Orgy Of The Dead (1965)

You don't want to get me started on Edward D. Wood Jr.; trust me, you do not.  We'd be here forever if I ticked down every reason why I watch his films...and also why I shouldn't.

Incompetence as an art form is only a small part of it.  This is the man who created movies that celebrated Tor Johnson, rambling dialogue, stock footage, transvestism and Bela Lugosi...not necessarily in that order.  Wood had this unusual approach to films, where ADHD is the message, since scenes will flash by onscreen with little or no connection to what came before.

When the only thing that links a series of movies about aliens, zombies and phony psychics is Kelton the Komedy Relief Kop, you know you're in the presence of...something.  Something that may not necessarily be good, but it would at least be memorable.

And for as much as Wood is remembered for his directorial efforts, he was even more prolific as a writer.  Yep, not just scripts but books, dime novels, short stories - a lot of them autobiographical but mostly stories full of action, adventure and ...well, pornography.

Okay, maybe more of some than the others.  But when you've written 26 scripts, 5 books and 9 short stories, then the casual viewer tends to contrast and compare between works to find common threads.

And believe it or not, there were some scripts that came from Wood's pen which he never even bothered to direct.  That's right; some of the stuff Edward D. Wood Jr. scripted ...he outsourced.

Which is what we've got for our example this time out for, you see, Orgy Of The Dead is a story that, apparently, was good enough for Wood to concoct but when the time came to set up the camera, he passed the lensing responsibilities to someone else.  Stephen C. Apostolof, in this case.  Never heard of him before?  No wonder; you're probably not familiar with his other works like Office Love-in White-Collar Style, Lady Godiva Rides, Drop Out Wife and Five Loose Women.  How many of those contained orgies, the dead or any combination thereof?  Who knows?  But at least he was able to work 'em in here, thanks to Eddie.

With a title like this, is a plot really necessary?  It is?  If you insist: Bob (William Bates) and his girlfriend Shirley (Patricia Barrington) go in search of a cemetery in order to inspire Bob for writing his next horror story. After they crash the car, they wander into a nearby graveyard and encounter the dancing (female) dead, a full moon spectacle overseen by the Ruler of the Dark (Criswell) and his beehive-hairdo'd assistant The Black Ghoul (Fawn Silver). Before long the couple is spotted and taken prisoner. Tied to stakes and forced to watch the dancing of various jiggling females, they await their fate....

As you no doubt can tell, this i a story that has Wood's fingerprints, DNA and other undeniable connective evidence all over it.  Topless dancing women!  Cheap sets!  Cut scenes that make no sense!  Lousy costumes!  A vamp lady!  Criswell!  All that's missing is an alien ship on a string and a 300-pound Swedish wrestler stumbling around.

Don't be misled, though; Wood's hand is not on the camera here, which was a detriment to a latter-day film based on an unfinished script of his named I Woke Up Early The Day I Died, which came out in 1998, some 20 years after the day Wood himself died.  Chalk it up to a lost opportunity, much like Orgy, which could only have benefited from Wood's manic desire to film everything, and when he couldn't, at least pad it with filler.  Therefore, you know his absence could only hurt this affair.

Anyway, back to Orgy Of The Dead; all this movie consists of is strippers staring blankly into space as they wiggle about, sans costume tops, their pulchritude on full display.  I hesitate, though, to refer to them as strippers, seeing as how they lose their tops in the first minute or so of their "choreography" and spend the rest of their...routines, let's call them...just wiggling.  Oh, they have costumes they wear - one is dressed as an (American) Indian, one as a skeleton, one like a Hawaiian (which isn't really as Hawaiian as one would think), another like a Mexican, others like zombies, street walkers, slaves, kitty cats - but when it comes to creativity, this is like the first round of eliminations on "America's Got Talent": good for laughs, period.

Criswell, what happened to you since your glory days in 1959?  There was a time when he could effortlessly sit behind a desk or in a coffin and speechify like the grandest of all community theater leads, vying for the year's most overwrought vocal performance.  In Orgy, Cris wears a Dracula cloak (that might just have been Bela Lugosi's but who knows) and sits there in the Styrofoam cemetery, feigning interest and looking more like a lost derelict struggling to stay sober but failing miserably.  Those bleary, squinted eyes suggest that there wasn't a full booze bottle in the immediate vicinity for the duration of shooting.

Again, talentless stripp... uh, semi-naked dancers... are the bulk of this 92-minute flick.  There are occasional cutaways to our Brad and Janet writhing in agony as they witness this "orgy", Criswell orating as if he were a drunk King Lear and this Black Ghoul lady standing around acting more like Vampira's unemployable layabout daughter, and these guys dressed up as a mummy and a wolf man, standing off to the side, nudging each other and pantomiming that, gee, they wish they could get in on some of this "orgy" stuff, but that would mean they would have to have either unwrap or shave themselves, and be female.  But soon, when our talentless boy and girl end up alone in the end with a twist ending that isn't really all that much fo a twist, that's it - and not a moment too soon, believe me.

Yes, this is all but touted as an Edward D. Wood Jr. film, with the script and story being his, but in the end, Orgy Of The Dead could have been so much more one of Wood's ruminations of society and horrific transgressions if he had lensed it as well.  Stampeding buffaloes during a striptease?  A two-fisted brawl between Bob and the Ruler of the Dark, Ed himself as one of the dancers, maybe?  Some improv from Tor Johnson?  A token cameo by Kelton The Komedy Relief Kop?  Could only have helped.

So Orgy Of The Dead tries, but it's a near-miss.  Too bad; it had the chops but was missing the soul.

I notice this review is shorter than a lot of my most recent, even for a sordid affair like this one.  But what can I say; I was distracted.  Perhaps I was thinking more of The Bride of Frankenstein getting jiggy with it, and The Creature From The Black Lagoon with a beer in his hand and a $20 bill to stuff in her g-string. 

Ahhh...what could have been.... Poor Eddie.