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Torture Dungeon (1970)

Dir: Andy Milligan

Andy Milligan magically transports us to Medieval Britain by way of Staten Island, New York. How does he do it!?

Wildly inappropriate, lilting, classical library music opens the film as the credits play over a rich satin background. Milligan seems to be spending more than the usual percentage of the budget on these credits.
Which would explain some of the cut-price sights to come.

The movie starts as it means to go on, with delightful pantomime costumes encasing camp medieval characters.
Lord Harkin is out picking flowers and, just as he bends down to cut the head off a rose, he has his own head chopped off (not too bad an effect for a Milligan flick either, with the victim's hand clasping at his stump the icing on the cake) by his treacherous companions.

At his funeral (in a field!) much high drama and ham acting takes place as our main protagonists are introduced.
The dead Harkin's Sister, Lady Jane (Patricia Dillon, in a school play style pointy hat) is heartbroken and we learn that her Brother and her were lovers (good old incest is always welcome where Milligan's plots are concerned) and that Lady Jane is pregnant!
Lady Jane knows that her Brother was murdered by his scheming half-Brother Norman, The Duke of Norwich, "I can't bare to look at him. It's all I can do to keep from spitting in his face".
The Duke (Gerry Jacuzzo, "Vapors"), feigns mild sorrow in front of Lady Jane, "What a pity. In the bloom of his manhood, like the roses he so dearly loved, cut down before his time. Oh well, ce la vie".

The Duke it turns out is last in line to the Throne due to his half-Brother status (and is also shooting blanks from his sperm gun) so he plans, with the other scheming nobles (headed by Neil "Guru the Mad Monk" Flanagan as 'Peter the Eye') to get the new King married off then, after he has impregnated the Queen , kill off all the other heirs so he can control the Throne of England when he moves in on the widowed Queen!
Or something like that, it is honestly hard to say where this plot is concerned!

Duke Norman is helped by that regular Milligan ingredient, t prancing, mad as a mad thing, hunchback. Here it's in the form of Ivan (Richard Mason), who is forced to help under threat of violence ("You wouldn't want anything to happen to that hump would you"?). That's when he's not leaping around singing very bad songs very badly.
Ivan is also the evil Duke's sexual plaything…a fact that leads to a truly weird 3 in a bed romp later on.

The new King, Alfred, (that most regular of Milligan regulars Hal Borske in a bad blonde wig) is a comic loon who crawls through the grass eating bugs and giggling a lot and as such is easily manipulated by the Duke.

The plotters choose a peasant girl named Heather (Susan Cassidy, "Seeds"), who is in love with William the witless serf (with whom she shares a naked romp in a stream), to be the Queen.
So it's hard luck for William as Heather is sold off to marry The King in a deal which, according to the mysterious 'One-Eyed Hag (the ever welcome Maggie Rogers) who hangs around the place, her Father had no choice but to accept.

So the evil scheme is set in motion, but of course evil schemes rarely go to plan….

What a plot! Milligan piles on the characters, piles on the wonderfully silly twists and piles on the craziness!
Like Milligan's self made costumes, the sets are just as marvellously amateur with very modern looking New York rooms being 'transformed' into Medieval chambers by few strategically draped drapes. It's so bad you can't help but warm to the whole enterprise.
But away from the visual (unintentional) fun, this is a movie that entertains in that true Milligan fashion… via its it's dialogue and characters.

There is just so much to enjoy here and the highlights are many, so let's crack on.
We have a wonderful sequence where Lady Jane shows how evil the Duke is to Heather by giving her a tour of the 'Torture Dungeon' itself.
As the dark, dank scene unfolds we are treated to cheap 'n' cheerful gore make-up as the unfortunates' hang, moaning, from the walls while the shocked Heather screams in horror. The 'One Eyed Hag' then arrives to add to the madness, literally shrieking her plans to get revenge on The Duke on behalf of the torture victims, "Damn him! Damn him! REVENGE! REVENGE! REVENGE! REVENGE"!!!
Truly deranged and truly wonderful, this whole sequence is one of the highlights in any Milligan movie.

Another highlight is a verbal scrap between the Dukes wife, Rosemary (Patricia Garvey), and a sexually charged Ivan (whom she finds in the Dukes bedroom) where, between slapping each other, they throw insults around:
Ivan: "I'd like to break you neck".
Rosemary: "Not if I break you first"
Ivan: "Is that a threat"?
Rosemary: "Take it anyway you like it"
Ivan: "I usually do"!
Rosemary: "You have a dirty filthy mind to go along with your dirty filthy body"!
Great stuff!

The best dialogue though is given to the Duke himself. Too many manic highlights of warped ego to quote here, but a few gems are:
"I live for pleasure, only second to power of course. And I'll try anything.
I'm not a homosexual, I'm not a heterosexual, I'm not a-sexual…I'm tri-sexual. I'll TRY anything for pleasure"!
And…
"Time? What is time? It cannot be controlled, it dominates us like lice on a mangy dog! We jump through its hoops like some Gypsy beggar travelling in a shoddy carnival! I hate time! Time is evil! Time is spent"!
The bizarre 'Wedding Night' sequence, which sees the Duke persuading a giggling Alfred and the reluctant Heather to strip off and get into bed together, gives us another Norman dialogue highpoint; "It's a shame, that a flower such as you must be plucked by an idiot".

Yet another gem of utter madness is Magda, a shrill 'Marriage Guidance Counsellor' (dressed in perhaps the most outrageously awful costume seen yet) who is sent in to coach Heather.
She rambles on non-stop without taking a breath, talks to her guide book, wildly dances around the room, and bursts into song without any warning!
She's a far more straight-ahead comic character than the usual, more unintentionally funny, characters we see in Andy's films but that does not stop her being a total joy or delivering one of the most enjoyable scenes Milligan ever filmed.

Random events are everywhere as well. Highlight of which is an hysterically overwrought (truly deranged in its cacophony of screams!) attack by a rubber snake in a greenhouse!
It comes from nowhere, shreds your eardrums and melts your brain. And don't we just love it!

Gore and violence wise we have a few fun moments scattered throughout the running time.
As well as the opening decapitation we have a guy nailed to a barn wall before a pitchfork is rammed into his neck and a knife stuck in his belly (blood spurts from his mouth before Milligan's camera does it's normal crazed 'swirl' towards the ground to cover up any FX that would be too hard to do).
We also have a stake is hammered into a chest, more pitchfork mayhem and a knifing.
Nothing special, but effective enough.

The movie can sometimes drags its heels pacing wise but not enough to cause any harm, the acting is enjoyably camp and crazed by the leads and truly awful (with mumbling dialogue delivery) by everyone else. But after a few Milligan movies all this is par for the course.

But as a whole "Torture Dungeon" delivers. And what it delivers are welcome smatterings of nudity, a bit of fun and cheesy gore, utterly wonderful dialogue, some enjoyably mad characters, hideously delightful costumes, crazed set-pieces, the most unrealistic recreation of Ye Olde England ever seen and many fantastically deranged ideas and overwrought plot twists worthy of a daytime Soap Opera.
All filmed and delivered of course in that unique Andy Milligan style.
It may not be a prime example of the more serious director Milligan could have been, but as far as his 'Trash' output goes it's a bright and shining jewel in his cinematic crown.