I know I mentioned this kitsch disasterpiece in my earlier blog on comedy gay ‘psychic’ Jeron King Crisswell, but I recently had a chance to access the entire script, and it is absolutely faaaaaaaabulous in terms of its LGBT (and feminist!) subtexts.

Here’s an exegesis. As the film opens, Brad and Janet- oops, Bob and Shirley - are travelling down a deserted mountain road, because as a horror scriptwriter, he wants inspiration…inspiration….inspiration. Anyway, they have a car mishap, but hey, they’ve encountered the mysterious graveyard he wanted to spy out.

Beforehand, Crisswell has informed the rest of us in his prologue that:

 This is a story of those in the twilight time… in a void between the living and the dead. Monsters to be pitied, monsters to be despised…A night with the Ghouls…

Doesn’t that whole routine remind you of an average night at most gay venues around the planet, particularly when there’s a particularly awful drag routine being perpetrated upon one?

On clear nights, beneath the cold night of the Moon, howl the dog and the wolf and creeping things crawl out of the slime.  It is then that the ghouls feast in all their radiance…

Probably Maccas, KFC or Burger King. As for the creeping things crawling out of the slime, no-one looks their best at aaargghhh o’clock in the morning, do they?

But yes, Crisswell is queen of all that he surveys. That is, except when he keeps bickering with that grrrly-ghoul, the high femme Princess of Dykeness- oops, no, Darkness. Actually, no, got it right the first time, as we shall see later. Who knew that lesbian-gay co-belligerency and its discontents preceded the seventies…???

There are momentary dance vignettes from an Indian woman and topless street walker dancing with a skeleton, before Bob and Shirley finally show up and are captured by a talkative mummy who doesn’t like snakes, and a growling werewolf, who tie them up. Shortly after this, there’s an “Ancient Egyptian” cat girl dancer, who is ineptly “whipped” by a servitor, before she escapes. Crizzy cackles:

Torture! Torture! It pleases me!

All I can say is that Crizzy must have been easily pleased. It is at this point that the Princess starts her round of repetitive and interminable bickering with Crizzy for the first time, before they break off to watch a Mexican Skull Dance, while the Mummy and Wolfman are summoned before Crizzy, as the Wolfman denies howling off-key at the Moon again.

The Princess starts whingeing about the imminent daybreak and the cessation of the delirious antics of the night. Bob and Shirley also get shirty with one another, although the ropes were badly tied, and they’re trying to break free. It turns out that the Princess wants Shirley for her own plaything. The Wolfman also wants Shirley for dinner, presumably as main course. As for Bob:

Criswell: No-one wants to see a man dance!

Closet case.

Bob: If I could get my hands on you…

Oh, Brad- er, Bob- you’re so masculine!!!

Criswell: Oh, you could do nothing!!!

Criswell wants Shirley too (which means that Crizzy may have lost a gambling session with Ed Wood and is currently trying to secure Shirley’s wardrobe and help himself to her angora sweaters…) The Princess of Darkness starts complaining about her turn to have naughty night time fun, and still going on and on about imminent daybreak, which leads Criswell (the sexist old porker!) to sternly remind the Princess that he is Queen of the Night and feminism hasn’t been invented yet.  She has to wait until the Zombie Dance Girl finishes her number, then she gets the chance to remove Shirley’s top, just before she sacrifices her.

However, too late, as day finally breaks, and everyone turns into steaming fake anatomy lecture skeletons, except for Bob and Shirley, who find themselves back at the car wreck. It was all a dream, they conclude.

However, Criswell is still undead and was only taking a coffin break.  He provides an epilogue that the ghouls will return…

upon the first appearance of the deep shadows of the night… when the Moon is full…to rejoice in their evil lust…

See? I told you it was all a metaphor for us!!!

Crizzy adds:

Make a wide path around the unholy grounds…of the Night people. Who can say we cannot exist. Can you?

Well, I believe in faeries…

Highly Recommended:

Orgy of the Dead script:

http://www.imsdb.com/Movie%20Scripts/Orgy%20of%20the%20Dead%20Script.html