The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan

Directed by Josh Johnson

He was a pioneer of avant-garde theater, trailblazer of early Queer cinema, and remains one of the most divisive talents in exploitation/horror history. But what is the truth behind Andy Milligan and his “depraved, desperate and damned” (Time Magazine) legacy? Filmmakers Josh Johnson and Grayson Johnson explore the bile, brutality and intermittent brilliance of “The Fassbinder of 42nd Street” (Artforum). Milligan’s low-budget productions – on which he served as writer, director, cinematographer, editor, set decorator and costume designer – were predominately period melodramas fueled themes of sadism, incest and misogyny bathed in bottom-of-the-barrel gore effects and forever consigned to grindhouse purgatory. Yet via revealing interviews with a gallery of Milligan’s performers, enablers, co-conspirators and his biographer 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.