Severin Films and Monocular Films have today released the first trailer for The Degenerate: The Life & Films of Andy Milligan, a comprehensive documentary following the career of cult filmmaker Andy Milligan and the impact his work had on queer genre cinema.
Directed by Josh Johnson and Grayson Tyler Johnson, The Degenerate is set to premiere at Tribeca Film Festival on June 11 alongside restorations of Milligan’s The Degenerates and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me!
Among the interviewees featured in The Degenerate are Gerald Jaccuzo, Hope Stansbury, Jimmy McDonough, Stephen Thrower, Sam Sherman, John Borske, Robert Berlin, Ken Lane, Bob Likola and Alex DiSanto. The doc also includes excerpts from a recently discovered interview with Milligan, which is thought to be the only one that exists.
An official press release reveals more:
Milligan’s low-budget productions — on which he served as writer, director, cinematographer, editor, set decorator, and costume designer and included such ‘classics’ as ‘The Ghastly Ones,’ ‘Bloodthirsty Butchers,’ ‘Guru the Mad Monk,’ ‘Torture Dungeon’ and ‘The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!’ — were predominantly period melodramas fueled by themes of sadism, incest, and misogyny bathed in bottom-of-the-barrel gore effects, filmed on Staten Island (and for a brief period, London) and forever consigned to grindhouse purgatory. Yet via revealing interviews with a gallery of Milligan’s performers, enablers, co-conspirators, and his biographer — along with copious clips from his deranged oeuvre — a portrait emerges of a gutter auteur who battled and antagonized his own demons to become one of the most transgressive outsider artists of the 20th century.”
Check out the new trailer and poster for The Degenerate: The Life & Films of Andy Milligan below:
