Seeds (1968) Andy Milligan

Claris Manning is an alcoholic invalid who tyrannizes her children when her youngest daughter, Carol, invites her family to spend a Christmas week together. They include Matthew, a crackpot clergyman; Michael, a misogynist businessman whom is sexually attracted to Carol, but abusive to his wife Susan; Margaret, the eldest daughter, whom is currently dating a local tough named Jonathan; and Buster, the youngest son from a military school whom brings over his gay lover Drew. Meanwhile, the two live-in servants, Peter and Jessica, plot to kill Mrs. Manning to gain her money for themselves. But an unseen killer soon begins killing off all the characters present for their debauched lifestyles they have led to since leaving the household.

SEEDS (aka SEEDS OF SIN) is an incredible slice of homemade dementia from mad genius Milligan, who is surely one of the pivotal filmmakers of all time. Here, he's like Andy Warhol slumming as Ken Russell, in a plotless black and white romp about a way-dysfunctional family of sexual freaks meeting for the holidays, giving it to each other, and themselves, before mysteriously dying off in the last five minutes. This may be the perfect Milligan film, for it has all the Milligan trademarks, superb and pure, and serves well as a textbook on Andy's gutteral style and nihilistic philosophy: raspy sound; casual nudity; harsh lighting; people yelling; nice old houses; spontaneous sex; hand-held camera; rampant obscenity; claustrophobic sets; close, odd camera cropping; overenthusiastic acting; minimal/peripheral plot; mucho anger and betrayal; infantile sexual politics; everyone hates everyone else; familiar classical or stock music, overemoting of florid, hackneyed dialogue; everyone is corrupt and nasty and calculating; an abrupt, ambiguous, violent, traumatic ending; characters have severe sexual phobias, obsessions and/or aberrations; sex is primarily used as punishment, or part of a power struggle; features "butch" women and "catty," fey men, with a token "ingenue"; the plot is highly moralistic (ie. money and sin are evil), almost religious in its strident misanthropy; features a "Warholian" family of mismatched, sexually-crippled grotesques; creates a decidedly tortured universe from which there is no escape but via death. And pain. This movie is all about PAIN. Andy Milligan is God, for all of these reasons, as well as his ability to stir them all into a hideously compelling Milligan Stew of lust, madness, confusion, rage, despair and torment (i.e. PAIN). There is no filmmaker like Andy Milligan. He is a true original.