Slumming - Orgy of the Dead (1965)

Dear god almighty. This was dire. A film based on script by Ed Wood, Jr., the great auteur of Plan 9 from Outer Space, Glen or Glenda, and one of my favorites, Jail Bait, that really, really needed his direction. That, friends, is dire.

There’s diddly to say about it, except that on the good side, it does have Criswell turning in a performance almost as good as his Plan 9 run. It has Pat Barrington, a well regarded (maybe?) burlesque and topless dancer, doing double duty as the female lead and as one of the dancers in the vignettes. And maybe, a nod should be given in the direction of Fawn Silver as “The Black Ghoul", a knock-off Vampira in a role written for Maila Nurmi, the actual Vampira, but who had schedule conflicts. And no, Silver is not a Black woman.

Sounds promising yet? No, please don’t think that’s the case. 

Here’s the deal. A couple is driving along the highway in, I don’t know, the Hollywood hills. The woman is apprehensive about her companion’s desire to go to a cemetery in search of inspiration for a new horror novel. I want to say it’s how he gets over his writer’s block, but I think I just want it to be more interesting than it really is. 

Because there’s no way to describe the awfulness of the dialog, I’m going to append some at the end of this little recap. But what am I recapping? 

Let’s be clear, there is no orgy. Sure, this is one of the last of the “nudie cuties”, which does have a series of topless lovelies performing various interpretive dances, but there is no activity that could be remotely called sexual or erotic, let alone orgiastic. Pity.

Essentially, Orgy of the Dead is a revue, a variety show for people who have never seen one. It’s a tedious enterprise that perhaps the kids on the slow bus might enjoy, but that stymies rational thought when you have to ask yourself, “how old is the person who wrote this or the person who adapted it for screen?”

I think Wood’s vision had to have been different. The source material is a novel, and I sincerely doubt that it was comprised of four people talking interspersed with descriptions of naked women dancing. Oh, and a werewolf and a mummy show up for comic relief, depending on how we define humor.

You’re wondering, of course, about the plot of the film, right? You want to know about the conflicts and redemption arcs that drive the plot and render the narrative so compelling. Right? I’m so sorry, that’s not gonna happen.

Basically, our couple drives off the road, are thrown from the car and appear to be in some form of limbo that Criswell rules over in which a series of post-life women appear and perform dances based on the lives they lead and the deaths they died. Barrington’s solo, for instance, is that of a woman who loved gold and died continuing to lust after it. Anyway, she does a kind of semi-balletic routine that ends with her at the feet of the two attendants who toss gold coins on the ground before her. At some point, she is transformed into a gold spray painted corpse taken into a crypt and laid to rest. Truth to tell, hers is one of my favorite routines, if I can say I enjoyed it (I didn’t). 

There’s a pussy-cat dancer that I also liked, but again, “liked” requires too much qualification for me to even begin to justify. What you’re stuck with are interminable dialogs between the couple, Criswell, and The Black Ghoul. Well, not interminable. They couldn’t be. The movie is only a hundred hours long. Oh, wait, I should be more accurate. Let’s see here…No…I’m wrong! Wait, this can’t be right. Ninety-two minutes?! That can’t be right. It is. 

In between the dance bits, Criswell prattles about how he requires entertainment and he best be entertained or he will send the dancer to damnation or some such nonsense. He also threatens the couple by telling Pat Barrington as “Shirley” that she will become one of those dancers and that he will end Bob's (the amazing William Bates! And by “amazing”, I do mean amazingly, tragically, unfathomably bad) existence because he, Criswell, isn’t interested in men. Oh, deary me. The irony runs so deep here. 

Sorry, but Criswell, gurl, you are most decidedly interested in men. What I’m saying is that Criswell isn’t exactly convincing as a cis-het horn-dog. There is potential here for greater ironic and high camp shenanigans, but these never quite materialize. Maybe if I’m ripped on amyls or blasted out of the saddle on some obscure powder, I might find this entire exercise in cinematic experimentation somewhat amusing.

