If the name “Amazing Criswell” sounds familiar, it’s because he was an associate of the legendary Z grade movie producer Ed Wood. My friends, can you stand to hear the horrific story of the gay psychic who appeared in the worst movie known to humankind?

Jeron Konig Criswell (1907-1982) began his career as a hawker of his own “Criswell’s Amazing Vitamins” on KCOP-TV Los Angeles, before being caught out in terms of excess time. To remedy this, he included a “Criswell Predicts” segment in which he made outlandish “predictions,” almost none of which came out true.  Despite his lamentable track record, Criswell made friends with legendary bygone figures of stage and screen, such as Mae West. However, his fringe celebrity status also led him to associate with an aspiring straight transvestite film producer named Ed Wood, and it is from this that his posthumous fame has largely been derived.

What did he predict? A meteor would strike London. Pittsburgh would be terrorised by an outbreak of cannibalism. An “aphrodisian gas” would turn everyone exposed into rampaging erotomaniacs, and a young fellow in Arkansas would ask to marry his cat. Denver would melt into a soggy congealed lump. New York would be flooded. Vermont would be consumed in a nuclear holocaust. By the nineties, orbital space colonies would abound in Earth orbit- just as well, because humanity would be wiped out by a large black rainbow (!) on August 18, 1999. I must have missed it…

However, one prediction did come true, recorded in his magnum opus, Criswell Predicts (1968):

 ”I predict that perversion will flood the land beginning in 1970. I predict a series of homosexual cities, small, compact, carefully planned areas, will soon be blatantly advertised and exist from coast to coast. These compact communities will be complete with stores, churches, bars and restaurants which will put the olden Greeks or Romans to shame with their organized orgies. You will be able to find them near Boston, Des Moines, Columbus, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, St. Louis, New Orleans, Dallas, and Miami.

Much thought and planning will be expended in setting up these communities where perversion will parade shamelessly. And all this will be within the law because the perverted will claim they have been discriminated against. The Supreme Court will rule that whatever these consenting adult males, or females, wish to do, they can!

True: Gay rights have been upheld in many courts, while gay neighborhoods exist in cities throughout the land.

False: There are no organized orgies in Des Moines”

Criswell was gay himself, an habituee of the “Gold Cup”, a pre-Stonewall Hollywood gay cafe. He married a former burlesque dancer, Halo Meadows (born Myrtle Stonesifter).  Back to Ed Wood, that angora clad director of dubious fare. In the legendary Plan 9 From Outer Space, Criswell served as the narrator of the campy dire doings involving zombies, UFOs and ‘vampires” with capes over their mouths (connected to the death of Bela Lugosi, the original, while mixed up in all this).

Six years later, Crisswell headlined Orgy of the Dead (1965).  Two wholesome teenage types end up in a graveyard presided over by the Emperor of the Dead (Crizzy himself). The couple are forced to watch a series of straight burlesque dancers while camp old Crizzy chortles madly in the distance and is accompanied by horror icon “Vampira” as the curvaceous Black Ghoul. At the end of this effort, Crizzy/the Emperor turns into a wired anatomy lecture skeleton at sunrise. Overshadowed by Plan 9 (1959), Orgy of the Dead is nevertheless a kitsch classic itself and deserves to be examined on its own lack of merit.

Sadly, Criswell himself isn’t with us any longer, but he achieved posthumous infamy when he was portrayed in the biopic of Ed Wood, focusing on the days before the opening of Plan 9, although he really deserves an outing of his own.

Recommended:

Orgy of the Dead script:

http://www.geocities.com/zzippeddskripptzz/edwood/orgyofthedead.html

Arthur and Marilouise Kroker: “Criswell Predicts: Lost Voices from a Forgotten Future: 1956-59″ (January 1996) C-Theory:  http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=77

Rare Memorabilia:

Jeron Criswell: Criswell Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000: North Carolina: Grosset and Dunlap: 1968.

Jeron Criswell: Criswell Predicts Your Next Ten Years: North Carolina: Grosset and Dunlap: 1969/1971?