Andrew Jackson Milligan Jr. (February 12, 1929 – June 3, 1991) was an American playwright, screenwriter, actor, and filmmaker, whose work includes 27 movies made between 1965 and 1988.
During the late 1950s, Milligan became involved in the nascent off-off-Broadway theater movement where he mounted productions of plays by Lord Dunsany and Jean Genet at the Caffe Cino, a small Greenwich Village coffeehouse that served as a hothouse for rising theater talent like Lanford Wilson, Tom Eyen and John Guare.
During this period, he operated and designed for a clothing boutique named Ad Lib and used his dressmaking skills to costume many theatrical productions.
The movie, set on one Friday evening in the St. Mark's Baths, a gay bathhouse for men, portrays an emotionally awkward and unconsummated meeting between two strangers.
Milligan's plays and movies explored topics of transgression and punishment, dysfunctional family relationships, repressed sexuality, homosexuality and physical deformity, and include such titles as Depraved!
(1967), The Naked Witch (1967), The Promiscuous Sex (1967), The Degenerates (1967), The Filthy Five (1969), Gutter Trash (1969), The Ghastly Ones (1968), Seeds of Sin (1968), Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1973), The Rats Are Coming!
On his return to New York, Milligan wrote and directed another medieval period piece titled Guru the Mad Monk, which was shot for the first time with a 35mm Arriflex camera and filmed entirely inside the St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Chelsea, Manhattan.
Milligan then directed three more independently produced horror movies in 1987 and 1988, which included Monstrosity, The Weirdo, and Surgikill as well as operated another theater and production company, called Troupe West, which ran until early 1990.
In his non-fiction book about the horror genre titled Danse Macabre, Stephen King gives a short assessment of one of Milligan's movies: "The Ghastly Ones is the work of morons with cameras."
Candy divorced him the following year, apparently due to neglect as he was more focused on his film making career, and she shortly thereafter returned to her North Carolina hometown.
Milligan had a reputation throughout his life of being demanding and bad-tempered, often provoking fights and arguments with actors, movie producers and financiers.
A non-smoker and non-drinker, Milligan was said to react badly and violently if those around him smoked cigarettes, drank alcoholic beverages or used any type of recreational drug.
Later in 1987, Malvasi was arrested, convicted and served five years in a federal prison for the attempted bombing of another abortion clinic in New York City.
"Bobby" Wayne Keeton (so-named for his gaunt physical build) (1960–1989), a Louisiana-born hustler who worked as a slate man and even appeared in a small part in Monstrosity, one of Milligan's later movies, which he filmed in Los Angeles in late 1987.
Later, unable to find any more financial backers, he eventually closed down his theater and production company, Troupe West, in early 1990 and then completely withdrew from the public light altogether.
In June 1990, Milligan confided in only two people the true nature of his health; friend and actor John Miranda and writer-biographer Jimmy McDonough, who then became his part-time caregivers for the next 12 months.