Andy Milligan & The Legacy of NYC Grindhouse Cinema

Recently I caught a movie on TCM Underground called, alternatively, Fleshpot of 42nd Street or The Girls of 42nd Street. Made in 1973, it was, to put it bluntly, one of the most amateurish and poorly made films I've ever seen. And yet it was fascinating. Directed by a guy I'd never heard of before named Andy Milligan, it was a leading example and artifact of early 1970s NYC "grindhouse cinema." 

Simply put, grindhouse movies were exploitation movies -- lots of horror, gore, violence, sex, nudity, and sheer nastiness. They were cheap to make and cheap to see, playing mostly in rundown theaters in rundown neighborhoods (like the old Times Square), and they would screen all day and night for the bored, lonely, horny and otherwise dissapossed people inclined to see them. In 2007, a loving homage to these movies was produced called, no surprise, Grindhouse, featuring two movies directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino that were short, shlocky, and violent. Later on a series of movies based on a character called Machete were produced, introducing grindhouse movies to a 21st century audience.

But back to 1973.

At the time one of the biggest gindhouse directors was a guy named Andy Milligan and Fleshpot of 42nd Street is probably his most famous movie. The plot concerns a woman named Dusty, a "working girl", who sleeps with, then steal from, various men. Her partner in crime is a drag queen named Candy who helps set her up with the clients she scams. But along the way Dusty meets a charming fellow named Bob in a Manhattan bar who then takes her to his home on Staten Island where he treats her nicely. Dusty starts to fall in love with him and begins to think about another, better life that might be possible with him -- leaving the streets, crime, and hustle behind once and for all. But then ... well, you'll have to watch it to find out.

Dusty is played by a woman named Laura Cannon who was an adult star at the time but here tries to actually act -- badly, but she holds your attention through the film. Bob is played by the notorious Harry Reems and he's actually a good actor. Most of the other actors are people who probably never acted before and since, and it shows -- the acting in this movies, much like the camera work, is uniformly bad. And yet ... the movie works. It's a heart-wrenching story. This movie affects you.

And Ms. Cannon is naked quite a lot in the flick.   

But the real star of Fleshpot of 42nd Street is Andy Milligan. He was probably more interesting that any of the characters in his movies. He was basically an early 1970s NYC Ed Wood, a bad director who people remember. Originally from Minnesota, he migrated to NYC after serving in the army, working on off-Broadway shows and hanging out in the Village. He began making movies in the 1960s, eventually moving to a house in St. George, Staten Island that became his cinematic headquarters and the location 

for many of his films (like this one). Eventually he migrated to LA and, a gay man, died of AIDS in 1991. He apparently suffered from bi-polar disorder, had drug and alchohol problems, could be insufferable and difficult, and yet was beloved by many. Like Mozart, he would up in a pauper's grave. And yet, here we are, 30 years after his death, and his movies are being shown on TV, folks like yours truly are writing about him, and his influence, and the influence of grindhouse cinema, has only blossomed since then. 

Andy Milligan was the true King of Grindhouse Cinema in early 1970s NYC, who work, like the man, was reviled and revered, master of a time and place and genre of film long gone but whose legacy endures to this day.