Seeds (aka Seeds of Sin)

A broken family comes together for a Christmas dinner that degenerates into an orgy of incest, suicide, and murder. Carol (Candy Hammond) invites her estranged brothers and sisters to the house she shares with her mother (Maggie Rogers), a bitter, reclusive wheelchair-bound alcoholic who flies into a rage when she hears the news. The mother hates each of her children and is convinced that they're all after her considerable fortune. The siblings and their spouses arrive and the dinner begins peacefully as they all catch up on each other's lives. However, their mother refuses to mask her contempt, and her drunken recriminations raise tempers to a fever pitch and set the tone for an ugly evening. Later that night, a furtive incestuous dalliance is followed by a bathtub electrocution and a desperate act of hari-kari. A young military academy student is revealed to be a homosexual, an arsonist, and a blackmailer, and subsequently slashes his wrists in the backyard. The beautiful eldest sister is disfigured with acid, while her husband receives an axe in his forehead. Meanwhile, Carol is trying to resurrect her own incestuous relationship with her brother Michael (Robert Service), which ended when he moved away from home. His reluctance pushes her over the edge, and she takes violent retribution against their hateful matriarch.

Stunningly grimy and nearly incoherent, Seeds of Sin is a trial for even the hardiest sleaze fans to wrap their minds around, though they'll probably have a good time trying. Andy Milligan directs in his usual harrowing fashion, dragging a hand-held camera around tightly enclosed spaces and instructing all of his actors to shriek horribly at each other. He fills the flimsy plot with a jumble of grotesque acts that don't always serve the thrust of the story, but certainly work thematically. Blood transfusions, forced abortions, poisonings, and sado-masochism all make guest appearances in this already vicious family tragedy. To add to all this depravity, somebody (most likely Harrington Film Distributing Corp., who owned the rights to the property) spliced additional softcore sex sequences into Seeds of Sin that feature people wholly unrelated to the rest of the film. These ridiculous inserts are actually a godsend, providing a welcome respite from the histrionics of Milligan's cast, and no one in this film's intended audience is going to be bothered by extra skin. Not that the original version isn't well stocked with sex. Candy Hammond (who was briefly married to the openly gay director for a short time) has a number of nude scenes, splashing in a bathtub and, most memorably, masturbating to a pile of bodybuilding magazines. Something Weird Video is responsible for making Seeds of Sin available to the modern viewing public, and was thoughtful enough to include an appendix of scenes apparently excised to make room for the spicier inserts. These sequences shed light on a few characters that all but disappear after the initial dinner party, and include a revolting scene in which a woman spits into the mouth of a priest. In other words, Seeds of Sin has everything a fan of Andy Milligan could want, supposing such people actually exist. FRED BELDIN

For more Milligan, read this Bright Lights Film essay or check out the excellent book The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan by Jimmy McDonough. The man's life was just as bizarre and disturbing as any of his dime-store freakshows.