“This is a story of those in the twilight time–”
Oh yeah?
“Once human, now monsters,”
Rad!
“In a void between the living and the dead.”
Limbo! Fuck yea!
“Monsters to be pitied, monsters to be despised,”
Sick!
“A night with the ghouls, the ghouls reborn from the innermost depths of the world.”
The host intones his spooky jargon while all too obviously reciting from cue cards. What a goddamn treat this ought to be…
First of all, this isn’t a story, as we are told to expect. Somewhere down the line, we decided that movies needed to tell a story. 1903, let’s say, with The Great Train Robbery, 24 years before we even got the “talkie”, and 62 years before we were given an Ed Wood picture which just decided to break tradition and just say “fuck it all.” Boasting Gorgeous Astravision and Shocking Sexicolor is the astonishing Orgy of the Dead.
Let’s play a little expectation vs reality, shall we?
Expectation: There’s gonna be an orgy
Reality: No orgy 😦
Expectation: There will be ghouls.
Reality: There are healthy looking women with tan lines that are supposedly ghouls.
Expectation: This is a horror movie.
Reality: This is Grade A sexploitation schlock.
Expectation: This movie will be about things.
Reality: This movie is not about things. This movie is an hour and a half of naked burlesque dancing, with colorful onlookers.
Expectation: The dancers will at least be good.
Reality: They are not. They are abysmal.
After the opening from the host (Some supposedly famous dude named Criswell) we have our first scene. Shirley and Bob are driving around during the day. Or is it night? Well what is continuity good for anyhow? Shirley has bright red hair. Or is it black? Again, we have continuity whoopsies. They have a brief conversation about Bob’s writing. He is most successful when he writes about “his monsters”, much to Shirley’s dismay. Or maybe she’s just dismayed because Bob’s delivery is like someone attempted to do a Christopher Walken impression, but opted instead for a William Shatner impression before finally giving up altogether. Nevertheless, the brakes fail and they careen off a cliff.
Waking up unscathed in a cemetery, Shirley and Bob hear music and see some ritual being performed. Bare-breasted womenladies dancing one-by-one for a man who calls himself The Emperor (Criswell again) who looks on, awkwardly nodding his lackadaisical approval of the dancers, each dancing with a different cultural theme. I had to hold my breath during the dances because each time it cut to the emperor looking on, I killed myself laughing.
After one of the dancers (Pat Barrington who also plays Shirley) gets dipped in gold and carried back inside the mausoleum, a mummy and a wolf-man find Bob and Shirley spying, and bring them to the emperor. They get tied up and are forced to watch more dancing for some reason. The mummy has a hilariously horrible monologue about snakes during one of the dances that should go down in history as the dumbest thing you’ll ever encounter.
And that’s it. That’s all that happens. I find it almost impossible to believe this is adapted from an Ed Wood novel. I can’t imagine the script itself is even ten pages long!
Vinegar Syndrome killed it with their blu-ray release of the Ed Wood written and produced Orgy of the Dead. From the double-thick dayglo slipcover with new cover art, to the crispness and colors of the actual film. It’s a nearly perfect release, inside and out.
A valid question you may now be asking, is why would I add this terrible movie to my collection? Well, my final word on Orgy of the Dead is that it is a different breed of perfection. Pursue it because it is strange and unique. Shut your brain off and enjoy. Throw it on at parties to play in the background while you snort lines of pizza rolls and smoke root beer floats.
Orgy of the Dead is the shocking first recipient of a perfect Schlock & Gore rating.
10/10
Stay slime, and be rad at all times!
-Rat
