Three sisters must spend three nights on an eerie island to inherit their father's fortune. A deformed man leads them to the estate where horrors await.
Similar titles
Reviews
Waste of Money.
Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
People who totally dig micro budget see-it-to-believe-how-bad-it-is schlock will probably enjoy Andy Milligan's "The Ghastly Ones". Supposedly a period piece, it brings together three couples in an old house for the reading of a will, where they will exist "in sexual harmony" for three days. Unfortunately, a brutal psycho has other ideas - first "marking" them by painting X's in blood, and then offing them. While technically quite a short movie (running approximately 72 minutes), it feels longer than it is, with a lot of talk. It may require some patience on the part of some viewers, therefore, in order to get to the good stuff, such as it is - with oh so tacky bargain basement gore (A Sno ball stands in for an eyeball!), a dose of (rather tame) sex, a priceless supporting character in the form of Hal Borske's half wit hunchback Colin (whose idea of fine cuisine is amusing, to say the least) and a not particularly compelling "Who is the killer?" mystery, which some people may well figure out early on. The characters are insipid and inspire appropriately insipid performances. (It's worth noting, though, that one actor in this bunch had a pretty good career for himself after this: co-star Richard Romanus's next film was Scorsese's "Mean Streets"!) That doesn't mean, however, that they aren't entertaining in their own way. Neil Flanagan, the star of Milligan's subsequent movie "Guru, the Mad Monk", is a riot as the aged, gnarly old lawyer. The movie itself is likewise inept enough to prove itself a real hoot. In fact, one can even hear Milligan calling out directions in the background; when a character is set afire, he can be heard saying, "Get down!" Milligan himself supplied the costumes, having ran his own clothing store named Raffine. Even while somewhat sluggish, this movie does deliver some good entertainment for bad movie buffs and some real laugh out loud moments. Five out of 10.
In order to qualify for their inheritance, three sisters and their husbands must spend three nights of married bliss in their creepy ancestral home on Crenshaw Island, which is staffed by two old-maids and a mentally challenged (and dentally-challenged) hunchback; in time-honoured tradition, this cheesy set-up results in several gruesome murders.Staten Island splatter-movie pioneer Andy Milligan threw this hackneyed 16mm mess together in 1968 for a budget of around $10,000 and unsurprisingly the result is amateurish in the extreme, with dreadful hand-held camera-work, lousy acting, enthusiastic but rudimentary gore on a par with the worst work of fellow gore legend H.G. Lewis, and a thoroughly unconvincing Victorian setting (it might take place around the early 1900s, but the dialogue and hairstyles suggest otherwise).The period setting of the piece does however allow Milligan to fully indulge in his passion for dressmaking, and a lot more time and attention was clearly spent on his costumes than on either the script or effects. During the film's many drawn out scenes of dull conversation, viewers get plenty of opportunity to admire Andy's prowess with needle and thread, but unless you're a seamstress into splatter, or a tailor who digs trash, then I doubt that this particular aspect of the film will be of much interest.In fact, save for the enjoyably bad death scenes, a spot of dead rabbit munching, and three pairs of boobies, there is virtually nothing to recommend The Ghastly Ones (unless, like me, you're determined to watch all of the official UK video nasties no matter how bad they are).
Well well, at last a view of this underrated flick. But you can't find a good copy of it, terrible copy full with green drops, the editing isn't syncronized, the sound do has sometimes that terrible hiss and sometimes you even can hear the camera recording. Overall it's too dark, a waist of time you should say but it isn't. It's a bit slow, the first half part of the movie it's all talking and making love to each other. It is even still weird that the girls in movies from the 60's never wear any bra's. When they enter the sleeping room it's full glory. Anyway, banned in the UK since 84 and still on the video nasties list. The reason is simple, it's gory for their time being. It really has some nasty dismemberement's and it's creepy in some way due the fact that it is filmed handycam way. So every shot the image is moving, things they do these days with the steadycam. The Ghastly Ones could have been better if the quality of the film was better but still better then other films of the time like Schoolgirls In Chains.
Andy Milligan was a film maker out of Staten Island New York who made films of very low quality but managed to be entertainig anyway. Ghastly Ones has a great premise about three sisters who go to a private island for the reading of their father's will. Soon the sisters and their husbands begin getting brutally murdered! IS the killer the weird mute hunchback brother of the housekeeper?? Or is it someone else??? The script is actually a lot of fun and so are the murders. The camera work and photography damage the film from living up to it's potential. The acting and story are above average and I liked the ending a lot. The opening murder has nothing to do with the rest of the film either. Still Ghastly Ones is worth a look!!