20 Exploitation Films You Must See Before You Die

20. Orgy Of The Dead (1965)

Ed Wood’s first collaboration with Bulgarian skinflick auteur “A.C. Stephen” (aka Steve Apostolof), Orgy Of The Dead began life as an eighteen-page script called Nudie Ghoulies to which Ed added The Mummy and The Wolf Man while Criswell, encoring from Plan 9 From Outer Space, was brought in as “Emperor of the Dead.” Once again, this incomparable MC introduces the proceedings as only he can, reading his demented dialogue (“It will please me very much to see the Slave Girl with her tortures”) from cue cards Ed was holding beneath the camera.

When the Emperor kidnaps an aspiring writer and his girlfriend, he forces them to watch ten striptease acts performed by such starlets as “Gold Girl” (who dances covered in gold paint), “Cat Girl” (who wears a crotchless catsuit) and “Slave Girl” (who dances naked with her hands bound).

Speaking of starlets, special mention must be made of Pat Barringer, whose dual role as the heroine and as Gold Girl allows her to give two amusingly bad performances. “Poor Pat Barringer,” muses John Andrews, who played The Wolf Man. “She thought she was going to be a big star. And she couldn’t even scream and make it convincing. She couldn’t do s**t. And those tits are plastic, by the way.”