Seeds_720p(480P)

source: Seeds

Unlikeable characters. Seems like that's the one thing many people nowadays just can't tolerate in movies. Well, if you're the kind that prefers their characters to be warm, fuzzy and lovable, then stay right the hell away from this flick. In fact, you may as well just stop reading now. There's nothing you'll enjoy in this movie. Trust me. For here we have an early foray into the seriously unpleasant world of Andy Milligan. A world totally devoid of any kind of positivity towards or from the human race. Of all the holidays, Christmas might be the one that most revolves around family. Seeds of Sin begins with young wackjob Carol gathering the family together at Mother's house for Christmas lunch. Whilst most families spend this occasion catching up, getting plastered and eating til they can't move, this particular dysfunctional family express their feelings through lies, emotional blackmail and abuse, both verbal and physical. Not to mention that one of them is going around trimming the family tree via electrocution, poison, acid to the face and other atypical Christmas activities. This mob are all spiteful, selfish creatures who utterly despise each other, even the married couples. The only two who show any fondness at all are the brother and sister who've been having sex since they were teens. Worst of all is the family matriarch, a wheelchair bound lush who constantly guzzles booze, spews bile at the fruit of her loins and breaks stuff in tantrums. Her vile behaviour reaches its pinnacle when she taunts her youngest son about his failed suicide attempt, encouraging him to try harder next time. Almost certainly based on Milligan's own mother, she's one of the most repulsive characters you'll ever see. No doubt a little taken aback by Milligan's relentless negativity, the producers of the film decided to splice in softcore sex scenes at inappropriate times. Fortunately it's done quite seamlessly. You can barely notice the change in film quality (the * scenes are actually of higher quality than the film itself). Nor will you notice that the * involves new actors with little resemblance to their non-* counterparts. And it's quite difficult to fault the way the movie's dramatic classical score is often cut off MID-NOTE and replaced with stereotypical porno music, complete with groovy bass line and even a touch of wah-wah. Yep, the producers had total respect for Milligan's dark vision. (/sarcasm) Taken as a whole, this all adds up to quite a bizarro oddity from an era and niche world of filmmaking that we'll never see again. However, if you disregard the crappy * scenes, you have possibly the ultimate anti-Christmas movie; a vicious glob of hate from one of cinema's most misanthropic miserablists. If you can handle Z-grade movies with a budget in the hundreds of dollars, then maybe give it a shot. Just don't expect to like anyone in it.

A HEAVILY dysfunctional family gets together for the holidays. This leads to multiple murders (all badly done) and quite a few sex inserts that feature none of the original cast! This was originally shot as a straight-forward exploitation film with little skin. The producers saw it and decided to change it. They cut out key scenes that explained the plot, inserted some seriously terrible music that occasionally drowns out the actors dialogue, inserted some soft core sex scenes (seemingly at random) with two people who aren't even in the movie! They turned what MIGHT have been an OK movie into an incomprehensible mess. Still the script (or what's left of it) isn't bad, the acting is pretty good (even though some actors REALLY chew the scenery) and a lot of dramatic sequences really work. However the sex scenes the producers inserted pop up all over the place and go on for up to 5 minutes! The two actors (a guy and a girl) ARE attractive and have nice bodies so they're not a chore the watch...but their scenes totally destroy the flow of the story. So what's left is what might have been a pretty good film destroyed by editing and inserting pointless sex. A 3.

Andy Milligan co-wrote, directed, shot, and did the costumes for this grimly effective exploitation feature. It stars Maggie Rogers as Claris Manning, a vile and hateful bitch if ever there was one. Now her grown-up children are all putrid and hateful in their own ways, and she's convinced (probably not incorrectly) that they're waiting and waiting for her to drop dead so her fortune will become available to them. The old lady's daughter Carol (Candy Hammond, whom Milligan married during filming) invites the ugly brood over for a Christmas dinner, and things turn ugly in more ways than one. Some of the family members start dying off in various ways. "Seeds" is one of those trash flicks that makes up for in spirit what it may lack in technical polish. It may indeed be "rough around the edges", but Milligan and his co-writer John Borske concocted a wonderfully sordid story and wonderfully sordid characters here. It's all compelling in a really twisted way, especially since incest is a theme that recurs throughout. And because so many of the characters are despicable (including house staff that have their own scheme in the works), we're only too happy to see these people bumped off. There isn't that much in the way of graphic violence, but exploitation devotees will be delighted to note the abundant nudity and sex. The lack of a big budget helps to create a truly depraved and, well, seedy atmosphere. There are very few settings used, with most of the action confined to the house. The dialogue is often very amusing, and better than one might expect, and the same goes for the performances. Rogers, in particular, is memorably hideous as one of the nastiest mothers in screen history. As some people likely already know, this is also available in an alternate cut, "Seeds of Sin", which trims out a lot of Milligans' original material and adds new sex scenes with different actors, in an attempt to increase the pictures' possible revenue. This could make for interesting alternative Christmas time viewing for more adventuresome movie lovers. Eight out of 10.

Dysfunctional family goes home for the holidays and murder and mayhem result. Violent sexy Milligan at his most home made. Little better than a home movie (as much of Milligans films are) this is a trip into depravity 1960's style. Notable for the copious nudity and sex this film is neither sexy nor gruesome, playing now more as quaint.(though decidedly r rated). The film suffers from its uneven cast and from the cheapness of the production.(No one was ever sure where the money went on his movies since he was always broke). Its a bad bad movie thats not worth seeing except as a Milligan completeist or because its got some good looking people fooling around.