Criswell the Lady’s Man, mackin’ on Fawn silver

Stephen C. Apostolof, the Orson Welles behind this work, was a Bulgarian refugee who fled Bulgaria in 1948, was caught in Turish waters and jailed for being suspected as a Bulgarian spy. He made it to Paris, served in the French Foreign Legion, and in 1950 moved to Canada and then to Los Angeles where he became a clerk at Bank of America. I neglected to mention that at 17, he joined a guerrilla group and fought the Communist part in Bulgaria and wss imprisoned as a result.

It’s difficult to make sense of his rise except to say that he staked out a unique position of films that are regarded as classics of exploitation. Orgy of the Dead doesn’t quite make it for me. I just didn’t find it enjoyable. It was too inexpertly executed to be fun. I wasn’t kidding; Ed Wood could have made something out of this. He really could have. Apostolof’s other works sound promising, but I’m not inspired to seek them out. I might. But I have my doubts.

Now, to be sure, this may sound like a stretch, but the score to the film is actually quite good. Jaime Mendoza-Nava was a Bolivian-American composer who studied in Spain at the Madrid Royal Conservatory and the Sorbonne. In addition to soundtrack work, he composed symphonic poems, orchestral works, concerti, and other program music. The music for the different routines is actually quite good. So much so, that I’ve got some of his works cued up on Spotify.

I haven’t slummed it for a while and this feels good, it feels right. I could never follow in Nathan Rabin’s footsteps and watch trash on a regular basis (though I have). However, I do believe that even in the trashiest trash, there are nuggets of treasure to be found. Even in the present work under consideration, I found something redeeming. Admittedly, I really don’t like the flick overall, but I did get a kick out of the doofus line-readings on everybody’s part, I did find some of the dances not completely atrocious (but none of them were exactly, ahem, stellar), but fi nothing else, I did like the tunes, so there’s something.

Now for your entertainment, from IMDb’s entry, selections from the delightful script of Orgy of the Dead"

Bob: You're talking nonsense.

Shirley: Oh no I'm not, these heathens probably have an open grave for us.

Bob: They wouldn't dare put both of us in the same grave. Or would they?

Shirley: I should hope not. I hate you.

Bob: That sudden?

Shirley: Yes, that sudden. If it weren't for you we wouldn't be hunting for an old cemetery on a night like this. It's all your fault.

Bob: And I thought you loved me.

The Emperor is Criswell’s character, by the way:

The Emperor: It will please me very much to see the Slave Girl with her tortures.

Slave Dance: [getting a whipping] Oh... ugh... umm...

The Emperor: Torturer, torturer - it pleasures me!

[first lines]

The Emperor: I am Criswell. For years, I have told the almost unbelievable, related the unreal and showed it to be more than a fact. Now I tell a tale of the threshold people, so astounding that some of you may faint. This is a story of those in the twilight time. Once human, now monsters, in a void between the living and the dead. Monsters to be pitied, monsters to be despised. A night with the ghouls, the ghouls reborn from the innermost depths of the world.

Bob’s literary theory:

Bob: Seeing a cemetery on a night like this can stir in the mind the best ideas for a good horror story.

Shirley: But there's so many wonderful things to write about, Bob.

Bob: Sure there are, and I've tried them all. Plays, love stories, westerns, dog stories... now there was a good one, that dog story, all about -

Shirley: But horror stories? Why all the time horror stories?

Bob: Shirley, I wrote for years without selling a single word. My monsters have done well for me. You think I'd give that up, just so I could write about trees, or dogs, or daisies?

[chuckles]

Bob: Daisies! That's it, I'll write about my creatures who are pushing up the daisies.

[he kisses her]

Bob: Your puritan upbringing holds you back from my monsters, but it certainly doesn't hurt your art of kissing.

Shirley: That's life. My kisses are alive.

Bob: [chuckles] Who's to say my monsters aren't alive?

And I think this is wit…

Bob: You're talking nonsense.

Shirley: Oh no I'm not, these heathens probably have an open grave for us.

Bob: They wouldn't dare put both of us in the same grave. Or would they?

Shirley: I should hope not. I hate you.

Bob: That sudden?

Shirley: Yes, that sudden. If it weren't for you we wouldn't be hunting for an old cemetery on a night like this. It's all your fault.

Bob: And I thought you loved me.

Bob, Shirley, and The Black Ghoul share a moment