Eternal Rewards: ORGY OF THE DEAD (1965)

(Night #4 of the Ten Days of Ed Wood Acidemic Holiday Special) 

If you watch Plan Nine from Outer Space two or three times a year, as many of us do, you probably wish there could be a whole movie of Vampira lolling around the mist-enshrouded graveyard, arms raised classic cartoon sleepwalker fashion. And... while we're wishing... maybe this time she could talk? Maybe was emceeing a Halloween-style strip show line-up of lost female souls summoned to dance to escape damnation? Maybe the Mummy and the Wolf Man were there too, acting as bouncers? And there was enough mist, skulls, and Martin Denny-style lounge music to fill six ordinary movies? And Criswell was ruling over all of it, lolling in his shiny black cape and laughing mirthlessly? Such a dream would be--in the words of a bare bodkin-contemplating Hamlet, devoutly to be wished! 

ORGY OF THE DEAD (1965) is that dream, oh bare bodkin-fancier: Fawn Silver as "the Black Ghoul" isn't quite on Vampira's level, but she does manage to keep a straight face as she introduces the girls. Criswell, as "the Emperor of Darkness," looks all boozed-up--dilated and doughy, glazed-eyed and cue card-dependent--but his hair and black cape shine in the starlight and his voice is the same never-ending source of resonant delight, and his words are still written and cue-carded by the great Ed Wood, send the whole thing over into paroxysms of surrealist bliss:

Now all we need is a reprint of
Ed's original novel, please

"It is said on clear nights, beneath the cold light of the moon, howl the dog and the wolf, and creepy things crawl out of the slime; it is then the ghouls feast in all their radiance." 

Only Wood would describe ghouls as "radiant." You can feel his love for his monsters - even if they are to be "pitied" and "despised." His affection for all oddballs permeates the ether and extends even to the moon, which "comes forth once more to shine in radiance and contentment." 

 Contentment indeed. Can you doubt it? 

The weird language continues as Criswell sets the scene:

 "Time seems to stand still. Not so the ghouls, when a night of pleasure is at hand!"

He's sure right on one level - time does seem to stand still. 

But there are two members of the so-called "living world" driving to their destiny: burly horror writer Bob (Edward Bates) and his stacked but virgin redhead girlfriend Shirley (Pat Barington) are headed off to a remote graveyard under a spooky full moon. Why? Bob needs inspiration for his monster fiction (he's a writer of lurid paperbacks) and full moons are the best time to go. She would rather they went somewhere else. His insistence on dragging her to the middle of nowhere in the dead of night seems passive-aggressive--maybe as a revenge for not putting out (the way guys bring dates to R-rated horror movies at the drive-in, despite their protestations)--but who are we to judge? 

Shirley (Ed's drag name, by the way) wishes he'd write about something other than monsters. Bob argues: "My monsters have done well for me. They sell in the top spots. You want me to give all that up and write about trees, or dogs, or daisies?"  

Writing about daisies. Their love life is--we glean--very chaste (maybe Shirley is an echo of Ed's first wife, who the story goes, was very old-fashioned and wouldn't put out before they were married, only to then divorce him as soon as she 'met' Shirley): "Your puritan upbringing holds you back from my monsters," he says, "but it certainly doesn't hurt your art of kissing."  Like Brad and Janet in Rocky Horror Picture Show, it's clear these two are going to need a night spent in the company of some of the degenerate swinger undead to loosen sexual repression's buzzkill shackles. 

But will it loosen them too much, as in from their mortal coils? It all depends on how fast the dawn comes. 

The dance floor shall be a cemetery clearing, flanked by imposing tombs, and and lined with grave markers and swirling fog. Seated on the stairs of one of the larger monuments comes Criswell. He is "Emperor of the Night," and he bids the Black Ghoul (Fawn Silver) to come forth. She does, with arms outstretched in front like a cartoon sleepwalker. A werewolf and a mummy appear also, to watch and do the Emperor's bidding, as do a pair of burly dudes in tiki-torch island native wear who escort the dancers from the tomb to the stage, as well as whip them and/or shower them with gold coins as their emperor commands. See, Criswell is not playing around: "If I am not pleased by tonight's entertainment I shall banish their souls to everlasting damnation!" And with that...

THE PARADE  BEGINS

And thus, with a clap of the Black Ghoul's hands, comes the first in a very long line of performers. First-- a Native American fire dancer, "one who loves flame,' says the Black Ghoul, "Her lover was killed in flame... She died... in flame." A lounge record of Native American chants and tribal drumming plays; she 'dances' as if half-heartedly trying to remember a calisthenics class while waiting for a bus. After a few minutes of this--which feels like hours--the drumming/chanting abruptly ends. We see a shot of Criswell, barely awake, looking up --are we done!? Not so fast! The needle is pulled back to restart the record--the tom-toms beat on! A fire is burning throughout to symbolize... flame... but for some reason the camera keeps it below screen. 

