Video Kart comes through again with another double-decker dungheap from the late, great (well, the late, anyway) Andy Milligan, an art-house-auteur-turned-sleaze-merchant-turned-grindhouse-horror-hack responsible for cinematic abominations on a level only previously achieved by the likes of Ed Wood and Larry Buchanan. Andy's late '70s horror oeuvre, financed (if you want to call it that) by producer William Mishkin, can best be described as... well, consistent. More to the point: if campy horror movies are the cinematic equivalent of junk food, then watching a Milligan flick is comparable to eating an entire case of wax lips.

This pack of Milligan munchies begins with the second of the director's long string of horror-themed period potboilers set in Victorian England. Although the first two, THE GHASTLY ONES and TORTURE DUNGEON, were lensed in Andy's crumbling Staten Island mansion, BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS was the first to be actually shot in Old Blighty - though you'd never know it, considering nearly every scene is filmed indoors in close quarters. As this is sort of based on the story of Sweeney Todd, the infamous "Demon Barber of Fleet Street," we are treated to a very British kind of murder tale. For Andy, that means that nearly every character uses the words "fortnight" and "sixpence" in a sentence. Otherwise, our story could be back on Staten, or in Pigfuck, Tennessee, for all the difference it makes.

Sweeney Todd (John Miranda, sporting scary velcro muttonchops), legendary barber-cum-serial-killer known for slashing the throats of hundreds of customers, supplements his income by plundering the pockets of his victims and selling their corpses to local baker Maggie Lovett (Jane Helay) as filling for her yummy meat pies. In his spare time, Sweeney spends his ill-gotten gains by whoring his way through half of London, beats his wife, jeopardizes the romance between Maggie's pretty employee and her new beau, wears puffy shirts, and generally acts the fool. It's a perfect recipe for a sleazy sex-and-gore epic, complete with lots of spurting arteries, hacked limbs and eyebrow-arching sadism.

Milligan does manage to depict all of the above, but it's the endless, rambling talking-head scenes that truly horrify the viewer with their high-school-drama histrionics. Nearly every scene is framed as a two-shot, with the performers berating, belittling and badgering each other for reasons incidental to the main story. The whole affair seems strangely stagebound, no doubt reflecting Milligan's early days as a frustrated director of eccentric, loud and often violent off-Broadway plays. Goofy characters come and go, often with little or no explanation: the most amusing of these is the appearance of hideous drag queen "Corky," who suddenly inserts him/herself into an argument between a slutty dance-hall girl and her manager, then disappears. Sad, really - I would have enjoyed a Corky-themed sequel.

This and plenty more "what the fuck was that?" moments are the signature of many a Milligan monsterwork, and are even more prevalent in THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! Which falls just short of the greatest cheesy horror title in history - first prize going to Ray Dennis Steckler's THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES. (Sorry, Andy.) Set in the same location and time period, THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! (hereafter abbreviated TRAC!TWAH!) actually makes use of its English locales (exterior shots... who knew?), particularly the rural mansion that serves as the setting for the gothic goings-on - despite the fact that just about any setting would have served just as well... or as badly, depending on your point of view.

Anyhow, such as it is, the main plot is oddly straightforward for a Milligan show, centering on the oddball Papa Mooney and his creepy progeny - a sort of cross between Poe's Usher clan and the Addams family - all of whom harbor a dark secret... something to do with the full moon and excessive body hair. Ah yes, the Swiftian subtlety of a werewolf family named "Mooney" is truly awe-inspiring. That said, TRAC!TWAH! is a surprisingly slick affair compared to BUTCHERS, with better photography, slightly smoother editing, and much more colorful characters, particularly spooky chick Hope Stansbury as Monica, the looniest Mooney, whose psychosis probably has less to do with being a werewolf than being a vessel for Milligan's sadistic tendencies. In between S&M-flavored sessions of horse-whipping and candle-waxing her feral brother, Monica sexually teases and murders a feeble-minded local girl. But the peak of Monica's psychosis seems directed toward her half-sister Diana, who dares to bring a relatively normal outsider into the clan in the form of her new husband Gerald. Tepid in-fighting continues as Papa Mooney's health continues to decline, leading to a loopy conclusion in which nearly everyone staggers around in rubber fangs and spirit-gummed yak hair while a fog machine works overtime.

