Orgy Of The Dead

1965
Directed By Stephen C. Apostolof

SYNOPSIS

A couple (William Bates + Pat Barrington) drive to a cemetery late at night. They crash their car. When they regain consciousness, weird music attracts them to the cemetery. The couple spies a series of undead women stripping for The Emperor of the Night (Criswell) Soon, a mummy and a wolf-man capture the two,  tie them up, and force them to... watch more undead strippers do their thing.

MY THOUGHTS

The film marked a new low in Ed Wood's flagging career.

Though he did not direct the film, many of his hallmarks are all over the Orgy Of The Dead.

Ed Wood wrote the screenplay. It features many deathless lines ( "Torture, torture! It pleasures me!"
"A pussycat is born to be whipped," etc.) but doesn't feature any badly circular dialogue (like "future events such as these will affect you in the future" from Plan Nine From Outer Space) Maybe he had time to do a second draft. The screenplay was based off a book he wrote of the same title. I hope much of the plot of the novel was cut from the script because I don't know how he would have been able to even fill 20 pages of a book.


Wood regular (and bogus psychic) Criswell stars as The Emperor, as well as narrates the film much like he did in Plan Nine. He delivers dialogue like no other...

Another Wood trademark... we get two noticeably bad out of focus stock footage shots of a rattlesnake inserted into the film. A plastic snake filmed on-set would be less jarring.

Lastly, the overwhelming ineptness surrounding the production. The acting is atrocious from everyone involved. The first few strippers dance like they were just released after being chained to the wall of a dungeon for 10 years... and learning to use their leg and arm muscles again. Very un-sexy. Thankfully, it seems they were arranged from worst to best in dancing ability. So each one seems to get better.... though it doesn't look like any of them bothered to choreograph a routine. The cameraman tries to follow them the best he can.



The film does differ from Ed's 'classic' 1950's output.

First, it's in color. The film's only set is lit like, and resembles, a second-rate alien planet set from the original  Star Trek series. It lacks any moody atmosphere that would add to the 'horror' like his older films.

Second, tits. The 1960s helped to destroy the old standards of 'decency" in place since Victorian England. Fringe films such as this helped...but there are so many boobs on display for minutes on end that the audience (even in 1965) would be desensitized to them by the end of the film. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Orgy Of The Dead is truly a terrible film... but it would be highly enjoyable and a hilarious time mixed with good friends and copious amounts of alcohol.

Bela Lugosi Week Film 6: Glen or Glenda?

This week I've decided to do something a little different here at Blues In The Night. Every film reviewed this week will star Bela Lugosi. For film #6 one of Bela Lugosi's final performances from his brief friendship with director Ed Wood.

Glen Or Glenda?
1954
Directed By Edward D. Wood Jr.



SYNOPSIS

After the suicide of a transvestite, a police inspector (Lyle Talbot) seeks out more information on transvestism. He turns to a psychologist (Timothy Farrell.) The doctor tells him the story of a patient of his, Glenn (Edward D. Wood Jr.) who was coming to grips of telling his fiancee (Dolores Fuller) of his unusual fetish.



MY THOUGHTS

A truly bizarre film that you cannot turn your eyes away from.

Many people know Ed Wood from the Tim Burton film and know of his 'unique' talents as a filmmaker.
Many traits of Ed Wood's later films sprout here for the first time. Horrible acting, seemingly unrelated stock footage, repetitive and/or elliptical writing are many of them.

We don't see any shots where it is day, then night, then day again in the same scene. However, the film's unusual, mostly non-linear story structure would prevent this anyway.

The film, on the surface, is a docu-drama. It remains grounded in fact and reality, presenting the sordid details of transvestism with the psychologist as narrator. Director Ed Wood knew the life well, as he was a transvestite himself and Dolores Fuller was his real-life girlfriend.

But Bela Lugosi also appears in the film. His character is a god-like figure, 'pulling the strings' of life and speaks directly to the camera often cryptically about existence. This clearly knocks it out of reality and as a result makes the film work on far deeper and more abstract levels than anything Wood had done or would ever do again. The seemingly unrelated stock footage can be explained this time.

The narrative of the film stops for nearly 15 minutes as we're shown an extremely well crafted and bizarre dream sequence of how Glen is fraught over telling his fiancee his secret and facing his feminine side. Buxom strippers, S+M, and the devil all appear. It's esoteric and experimental filmmaking that directors like Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch or even surrealist filmmakers like Luis Bunuel would be proud of.

Story-wise there is little going on. But with such interesting ways to pad the story and the different directions the film veers... it makes the film insanely watchable. It is never boring.

Glen or Glenda provides a stark opposite of the perceived view of 1950's life and remains a fascinating, bizarre, and totally original film more than 55 years after it was made.