The Ghastly Ones
Tags: violence, cruelty, murder, sadist

Plot synopsis:
In the opening scene, set on a 1880's Victorian-era private island somewhere on the Hudson River, a young couple, Robert and Ada, are having a picnic near an old house when Robert wonders off and gets attacked and hacked apart by a wild-eyed hunchback man. Ada goes off to look for him when she too is attacked and killed.Some time later in Philadelphia, Vicky receives a letter from a lawyer explaining about her father's recent passing and she wants her husband, Richard, to travel with her to New York City to meet with Dobbs, her father's estate lawyer. Before leaving, Vicky and Richard meet with Father Walter, an old friend to ask for money since Richard is broke. It is implied that Father Walter and Richard had a secret sexual tryst sometime back.In New England, Vicky's younger sister, Elizabeth, received a similar letter and tries to get her lazy husband, Donald, to listen about this turn of events.In New York, Veronica, the youngest sister of Vicky and Elizabeth, receives a letter from Dobbs and tells her emotionally distant and barren husband, William, about her sisters arriving for a visit. In New York, while the men go off to a men's club, the women have dinner at a local restaurant where they talk about what may lay in store for them since they have not seen each other for several years.The next day, the three couples meet in the office of Lawyer Dobbs, a decrepit lawyer of their late father who has willed that upon his death, his three daughters, having married, must spend three days and two nights at his old house on Crenshaw Island on the Hudson where the money and possessions will get divided up among everyone.Upon arriving on the snowy and desolate island, Vicky, Rich, Liz, Donald, Veronica, and William are met by Hattie and Martha, the two housekeepers, whom lead them on a snow-covered path to the house. Accompanying them is Colin Trask, Hattie's mentally retarded hunchback brother (and the same killer from the opening scene), who works as a handyman on the property. Colin sees a white rabbit in the snow when he attacks it and eats it alive, forcing Martha to pull him away from his gruesome doings.During an uneventful evening, the two housekeepers tell the three couples about their dinner plans and about their employer, the girls father Mr. Crenshaw, whom was always out of the country on business and only lived inside the house five times in the past 30 years. Liz becomes worried that something is not right about Hattie or Martha, but Donald tells her that she's just imagining things.Later that night, when Veronica refuses William's desires for sex, he forces himself upon her and slaps her when she protests. Meanwhile, Vicky begins to confide in Richard about problems with this whole situation, but still wants to spend the time with him the best she can. When they hear a noise, Richard goes out of the bedroom to investigate and gets attacked by a shadowy, robed figure who brutally stabs him to death and throws him off the second floor balcony.In the morning, everyone is disturbed by Richard's mysterious death, but with no way of contacting anyone, they will have to wait until Lawyer Dobbs will arrive the following day with the final paperwork for the Crenshaw estate. Colin begins to try to comfort Vicky about her husband's murder, but she is put off by his ugly appearance despite his friendly attitude. When Donald ventures down into the cellar to get some more firewood for the fireplaces in the house, he gets attacked by the same robed figure who ties him to a table and disembowels him with a saw. Liz soon goes missing too, and when dinner is served that night, her severed head is discovered on a serving tray that Hattie and Martha serve for them.Now in fear that a killer is among them, Vicky, Veronica and William hold themselves up in a room to wait until morning. When William decides to venture out to have a talk with Hattie and Martha about what is going on, he is lured to the cellar where the robed figure attacks him by pinning him to a wall with a pitchfork and then disembowels him too. In the morning, Colin discovers William's dead body in the cellar as well as all the other murder victims and flees outside where he and Martha get attacked by the robed figure who stabs Martha to death and chases Colin back inside the house where the killer throws lamp oil onto him and sets him afire.Vicky and Veronica hear Colin's screams and venture outside their room when they come face to face with Hattie, whom is the killer all along. Hattie explains to the two surviving sisters that she is their long-lost half-sister whom was the product of their father's one-time infidelity and has been killing everyone so she can lay claim on the estate for herself. Just as the murderous Hattie is about to stab the ladies with a meat cleaver, the horribly burned Colin revives and lunges at Hattie in which she gets stabbed in the head with her own cleaver and they both tumble down the stairs to the ground floor, both dead... leaving Vicky and Veronica as the only survivors of the massacre.... and having to face Lawyer Dobbs when he shows up minutes later.

