from Staten Island's own auteur., 27 July 2001
Author: reptilicus from Vancouver, Canada

Whether you love Andy Milligan's films or hate them everyone is in agreement; they are a genre unto themselves! You know you are in some paralell universe in the opening minutes of this film when a mad killer attacks a couple having a picnic on a private island. The maniac gouges out the eye of the man and then turns to the camera holding up a tennis ball sized object that is meant to be the eye! If you listen carefully during the murder scene you can even hear Andy Milligan's voice calling out "Cutting away, move!" to the actors! When I met Andy in the late 70's he confided to me that whenever an enucleated eye was needed he found Hostess Sno-Balls not only filled the bill nicely but also provided an impromptu snack for his performers. The plot involves the gathering of heirs on a lonely island to hear the will of the rich, eccentric father. Andy knew that plot had a long white beard well before 1969 so he loaded his movie was sado-masochism, marital rape, homosexual incest, a hooded killer that you'd have to be deaf and blind not to know was stalking you, and of course the bargain basement gore that made him so (in)famous to the people who gathered at drive-ins to watch his movies. THE GHASTLY ONES was his first gore film. After doing soft core movies like THE NAKED TEMPTRESS, GUTTER TRASH and FLESHPOT he saw the market movie away from soft to hardcore and decided to move into the terror genre. Actually this film offers some interesting things. Neal Flanagan, one of his stock company, plays a withered ancient lawyer who appears to have stepped out of a Charles Dickens novel. Haal Borske,a writer and director of several plays, plays the first of many idiot characters in Andy's films. His character of Colin appears to have been the killer in the opening scenes and he looks perfectly normal (apart from being a total sociopath, that is) yet later in the film he has becomes a hunchbacked, snaggletoothed halfwit who eats raw meat. Maggie Rogers also appears in SEEDS OF SIN and TORTURE DUNGEON and her acting is actually several notches above what is expected in a Milligan film. Gore is very . . .well . . .unusual. Bloody scenes include a pitchfork to the throat, a man cut in half with a bandsaw, a hand chopped off, a head in a roasting pan and wait'll you see what happens to the killer at the end! Andy remade this movie a few years later as LEGACY OF BLOOD with a different cast but the same plot and effects. To further confuse matters there is another movie called LEGACY OF BLOOD that stars John Carradine, Faith Domergue and Rex Reason that offers a similar plot but more sex and better effects. Don't worry it will be impossible for you to confuse these movies; an Andy Milligan film is like no other. Back in '69 THE GHASTLY ONES played on a double bill with Kent Bateman's HEADLESS EYES. If I had not been only 4 back then I sure would have paid to catch a programme like that!

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Andy Milligan strikes again!, 27 February 2006
1/10
Author: theTRUTH-hurts from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Staten Island filmmaker Andy Milligan is well known in the horror community for being an even worse director than Ed Wood. And with this as a dim example of his output I'm apt to agree with them. In "The Ghastly Ones" we basically have three bickering couples traveling to their childhood home (located on a conveniently secluded island) to collect an inheritance. There they are killed off one by one and the events unfold in murder/mystery fashion with a scarred retard hunchback butler added to throw you for a loop. The film is in such bad shape that it looks like someone just ran it through a dishwasher, the sound is terrible, the dialog is otherworldly bad, there's some primitive mannequin gore (plus some dismemberments and guts) and it's technically inept in every possible way it can be inept. But is it enjoyable in a bad movie kind of way? Sort of. It's excruciating to watch but oddly entertaining in a train wreck fashion. Approach with caution. If you're not a fan of horrible movies better deep six this one.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
A Looney-Tune For Gorehounds, 23 August 2002
6/10
Author: Flixer1957 (wtr4423@juno.com) from Columbia County, NY