Wait a minute... isn't this also supposed to be a rat movie? Well, it wasn't supposed to be at first. Milligan originally undertook the production as an all-wolf affair titled CURSE OF THE BLUE MOON, but after Mishkin spied the returns for rat-rage flicks WILLARD and BEN, he made Milligan shoot additional footage in which Monica buys a pack of flesh-eating rodents from a weird, disfigured old man. (She even names two of them "Ben" and "Willard!" Cheeky bitch!) Although this new wrinkle seems to suggest a means for the spooky chick to murder her half-sister, these scenes ultimately lead nowhere, other than to provide an excuse for additional sleaze - including the onscreen torture and murder of a very real rat, which is made all the more unfortunate by serving no useful purpose, as the rat subplot is promptly dropped.

As with its companion feature, TRAC!TWAH! employs all the charming Milligan mainstays: endless tacky library music, cuts in odd places, that seldom serves the action; shaky hand-held camera; under-lit sets; fuzzy dialogue recording; and of course, endless scenes of people arguing, insulting and being generally shitty to each other for no apparent reason other than to fill up screen time.

Also a great source of entertainment on any Milligan production are the often-maligned historical anachronisms. These have been dismissed by some as being brought on by his financial limitations - but if that's true, then why the hell does he keep doing period pieces for a buck forty-nine? Anyway, it's damn funny to see '70s hairstyles and the odd cheap wig combined with costumes that don't even come within 30 years of Victorian English styles (Milligan did the costume design under the poofy pseudonym "Raffine"), as well as the automatic pistol Diana buys from a doddering old gunsmith (played by Milligan himself)! It's all part of the threadbare charm, I guess. Just keep telling yourself that.

As for Video Kart's presentation: given that this is nowhere close to the original negative, the digitally remastered print is about as good as it's going to look. Considering the limitations of 16mm stock in the early '70s (Mishkin had the prints blown up to 35mm) and the fact that Milligan's meager budgets often forced him to use short ends and mismatched stock scraps, both films are fairly clean. BUTCHERS fares worse than TRAC!TWAH! in terms of scratches and dirt, not to mention color levels, and the audio is particularly crappy - you can hear the track warbling in and out of sync at times - although I'll give Video Kart the benefit of the doubt, considering the limitations of the source material. Both films are full-frame, but likely little or no frame info has been lost, due to their 16mm origins. There's the normal amount of grain typical of a blown-up 16mm print, but this actually adds to the grindhouse charm.

Somewhat less charming, however, is Video Kart's odd choice of the censored versions of the original theatrical prints. Considering they've proudly touted the package as "Outrageously Gory," there is practically no gore on display whatsoever, even on the R-rated BUTCHERS. Though the early shot of Sweeney lopping off a customer's hand is mostly intact, none of the film's notoriously gory set-pieces are anywhere in sight, including the discovery of a nipple in a meat pie, or the cleaver-to-the-head murder featured on the cover art! The PG-rated TRAC!TWAH! fares a little better, though the murder of Monica's gal-pal is completely cut. Bizarrely, the animal cruelty scene is left intact. What the hell is up with that?

Nominal extras include trailers for these and other Video Kart treats, as well as a nearly impossible-to-read text essay about Milligan and Mishkin. It seems to be fairly interesting, but trying to read it made my head hurt.

Well, I can't say I'm a better person for subjecting myself to two stinky scoops of Milligan mayhem, but there's a certain train-wreck aspect to watching what looks for all the world like home movies made by a homicidal Bedlam inmate with a time machine and a baggie of smack. The real tragedy here is that without the key sex and gore so proudly trumpeted by the lurid ad campaign, it's kind of like riding a broken roller coaster that just rolls forward a few feet and then stops. Not really my idea of a good time.