If you would have told me a decade ago that I would be praising the work of Staten Island bottom of the basement auteur Andy Milligan, I would have said you’re crazy. I had known about him and a few of his titles but just wrote him off as another low-budget schlocky filmmaker. But a couple of years ago, Severin Films did an amazing thing by releasing a massive box set of Milligan’s work, with a ton of extras. These films looked better than they probably did if/when they played in theaters. As I started to go through the set, I realized that while they are still very low budgeted films, and weren’t the best on the technical side, there was a charm to them that I really started to enjoy. I’ve always said that the more you know about an artist, it will make you appreciate their work a little more. And between that box set and Jimmy McDonough’s book The Ghastly One, I really started to enjoy what I was seeing.
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