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

**May Contain Spoilers**

A gore opera set in the late 1800s, made by one of the most infamous exploitationers of all time. Three sisters and their husbands convene on Crenshaw Island for the reading of the family will. The tired plot is given new blood–and guts–when a hooded mutilator starts knocking off the heirs with pitchforks, saws and meat cleavers. A real backyard effort, literally, since the $8,000 horror was shot on Staten Island property owned by Milligan at the time. Of course, you're better off filming at home when you set your actors on fire and splatter gore all over the walls. During one nasty murder, Milligan's voice can be heard on the soundtrack as he gives direction. Effects range from fake and obvious to fairly gruesome. These include dismemberment, eyeball-yanking, hanging, bisection, stabbing, evisceration, a cleaver in the skull and a severed head on a turkey platter. Except for Hal Borske's sympathetic portrayal of an abused hunchback, the acting is comically bad. This looney-tune for gorehounds is worth checking out--especially if you want to delight fellow trash-fiends and appall your friends who enjoy normal motion pictures.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Ghastly, just Ghastly, 14 August 2008
4/10
Author: lastliberal from Florida

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.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Warning: This program contains Nudity, Sexual Situations, Violence and a Blackmailing-Suicidally-Homicidal-Pyromaniac-Sissy-Boy!, 17 November 2004
2/10
Author: Paul Andrews (poolandrews@hotmail.com) from UK

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Out of all the films I could have chosen, it had to be this. When I was last in New York I went into a Times Square store and out of the hundreds of DVD's they had I chose Joel M. Reeds Bloodsucking Freaks (1976) and this, on a double feature DVD that also included Seeds of Sin (1968), did I regret it? Read on to find out. The film opens on an island (near Milligan's Staten Island home) where two lovers are walking along with a massive parasol seemingly made from paper, at one point he gives her the top of a weed as a gift. Out of nowhere Colin (Hal Borske) a retarded hunchback pops up and kills both of them for no reason at all. After the opening credits which are joined by some of the worst headache inducing music I have ever heard, at least it got me used to it as it's used constantly throughout the film, we are introduced to three couples. The wives are all sisters, Vicky (Ann Linden) and Ricard (Fib LaBlaque), Veronica (Eileen Hayes) and Bill (Don Williams) plus Elizabeth (Carol Vogel) and Donald (Richard Ramos). They each receive a letter from a lawyer, H. Dobbs (Neil Flanagan) that request a meeting so he can read their late father's will. Dobbs informs them that they must spend three days in their childhood home 'Crenshaw House' and fill it with 'sexual harmony and marital love' that it had never known because of the strained relationship between their father and mother. He informs the couples that the will is highly irregular but legal. After three days the inheritance will be settled. The couples are also told about the servants, Martha (Veronica Radburn), Hattie (Maggie Rodgers) and the retarded Colin, who welcomes the couples by killing and biting chunks out of a rabbit in front of them. Later on that night whats left of the dead rabbit is found in one of the couples beds with a note that says 'blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit'. This starts a series of events which end in gruesome murder and reveals dark family secrets.

