Andy Milligan

Andy Milligan (January 31, 1929 – June 3, 1991) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director whose work includes 27 films made between 1963 and 1991. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Milligan died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 62.

Self-taught as a filmmaker and responsible for much of the creative activity on his films (including cinematography and costume design), Milligan might best be described as an outsider artist. Milligan's films often dwell on the topics of transgression and punishment, familial relationships, repressed sexuality, and physical deformity and include such titles as Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1973), The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here! (1973), Guru, the Mad Monk (1970), Gutter Trash (1969), The Ghastly Ones (1968), Depraved! (1967), and The Naked Witch (1964). Most of Milligan's early works are considered lost films.

In the 1960s, Milligan became involved in off-off-Broadway theatre, mounting productions of plays by Lord Dunsany and Jean Genet at the Caffe Cino. During the same period, he also operated and designed for a clothing boutique called Ad Lib. He began making films after the collapse of Caffe Cino and Ad Lib. His first film was the short entitled Vapors (1963), set in a gay bathhouse and based on a script by Hope Stansbury. The film, shot in black and white 16 millimeter, portrays the emotionally awkward, intimate moments leading up to a sexual encounter between two strangers. One of the actors appears in brief, full-frontal nudity, but that particular shot was later censored. Milligan was later employed by producers of exploitation films, and directed soft-core erotic and horror pictures.