Review: 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).
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.
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.
People who totally dig micro budget see-it-to-believe-how-bad-it-is schlock will probably enjoy Andy Milligan's "The Ghastly Ones".
Supposedly a period piece, it brings together three couples in an old house for the reading of a will, where they will exist "in sexual harmony" for three days.
It may require some patience on the part of some viewers, therefore, in order to get to the good stuff, such as it is - with oh so tacky bargain basement gore (A Sno ball stands in for an eyeball!), a dose of (rather tame) sex, a priceless supporting character in the form of Hal Borske's half wit hunchback Colin (whose idea of fine cuisine is amusing, to say the least) and a not particularly compelling "Who is the killer?" mystery, which some people may well figure out early on.
(It's worth noting, though, that one actor in this bunch had a pretty good career for himself after this: co-star Richard Romanus's next film was Scorsese's "Mean Streets"!) That doesn't mean, however, that they aren't entertaining in their own way.
Neil Flanagan, the star of Milligan's subsequent movie "Guru, the Mad Monk", is a riot as the aged, gnarly old lawyer.
In fact, one can even hear Milligan calling out directions in the background; when a character is set afire, he can be heard saying, "Get down!" Milligan himself supplied the costumes, having ran his own clothing store named Raffine.
The first gore film from Staten Island's own auteur..
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.
If you listen carefully during the murder scene you can even hear Andy Milligan's voice calling out "Cutting away, move!" to the actors!
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.
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.
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.
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..
Now, this is the type of wonderfully bad B-Movie I like - It's glorious.
Shaky camera work, terrible direction, the acting ranges from poor to average, and the special effects at times are laughable.
Neil Flanagan who played Lawyer Dobbs is obviously much younger than his portrayed character, though this didn't stop him from doing his best with the part, even though the makeup people only covered his face in white talcum powder and put a raggedy old scarf over his head, to make him ancient.What little budget they had for the film was spent on the few 1800's dresses.
However, when they get frisky, especially Vicky (played pretty decently by Anne Linden), then they take to wearing see-through nylon teddy's.The most endearing thing about the film is the feeling the actors being real-life friends who had an idea to make a movie.This isn't the best but it does have heart.
At least worth a viewing for all the lovers of bad movies.
I have seen patchworks by some very bad sleaze directors in my day, but talentless hack Andy Milligan takes the cake...
his movies make Ed Wood's films look like Alfred Hitchcock's.
A fine example as to why Andy Milligan is regarded as one of the worst director's of all time.
Three sisters travel to their late father's mansion where they are to spend three nights together with their respective husbands, before they are eligible to hear the will (read to them by a man wearing make-up to rival Ramses' from Blood Feast (1963)).
Also there are the two housekeepers, Martha (Veronica Radburn) and Ruth (Maggie Rogers), and Martha's deformed and dim-witted son Colin (Hal Borske), who we see murder two people at the beginning of the film.
After a night of pompous partying, one of the couples, Veronica (Eileen Hayes) and Bill (Don Williams), find a dead rabbit in their bed (which was previously seen being eaten alive by Colin) with a note attached reading 'blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit."Directed by exploitation and horror hack Andy Milligan, The Ghastly Ones (titled Blood Rites in the UK and placed on the Video Nasty list) is a fine example as to why he is considered one of the worst directors of all time, commonly placed in the same category of Edward D.
He began his career in small-time off- Broadway production during the 1950's, and his experience in that medium is evident here as, unlike most trashy horror films, the film is almost unbearably wordy, as the main characters have their mundane conversations between the brief moments of gore.
Saying that, I would much rather be listening to conversation than watching overlong stalking scenes or disco dancing which was so prevalent as running-time-filler in Grindhouse movies.However, the movie is a massive bore, and even with the slender running- time of 70 minutes, I checked how long there was remaining at least three or four times.
The awful, clunky camera-work, added to the fact that the film stock was so poor I could barely make out faces, gave me a headache.
When the moments of inevitable gore come, the film is given a little relief, as the scenes of pitch-fork impaling and disembowelment are so bad it does give the film a little charm.
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.