Colleen O'Brien is next as a streetwalker ("one who prowls the lonely streets of life is bound to prowl them in eternity"), sashaying barefoot to a laid-back Spanish guitar, tinny piano and hazy sax.O'Brien seems to be at least able to convey a good time, even going so far as to wink  at the camera (which Criswell loves in a cutaway) and cavorting with a skeleton under nice Gold Key comic / pulp magazine lighting.  Her long candy apple hair, pink dress and blue feather boa all hang perfectly against the swirling purple fog and obsidian night around her. We could watch this routine for all eternity. And we almost do.

"Throw gold at her!"

So now we're on a roll! Next up is the "one who prized gold above else" (Pat Barington, who also plays Shirley). Natural, full-breasted and natural, hers is a perfect burlesque body, and her dance gets the best introduction. Lifted from a slab in her comely crypt by the two Pacific islander slaves, she rises as bongos, mariachi trumpet, xylophone, and skittery flute get her limbs and hips in motion . "Throw gold at her!" declares mighty Cris. They do. But it's never enough, no matter who much they throw. "More gold!" Criswell shouts. "MORE GOLD! More Gold! Ahahahaha!"

 "For all eternity she shall have gold!" 

Obligingly melting down the gold in a big cauldron, the boys dunk her in it and she emerges a gold-covered corpse ala Goldfinger (which came out the year before). The natives carry her back to her slab, the fog comes rolling in, the crickets and piano pound, and Ciswell notes of the two agape humans " both couldn't help but remember a line from one of Bob's stories -- 'I know I should think of other things, pleasant things, but how can I when shadows are all around me...'" Yes, it's verbatim from Ed's narration in The Final Curtain, but what the hell. That was never aired, so so what? 

Next up is one of the worst in the line-up: Texas Starr in a shitty leopard costume with dark red ears, with bit ugly squares cut in the fabric so her naked chest and ass stick out. Notes Criswell's Emperor of the night, "a pussycat is born to be whipped." A slave whacks the ground or feebly whips her but she doesn't seem to notice, her paws bent forward, hopping as if jumping an invisible rope, for minute after minute. Her dancing--to an idiotic xylophone riff-- with her little bunny hop and ass wiggle in her leaopard pajamas is so inane as to defy description. Next, Criswell gets an idea, though- "it would please me very much to see the slave girl and her tortures." And so she is brought out, chained up, kinda, and whipped, kinda, mercilessly ("torture! Torture, it pleasures me!" shouts Criswell) but then her whipper leaves, her chains come off and she's just a weltless girl (Nadeja Klein) 'dancing' dazedly as the mist in the air slowly grows to the opaque level.. She rolls around on the ground, she wafts pass the still-open crypt, she wafts across the whole set. She waves her arms around. Her nipples seem too red for the rest of her. Did she put lipstick on them, like the girl in the opening credits of Ed's Take it Out in Trade? God we hope not. 

The procession goes and on and on. A Spanish flamenco dancer (Stephanie Jones) struts around the skull of her bullfighter lover; "a worshipper of snakes, and smoke.. and flame" does some good Hawaiian dance hip gyrations but has strange too-white teeth and an ill-fitting Betti Page wig; cutaways to a rattlesnake imply it's jamming along with the congas and steamy sax. The Ghoul and Criswell nod at each other with conspiratorial smiles. "She pleases me," he says. "Permit her to live in the world of the snakes." Tied to their respective sacrificial poles, Bob and Shirley start to bicker. She blames him for getting them into this mess. The Black Ghoul is lusting for Shirley and asks if she may be her prize but Criswell puts her off, first another 'entertainment!' 

Next up is a bride (Barbara Norton) dancing with the skeleton of her groom. When her dress comes off the jazzy number she's moving to switch up to a funky Herb Albert style bouncy melody and this bride shakes and shimmies and rattles her breasts around like she's swimming through the mist. She does this for what seems like ten minutes. This is the one the Wolf Man and the Mummy choose as their favorite out of the remaining line-up; the Black Ghoul convinces Criswell to speed things up as the morning will be here soon. Shirley and Bob watching stunned from their posts as the shimmying breast shaker goes on and on.

"The princess of darkness would have you for her own to join us in extreme pain," Criswell tells Shirley, She begs for their lives. Bob tries to offer himself in Shirley's place, so she can escape. "No one wishes to see a man dance!' sniffs Criswell.

