I’m not much interested in Ed Wood’s porno movies, the films he was forced to make towards the end of his life just to keep a roof over his head and food on his plate. I don’t think his heart was ever in them. In fact I think he hated them. I think he hated having to do them, that he viewed them as being beneath him—and they were. There are two exceptions from his porno oeuvre. ONE MILLION AC/DC has enough of Ed’s personality infused into it that it merits attention—the scene of the T-Rex puppet eating the Barbie doll is totally something Ed would do—as does ORGY OF THE DEAD. Neither of the two is a true porno. Softcore if anything. They are what is known as “nudie cuties.” Lots of nudity but no actual penetration or close-ups of genitalia.
SHOWGIRLS proved that naked women could be boring, and ORGY OF THE DEAD would be boring, too, were it not for that unmistakable Woodian dialogue and Criswell hamming it up as the “Emperor of the Dead” who oversees lots of dancing dead nudies (who don’t look all that dead). Ed only wrote the screenplay for this one but he was present on the set and director Stephen Apostolof (billed as A.C. Stephen) must have been asking him for advice, because the movie has Ed’s fingerprints all over it. It’s not brilliant in the way that PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is brilliant, but it’s worth a few laughs and is a must-see for the completist.
