For once, I've decided not to click the spoiler warning box, because there is nothing to spoil in this movie! A must-see for any fans of Edward D Wood Jr, this....remarkable...softcore striptease movie reaches new heights of what I like to call 'ultra-boredom'.
I don't believe it's impossible to have a plot in a porn film...mainly because it isn't...but Orgy Of The Dead managed to fall between both stools. It has no plot, and there is no porn! Not really. What we see on screen for the majority of the flick...an even dozen very listless horror-themed striptease burlesque acts, performed by a bevy of well-endowed but uninvolved-looking women...is about as erotic as a documentary on the construction of the Suez Canal. There's whipping, there's lots and lots of boobs being shaken, but unless you're an insane breast fetishist or a HUGE burlesque fan, anyone hoping to get a thrill outta this stuff is in for a letdown. This film is BORING, folks. This film brings new meaning to TEDIOUS! The stripping's not kinky or explicit enough to be titillating, and each strip goes for way too long. The music that accompanies it is...well, actually, quite humorously bad.
But! Lame as the stripping is, there is just enough Wood magic to keep da boat afloat. The angstrom-thin plot sees a wooden WASP couple being taken prisoner by ghouls after a car breakdown and forced to watch the above-mentioned strip n whip marathon. Inbetween acts, and sometimes during them, we get the 60s equivalent of DVD commentary, provided on screen by Ed's old pal Criswell. Cris, as the 'Emperor', presides over the festivities, reading his lines off cue cards in his inimitable shouting pseudo-Shatner-on-LSD style. "A pussy cat was born to be whipped!" is but one of his profoundly insightful comments. Criswell is DA MAN in this movie, proving with his 'performance' that you don't need to smoke wicked pot to act completely stoned. Cris's sidekick, a buxom pale-skinned Vampira clone dressed in what would come to be known (by everyone except Vampira and her lawyers) as "Elvira gear", also chips in with droll asides now and then. We cut to our tied-up 'heroes', the WASP couple, now and then, to learn how scared the woman is and how determined the man is to get away somehow. The stripping continues. There's some gold coins. Then more gold coins. Criswell laughs and calls for yet more gold coins. We cut to more stripping. Vampira Clone pouts and purrs a line while thrusting her Valles Marineris-deep cleavage outwards as far as she can. (Bless her.) Then a mummy and a werewolf come on and do a bizarre comedy double act that goes nowhere. Then there's a snake. Then more stripping, then OH MY BRAIN HURTS.
Ed Wood, now well into the alcoholic spiral that would kill him in 1978, scripted this megaturkey for his pal Stephen Apostolof to direct, garnering about 600 bucks for the sale of the story. Apostolof (billed in the credits in very cryptic fashion as "AC Stephen") seems to have taken tips on direction from Ed here, as can be witnessed in the initial car ride sequence. True to Plan 9, day and night freely interchange about four times during the course of one scene. Once our heroes are captured, we never move from the one 'spooky' forest set...there's plenty of fog, plenty of trees, plenty of Criswell shouting, plenty of female toplessness, but no actual motion of plot whatsoever. The film's not very long, maybe 70 minutes tops, but seems to make the 15-hour-plus Paris Alexanderplatz look fast-paced.
This movie is bad bad bad, but as the final collaboration between Ed and the world's most inaccurate TV psychic (Cris, of course), this is unmissable. As many other people have noticed, Cris and his busty assistant bear an odd resemblance to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky...a good deal of humour can be gained from taking the duo's on screen comments out of context in a "Bill and Lew" way.
One final note - "Monica" is by far the sexiest woman in the movie, and yet is the only one that doesn't take any of her clothes off. This seems deeply wrong to me, and probably killed the film's only chance of being even vaguely erotic.
This is trash, but it's Ed Wood trash (even if he didn't direct it)...and what's more, it's about the easiest 60s Wood trash movie to find, so go ahead and see it. Some great Woodian moments amongst the ultra-boredom. Too cheerful to be offensive, yet too tame to be arousing. More fun than you'd think, if you approach it with the right mind....or lack thereof. Criswell rules!
