The Ghastly Ones on AllMovie

Staten Island's Andy Milligan, notorious for 16-millimeter backyard horror projects -- often incorporating thrift-shop period costumes and plentiful fake-looking gore -- applies his signature brand of awfulness to the Ten Little Indians scenario with this amateurish whodunit. The plot requires six potential heirs to spend the night in their late patriarch's allegedly-haunted estate, after which the survivors (if any) will claim his inheritance. Before long, the guests are being murdered in a variety of messy (and unconvincing) ways, including impalement, decapitation, burning alive and bisection with a two-handed saw. The usual Milligan touches abound, from dead bodies seen breathing or blinking their eyes to four-tined pitchforks which somehow become three-tined when plunging through a victim's body. The entire scenario -- including the pleasant seaside setting -- was handled far more deftly in Mario Bava's excellent thriller Bay of Blood in 1971.