It's rather redundant, but, more dancers! Next up, 'the zombie' (Dene Starns), putting her arms straight out in front of her, lowering them, bowing, touching her hair, putting her hands back down again, over and over. Her eyes seem scared and dead at the same time. The music plods and she doesn't even appear to blink. How she got the dead lifeless glaze in her eyes I don't know, but it's effective. Her eyes look like they were painted on the back of her closed eyelids. But they're her real eyes. Anyway, she bows. She makes a little back and forth sidestep movement. She  sort of wafts around in a circle. We have to endure this, you think, instead of watching the Black Ghoul have her way with Shirley?! By now we're squirming in anticipation! Let the Ghoul get her girl!

Criswell puts her at ease: "you shall have your pleasure, that I decree."

Bur first, the dancers continue: "This one would have died for feathers, fur and fluff... and so she did." Rene De Beau has nice breasts and kind of looks like Debbi Mazur. She does a lot of twirling. By then even those of us who came purely to see naked women dance have grown no doubt weary. With a few exceptions, the dancing all has a disconnected half-asleep aura, as if the music was added later. chosen at random, and the coffee was yet to arrive; and the girls--Silver and O'Brien aside--don't seem to be professionals but scared amateurs whose agents roped them into this by saying it's a gateway to bigger things. Some of them have that squirrelly look in their eyes, like one loud noise behind the camera and they'll dart off the set and grab the Greyhound back to Kansas. 

"Could it be a college initiation? "

By now the disconnect between movement and music has become as vast as the ocean.  And yet, in that disconnect there is a kind of modernist thrill to be unearthed. Dyed-wool Woodsians prize this treasure above all else. We know Wood didn't direct it, but he wrote it, it was his idea to cast Criswell, and he was there on set to hold Cris's cue cards. Director Stephen C. Apostlof clearly enjoyed working with Ed. After Orgy they would go to make softcore grins like The Cocktail Hostesses and Drop Out Wife full of--as Dead2rights says-- "pasty white Californians halfheartedly pretending to hump each other in blandly-hideous bedrooms, motel rooms, and living rooms, while drowsy "beautiful music" drones on in the background"  Most of these films seem lost to time and maybe we're better for it. But Orgy is its own thing. And thanks to a beautiful remastering by Vinegar Syndrome, it looks stunning, mesmerizing, inviting and ever-so radiantly ghoulish. The endless parade of half-asleep strippers are now couched in a gorgeously-lit (by Ted Mikels!) set, rich with lurid blazing colors and real 3-D depth in the swirling fog. And, while most of the dancers make time seem to stand still, we can take comfort in bleary-eyed Criswell's odd commentary, the cutaway reaction shots to the buxom redhead human witness (the red of her hair and lips is insane on this new restoration), the lesbian Vampira substitute with her belated knife act, the werewolf and mummy hanging back in the bushes, The lovely fog and Gold Key comic book cover colors, the skeletons and skulls. If you grew up as I did, slavering worshipfully over newsstand copies of Playboy and Famous Monsters of Filmland while mom or pop shopped, you know that Orgy is like some weird magic spell you wished 20 years ago at last come true. Not so much a movie as a place to live, sleep, and dream. 

That said, it goes get a bit disappointing when, after whining for her reward for half the film, the Ghoul wastes too much time dancing and waving a knife around Shirley instead of hurrying to drink her blood and make her a full-time member of the troupe. But you can't have everything.  Besides, you can always watch Jess Franco's Succubus immediately after Orgy and pretend Fawn Silver has become magically Jeanine Reynaud and the act picking up right where we left off, with a demon woman taunting a tied up couple with a dagger--and this time sealing the deal. 

But that's not to be in this film. Suddenly, it's morning! Both Criswell and the Black Ghoul turn instantly into skeletons before she can plunge in the knife.

 Girl, you wasted too much time with your damned blade dance!

Still all in all, I've found it to be the perfect movie to fall asleep to, at 4 AM. Perhaps the most touching aspect is to think how bad this used to look in cropped format with ugly colors until 2017 when the restoration and Blu-ray set came out. Looking as good as it does now more than makes up for the dull stretches. As the Joseph Ziemba wrote in 2004, 13 years before VS came through with the excellent version available on Blu-ray today: "Orgy Of The Dead is the greatest trash movie of all time... let it not rot in the vaults." Vinegar Syndrome heard that plea! They came through, before actual vinegar syndrome could work its catastrophic damage. Orgy is safe. Hurray for AFGA, SW, and VS, and for Bleeding Skull--and their continual championing of all way-outsider artist. Open the vaults of thy crypt to receive Orgy of the Dead, if you dare to doze! As erotic as a tombstone, it's ripe with eternal rewards, and now it shines with enough radiance and contentment to brighten a dozen moonless nights.