I don't believe it's impossible to have a plot in a porn film...mainly because it isn't...but Orgy Of The Dead managed to fall between both stools. It has no plot, and there is no porn! Not really. What we see on screen for the majority of the flick...an even dozen very listless horror-themed striptease burlesque acts, performed by a bevy of well-endowed but uninvolved-looking women...is about as erotic as a documentary on the construction of the Suez Canal. There's whipping, there's lots and lots of boobs being shaken, but unless you're an insane breast fetishist or a HUGE burlesque fan, anyone hoping to get a thrill outta this stuff is in for a letdown. This film is BORING, folks. This film brings new meaning to TEDIOUS! The stripping's not kinky or explicit enough to be titillating, and each strip goes for way too long. The music that accompanies it is...well, actually, quite humorously bad.
But! Lame as the stripping is, there is just enough Wood magic to keep da boat afloat. The angstrom-thin plot sees a wooden WASP couple being taken prisoner by ghouls after a car breakdown and forced to watch the above-mentioned strip n whip marathon. Inbetween acts, and sometimes during them, we get the 60s equivalent of DVD commentary, provided on screen by Ed's old pal Criswell. Cris, as the 'Emperor', presides over the festivities, reading his lines off cue cards in his inimitable shouting pseudo-Shatner-on-LSD style. "A pussy cat was born to be whipped!" is but one of his profoundly insightful comments. Criswell is DA MAN in this movie, proving with his 'performance' that you don't need to smoke wicked pot to act completely stoned. Cris's sidekick, a buxom pale-skinned Vampira clone dressed in what would come to be known (by everyone except Vampira and her lawyers) as "Elvira gear", also chips in with droll asides now and then. We cut to our tied-up 'heroes', the WASP couple, now and then, to learn how scared the woman is and how determined the man is to get away somehow. The stripping continues. There's some gold coins. Then more gold coins. Criswell laughs and calls for yet more gold coins. We cut to more stripping. Vampira Clone pouts and purrs a line while thrusting her Valles Marineris-deep cleavage outwards as far as she can. (Bless her.) Then a mummy and a werewolf come on and do a bizarre comedy double act that goes nowhere. Then there's a snake. Then more stripping, then OH MY BRAIN HURTS.
Ed Wood, now well into the alcoholic spiral that would kill him in 1978, scripted this megaturkey for his pal Stephen Apostolof to direct, garnering about 600 bucks for the sale of the story. Apostolof (billed in the credits in very cryptic fashion as "AC Stephen") seems to have taken tips on direction from Ed here, as can be witnessed in the initial car ride sequence. True to Plan 9, day and night freely interchange about four times during the course of one scene. Once our heroes are captured, we never move from the one 'spooky' forest set...there's plenty of fog, plenty of trees, plenty of Criswell shouting, plenty of female toplessness, but no actual motion of plot whatsoever. The film's not very long, maybe 70 minutes tops, but seems to make the 15-hour-plus Paris Alexanderplatz look fast-paced.
This movie is bad bad bad, but as the final collaboration between Ed and the world's most inaccurate TV psychic (Cris, of course), this is unmissable. As many other people have noticed, Cris and his busty assistant bear an odd resemblance to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky...a good deal of humour can be gained from taking the duo's on screen comments out of context in a "Bill and Lew" way.
One final note - "Monica" is by far the sexiest woman in the movie, and yet is the only one that doesn't take any of her clothes off. This seems deeply wrong to me, and probably killed the film's only chance of being even vaguely erotic.
This is trash, but it's Ed Wood trash (even if he didn't direct it)...and what's more, it's about the easiest 60s Wood trash movie to find, so go ahead and see it. Some great Woodian moments amongst the ultra-boredom. Too cheerful to be offensive, yet too tame to be arousing. More fun than you'd think, if you approach it with the right mind....or lack thereof. Criswell rules!