#andy milligan

Nightbirds (Andy Milligan, 1970)

The Body Beneath (1970) | Dir. Andy Milligan

Attention, Londoners! Run don’t walk to Dalston’s Rio Cinema this Thursday [26 March] when their Pink Palace film club presents Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1972) by maverick outsider gutter auteur Andy Milligan (1929 - 1991). (Tagline: “Wilder than you can imagine! Explicit beyond belief! Meet them all! Hustlers and pimps! Pushers and S&M freaks! Straight guys and girls looking for thrills and one-night stands!”). It’s fun to imagine the “dirty mac brigade” settling into their seats at some fleapit grindhouse cinema in the early seventies hoping to watch some raunchy sexploitation – and instead being confronted by this grimly downbeat, profoundly unerotic character study about survival prostitution.  There’s even mournful flute music on the soundtrack for maximum erection repellent. Think of Fleshpot as a grubby genital warts-and-all slice of life! A quick synopsis: Pretty brunette Dusty Cole (Laura Cannon) is a street-smart and calculating sex worker barely eking out a hardscrabble existence in New York’s Times Square. Her hard-bitten demeanour begins to melt after a fluke encounter with handsome, sensitive and earnest young Wall Street banker Bob Walters (Harry Reems of Deep Throat notoriety sans his trademark moustache). Can Dusty embrace the straight life and find true love and happiness in Staten Island with Bob? Spoiler alert: anyone familiar with Milligan’s pessimistic oeuvre will already know the answer is a resounding NO! Both Cannon and Reems are exceptionally good, but they’re arguably overshadowed by Neil Flanagan (pictured, billed as “Lynn Flanagan”) as Dusty’s sassy aging drag queen roommate and fellow working girl Cherry Lane. Whether singing “Some Day My Prince Will Come” while painting her nails or lamenting, “It’s getting so you can’t give a blowjob on Times Square without some cop looking over your shoulder”, Flanagan (and his ratty blonde wig) steals every scene. To buy tickets, go here.

Seeds (1968) // dir. Andy Milligan

VAPORS (1965) dir. Andy Milligan Mr. Jaffee is a curious but closeted married man, who decides to take a walk on the wild side one night over to the local bath house located in Times Square, New York. When he is a approached by Thomas, a swinging regular who takes an interest in Mr. Jaffe as the new face “on the scene”, a deep discussion about marriage, connection and loss begins to unexpectedly unfold. The two become emotionally intimate in a very short time, with no sexual contact of any sort, while everyone around them are screwing like rabbits. (link in title)

From Andy Milligan's Bloodthirsty Butchers, 1970.

House of Seven Belles (Andy Milligan, 1979) // Yellowjackets S02E01 “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” (Daisy von Scherler Mayer, 2023), series created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson // Den stygge stesøsteren aka The Ugly Stepsister (Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt, 2025)