I saw this film purely based on the fact that it was on the DPP Video Nasty list, and while I'm glad I saw it because it's now 'another Video Nasty down' - on its own merits, Andy Milligan's film really isn't worth bothering with.
The film was obviously shot on an extremely low budget, and that has translated into the script; as Blood Rites works on an idea often seen in horror cinema, and doesn't do anything new with it.
For most of the film, nothing happens; and then when we finally get down to the scenes that justify the movie being banned, they're so amateurish and silly that they're impossible to take seriously on any level.
It's a very good thing that this movie doesn't have a very long running time as otherwise it could have been used as a particularly nasty method of torture.
Basically, Blood Rites isn't worth seeing and I personally can see no reason to recommend it.
This movie is terrible, but in a "so bad, it's good" kind of way.
In order to qualify for their inheritance, three sisters and their husbands must spend three nights of married bliss in their creepy ancestral home on Crenshaw Island, which is staffed by two old-maids and a mentally challenged (and dentally-challenged) hunchback; in time-honoured tradition, this cheesy set-up results in several gruesome murders.Staten Island splatter-movie pioneer Andy Milligan threw this hackneyed 16mm mess together in 1968 for a budget of around $10,000 and unsurprisingly the result is amateurish in the extreme, with dreadful hand-held camera-work, lousy acting, enthusiastic but rudimentary gore on a par with the worst work of fellow gore legend H.G. Lewis, and a thoroughly unconvincing Victorian setting (it might take place around the early 1900s, but the dialogue and hairstyles suggest otherwise).The period setting of the piece does however allow Milligan to fully indulge in his passion for dressmaking, and a lot more time and attention was clearly spent on his costumes than on either the script or effects.
During the film's many drawn out scenes of dull conversation, viewers get plenty of opportunity to admire Andy's prowess with needle and thread, but unless you're a seamstress into splatter, or a tailor who digs trash, then I doubt that this particular aspect of the film will be of much interest.In fact, save for the enjoyably bad death scenes, a spot of dead rabbit munching, and three pairs of boobies, there is virtually nothing to recommend The Ghastly Ones (unless, like me, you're determined to watch all of the official UK video nasties no matter how bad they are)..
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.
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.
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.
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.
Quite simply one of the worst horror films ever made.
Terribly directed film by the "legendary" Andy Milligan.
He was known for making no budget horror films with threadbare scripts, terrible actors (most of who never made another movie) and gore effects that are so bad you won't believe what you're seeing.
The films aren't bad enough to be good (like Ed Wood films) and the acting and gore is just laughable.Anyways this film is, as I said, terribly directed.
Most of the film is shot in tight closeups--probably to cover up the cheap sets.
Still this is a bad film with terrible direction, threadbare sets and gore that is so lousy it staggers the imagination.
An enjoyable gorefest from trash master Andy Milligan..
I remember reading Stephen King's book "Danse Macabre" about horror movies and this famous writer totally trashed this film.He called it "the work of morons with cameras" or something like that.I wouldn't go so far to call "The Ghastly Ones" a masterpiece,but I found it immensely enjoyable.Of course the acting is rather bad and the budget is extremely low,but the gore scenes are amazing.I loved especially the scene when one guy is butchered in the cellar and the amateurish gore frenzy during the climax.Though the production is rough from beginning to end you can sense a psychosis of sorts in the scenes of bloodletting.The hooded killer really rips into his victims after he's trapped them.The hunchback is an extremely funny and grotesque character.I laughed my ass off when he killed a rabbit.Check out this cheap and gory horror,if you like low-budget grindhouse fare..
The Ghastly Ones (1968) is a shocking film.Still banned in the United Kingdom to this day, the film remains a spectacular horror story.
Forgotten B-movie is worth a look.
Andy Milligan was a film maker out of Staten Island New York who made films of very low quality but managed to be entertainig anyway.
Ghastly Ones has a great premise about three sisters who go to a private island for the reading of their father's will.
The camera work and photography damage the film from living up to it's potential.
Still Ghastly Ones is worth a look!!.
Staten Island filmmaker Andy Milligan is well known in the horror community for being an even worse director than Ed Wood.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
Three sisters and their husbands convene on Crenshaw Island for the reading of the family will.
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.
Except for Hal Borske's sympathetic portrayal of an abused hunchback, the acting is comically bad.