This is another cheapo by Andy Milligan, but it is actually a fair story about a highly dysfunctional family. It was certainly made for the Grindhouse circuit, as the actual story has sex scenes inserted instead of commercials. Don't get me wrong, this is high class acting, but it certainly was better than The Ghastly Ones in that regard. The stay-with-mom daughter invites all of her siblings home for the holidays. This causes mom to go ballistic, as she hates all of them. It's not enough to cause the old biddy to have a heart attack, so she is there throughout the film yelling and screaming at her children. They certainly are the weirdest bunch I have ever scene - one is 17 and gets kicked out of every school mom sends him two; one married a woman who lied about a pregnancy to get out of the house, and away from his sister, who was having regular sex with him; one just wanted love and married the first man who would have rough sex with her - a real happy family. But someone is killing them off, one by one, in between the almost hard core sex scenes. Yes, I actually fast forwarded through the sex to get the story. It wasn't bad if you can stand the 16mm camera-work and the horrid music played during the sex. I fast forwarded just so I would have to listen to it.

Originally released as Seeds of Sin with unconnected sex scenes inside the film, Andy Milligan succeeds at something that only Juan López Moctezuma can come close to: non-stop screaming. Everybody in this movie hates themselves, hates one another and hates anyone that comes in between one another. Even the camera hates everyone, swirling out of the way to avoid whatever is happening on screen at times. Christmas has brought the Manning family together one last time and someone is killing them one by one, but it feels like a mercy killing as originally fake smiles give way to teeth bared and always the yelling, always the anger, always the screaming. Peter and Jessica, the live-in help, also want to kill mom. Maggie Rogers is Claris the mother, confined to a wheelchair, drinking herself to death, burning the money instead of heating her house, lording over a family that includes son Michael and daughter Carol forever sexually intertwined even when he's abusing his wife Susan, sex-obsessed priest son Matthew, daughter Margaret who is dating a tough guy and Buster, the military school brat who is obsessed with the Third Reich and his lover Drew while also being abused by Matthew. Everyone in this movie has an issue, several of them more than one, and they all drag one another into a festering abyss of tortured life and painful death. Acid to the face, knife to the heart, electrocuted in the bathtub. I can't even imagine what this film's distributors must have thought when they got it and wondered, "Who wants to endure this?" Me! That's who. Instead, they stuffed it with faceless people having anonymous sex as if that would erase the psychological barrage that you just witnessed. I can't imagine anyone wanting to get down after watching this and if they are, they just might eat your head after they're done with you. A holiday movie.

**Possible Spoilers** A recently re-discovered black and white murder melodrama, shot in the same Staten Island house where THE GHASTLY ONES was made (I recognized the tacky wallpaper) and featuring it's star, Maggie Rogers. This time she plays an alcoholic old biddy whose twisted daughter (Candy Hammond) holds a family reunion without her permission. Come to think of it, I wouldn't want a family like this around either; they're the worst bunch of liars, thieves, arsonists, psychos, satyrs, nymphos and all-around perverts ever congregated under one roof. Various siblings lust for each other, even as they despise each other. One of them is also a killer and various victims are electrocuted, hacked, stabbed and strangled. One woman has her face eaten away by acid (no home should be without it) in one of Andy's goriest scenes ever. A victim in a wheelchair is rolled down a staircase–a startling scene, but Richard Widmark did it better in KISS OF DEATH. Milligan's sordid story on it's own should have been enough to please sleaze-hounds but it's prefaced and punctuated by near-hardcore sex scenes -- 21 minutes worth altogether--featuring actors not related to anything else in the picture. These inserts feature primitive Sixties "mod" music rather than Milligan's peculiar library music, are garishly lit and were obviously shot by someone else. They destroy whatever sense SEEDS OF SIN might have had and their only purpose, other than padding out this feature, is to demonstrate why the fast-forward button was invented. Milligan regular Neil Flanagan (GURU THE MAD MONK!) appeared in trailers to this film but not the padded, re-edited version just discovered by Something Weird Video. While I'm always grateful when one of Milligan's rarities surfaces, I would have liked to have seen this picture as he intended it. Previews for GURU THE MAD MONK, LOVE HUNGER and other obscurities appear at the end of the tape. There's even a trailer for SEEDS OF SIN, showing scenes that were cut out of the re-edited print. Talk about adding insult to injury..

If you really want to see what Milligan intended, skip the main film. It is cluttered with boring softcore inserts that are tedious. Seeds is an interesting film about a dysfunction family gathered for Christmas as the home of an almost insane Matriarch (Maggie Rogers) One of the family is killing off the family. It's a crude but fascinating look at palpable hate and loathing. There is not one character who is a positive person the viewer can like. One character, Carol, is interestingly played by Candy Hammond, who was briefly married to Milligan. As mentioned, the producers, concerned the film was too dark and not sexy enough, all true, inserted the straight, boring softcore stuff. It doesn't come close to matching the characters. As mentioned, go to extras and watch the Milligan print; you'll see a unique film that's not for all tastes but is a great sampling of Milligan's art.