Co-written, photographed and directed by the talentless Andy Milligan. This is an absolutely horrible film in every way possible. Lets go through just some of it's faults. The music, it's awful and headache inducing. Sound, you can barely hear what characters are saying and certain scenes don't have any sound effects plus at certain points you can hear Milligan shouting out orders to his actors, oh and there's a constant hiss on the soundtrack throughout as well. The acting, probably among the worst I have ever witnessed. The very un-special effects, Colin pokes someones eye out in the opening sequence, it's the size of a tennis ball, the part where someone is tied down and has his stomach opened up with a saw looks really awful as are the various hands and legs that are chopped off. Photography, Milligan has absolutely no idea how to stage or film a scene, he regularly cuts the top, bottom or sides of peoples heads and faces off the screen and his camera jerks and shakes around like it's operated by someone who is constantly tripping over. There is also at least one scene so badly thought out and filmed that a crew member is seen. The film is often so dark you can't see whats happening, too. Editing, again some of the worst I've ever sat through, he seems to cut scenes before they've finished, cutting away while characters are in the middle of a sentence. The script, if there was one, credited to both Milligan and Hal Sherwood (It took two people to write this!?) is all over the place and is incredibly stupid. There is one unbelievably bad sequence where the killer follows a victim down into the basement, the killer walks right behind him, at one point the potential victim turns around. What does the killer do to avoid being spotted? They duck down right in from of him, the killers close enough to give the guy oral sex yet he doesn't notice them, right in front of him. You have to see this sequence to believe it, I still can't believe what I saw. Bizarre sub plots just happen and then totally disappear, check the scene out when Richard has to borrow money from his brother Walter (producer and co-writer Hal Sherwood), who turns out to be a gay priest who has had an incestuous relationship with his brother before he was married! A strange scene that's there for no reason at all. Martha the housekeepers reaction to the first murder, she's more bothered by the fact that it's thrown her dinner schedule out! There's load of insane dialogue as well, Patty and Martha discuss Colin, Patty says "if only I didn't beat him so hard" Martha sympathetically replies "you have to Patty, you have to!", delivered totally straight faced. And don't start me on how ugly the wallpaper looks throughout the house! The only good thing I can think of saying is that the costumes look reasonable, for the time period it's meant to be set in. I could probably go on all day about how amateurish this is, but I think you get the idea. One to avoid unless your a serious masochist! I didn't regret buying or watching it for a second, though!

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Ready to explore the zany world of Andy Milligan?, 19 June 2009
Author: DuaneBradley from Scandinavia

The movie was released in England in the 80's as BLOOD RITES and was included in the controversial Video Nasty list. More over, a collectible lobby card indicates that it even had a cinematic run in Mexico as ESPECTROS! I presume THE GHASTLY ONES were the only of Andy Milligan's movies to be exported.

The plot is set at the end of the 19th century, and features three sisters and their husbands who gather at their deceased fathers house for the will-reading, but are killed off one by one by a hooded killer! It is the classic plot for a haunted-house mystery, of the kind that was mass-produced by poverty row studios in the 30's/40's. But this one still doesn't look like any others with it's comical OTT, yet extreme evil and perversion lurking everywhere. The audience is committed to incest, rape, torture and unconvincing, skid-row gore that still is increasingly brutal.

Rubber hands are chopped off, a head is served on a plate, bodies are dismembered, and one gets a pitch fork through the throat. Notice that it is Richard Romanus who is sawed in half! Oddly, no one spots the killer who often only stands a few inches behind the victims and even marks them with an X on forehand!

Then there is Colin, played by Milligan regular Hal Borske, a lovable, deformed, bucktoothed, gimp who are seen chewing up a white rabbit! No rabbits were killed for the picture, the one that is eaten of had been dead AND decomposing for a long time! Colin is also seen in the opening, massacring two strangers, but now looking normal without the teethes! Yet he stays as one of the good guys, actually!

Andy Milligan reportedly loved film-making and was a true auteur himself, who both directed, wrote, filmed, made costumes, and practically did everything but acting. Many of his movies had the same selected cast of misfits and eccentrics who never showed up anywhere else. There is some who will think of him as a gutter-level Buñuel, and probably even more who think he was the worst filmmaker of all time! I've seen a couple of his horror movies and as some kind of defense I would like to point out the HUGE gaps his filmography has today. About the half of the movies he ever did has become lost over time. Mainly all the movies he made between the debut VAPORS, and this one, all is gone! VAPORS is actually a rather classy and well made short that looks nothing like GURU: THE MAD MONK. That just makes me even more curious about his lost output, that should include downbeat, urban dramas, and a post-apocalyptic sci-fi!? Not that I dislike THE GHASTLY ONES. How could i? It is damn charming.

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why banned in the UK?, 8 December 2008
4/10
Author: trashgang from Midian

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.

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