Back to basics.
Torture Dungeon is, like many of Andy Milligan's movies, best described as a "stew of images." I have now seen a good handful of his horror films (The Ghastly Ones, Seeds of Sin, Bloodthirsty Butchers, The Man With Two Heads, Blood, and possibly Guru the Mad Monk), and can confirm that there are patterns and shared themes between them. Ennui, depression, desperation, rage--incest--hatred of the mentally or physically deformed. The susceptibility of the average person to mental illness. And, of course, England-set period pieces heavily inspired by the Gothic tradition. Better scribes than I have written of Andy Milligan's personal history, and so I will briefly say that he grew up a product of abuse and hatred. Jimmy McDonough's The Ghastly One tells the full tale. Each of Milligan's films contains a bizarre melodrama that shows people at the end of several ropes, so hateful that any of them could be responsible for the gory fates of their fellows. Oftentimes a bunch of characters, usually an inbred, degenerate rich family far enough back in the English past so as to have Long Island accents, locked in a house with a murderer. Sure enough, Torture Dungeon grows along similar lines, but it is probably the sleaziest iteration of the formula I've seen yet. Milligan jumps into some deep shit here, and it's a tough sit. There's no reason for me to choose it as the first Milligan flick for the site, but it's what I've done anyway. Down, down, we must go...
In medieval England a bunch of gaudy-dressed inbred aristocrats plot to seize control of the poor kingdom. Their plan involves gutting people with pitchforks and marrying a girl to the mentally handicapped member of the family. There is a long, long "seduction" sequence whereby this girl is meant to conceive the heir of said member, and while it's ableist as fuck, it still sets off more than a few fine points of my rape trigger. This leads quickly into a long scene where two characters recant their backstories to each other, which both involve rape and eating garbage. Jesus. Despite Milligan's own homosexuality, the movies indulge in a fair share of homophobia, though it does contain the ever-infamous howler: "I'm not homosexual, I'm not bisexual, I'm not asexual. I'm trisexual. Yes...I will TRY anything for pleasure!" Anyway, you'll lose track of the characters pretty hurriedly, and there's a "you're secretly a princess" twist that's lamer than the lousiest of penny dreadfuls. Mercifully, your attention will have been held this whole way, just to see how much sleazier it can get.
If you were to trim out scenes that were clearly Andy Milligan indulging himself and his personal troubles, this movie would only be as long as Guru the Mad Monk, which clocks in at 55 minutes on my copy. But despite slight bloating, there's enough gruesomeness to satisfy anyone, and perhaps even overwhelm 'em a little. The Ghastly Ones and Seeds of Sin suddenly seem mild, and indeed, it seems as if age slowly Andy down a bit, as Bloodthirsty Butchers and Blood weren't nearly this...unfettered. Simply put, Torture Dungeon is a passionate movie. It has camp elements due to people insisting on overacting the fuck out of literally everything but camp in a Gothic setting can be kind of grotesque sometimes. Especially since it's clear that the Gothic lit Milligan was aiming for was less The Mysteries of Udolpho and more The Monk. The Monk is a novel from the early 19th Century written by a teenager that contains incest rape on top of a pile of corpses. Jesus.
Andy Milligan had, as they say, no chill. None at all. His actors and scripts and settings always spit pure bile, pure revulsion, at each other, and at life itself. It's difficult to talk about him in calm and level-headed terms, not helped by the fact that I admire his work as much as is okay to. Milligan was probably one of the people I channeled when I wrote Tail of the Lizard King, which you would probably like if you enjoyed The Ghastly Ones or any of Milligan's other comparatively tame films. (Hey, Ben Arzate of Cultured Vultures called Tail a "goofy and fun read", so it can't be that bad, right?)
Don't go into Torture Dungeon expecting either comfort or a torture dungeon--though there is a lengthy scene where one of the ladies who appears in all of Milligan's movies runs through a cave full of bloody men in chains shrieking about "revenge!" Does that count? As before, there's no rhyme or reason to a lot of this--it's just images and rage-venting for the grand Mr. Milligan. There is some comedy in store if you've seen enough mid-century exploitation movies, as once again, the stock music that's on every Something Weird release ever reappears. And hey, have you seen Lost Skeleton of Cadavra? The music from that is in this, too. Usually, whenever I hear these music cues in a movie, I get happy, because they usually appear in movies I love. Torture Dungeon is tough to love, but it's won my heart all the same. It's a good square-one restarter for the trash lover, fast-forward-needed scenes and all.
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