‘The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan’ Documents Exploitation Trailblazer [Trailer]

The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan explores the bile, brutality, and intermittent brilliance of Andy Milligan, a pioneer of avant-garde theater, trailblazer of early Queer cinema, and one of the most divisive talents in exploitation history.

The documentary will premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on June 11.

Severin Films and Monocular Films have released the trailer and poster for the film, directed by Josh Johnson (Rewind This!) and Grayson Tyler Johnson.

Milligan’s low-budget productions — on which he served as writer, director, cinematographer, editor, set decorator, and costume designer and included such cult “classics” as The Ghastly Ones, Bloodthirsty Butchers, Guru The Mad Monk, Torture Dungeon, and The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! — were predominately 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.

Interview subjects include Gerald Jaccuzo, Hope Stansbury, Jimmy McDonough, Stephen Thrower, Sam Sherman, John Borske, Robert Berlin, Ken Lane, Bob Likola, and Alex DiSanto, along with excerpts from a recently discovered interview with Milligan himself — the only one known to exist.

Joining The Degenerate at Tribeca 2025 are the “re-premieres” of two lost Milligan films, newly remastered in 2K by Severin: 1967’s The Degenerates and 1968’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.