Werewolf News

Do not be alarmed by the title of this month’s Full Moon Feature: Orgy of the Dead was made in 1965, so it’s nowhere near as risque at it sounds. It was also written by Edward D. Wood, Jr., based on his own novel, so there’s little chance of anyone finding it at all erotic in spite of the bevy of nearly naked women that are made to dance for the pleasure of Criswell, the Emperor of the Night (and allegedly the audience).

It all starts out innocently enough with a young couple (William Bates and Pat Barrington) driving out to a cemetery because, he being a horror writer, he’s looking for inspiration for one of his extremely popular monster stories. She’s not so keen on the idea, but she does exchange a chaste kiss with him, prompting him to remark, “Your puritan upbringing holds you back from my monsters, but it certainly doesn’t hurt your art of kissing.” Soon after, he loses control and crashes the car, which they are thrown clear of. That’s the cue for Criswell to beckon forth the “princes of darkness” — or maybe he says “princess.” It’s really hard to tell. I’m leaning toward the latter because only one darkness-dweller comes forth, the Black Ghoul (Fawn Silver), who gets things started by summoning a Native American girl who died in flame to… dance topless near a flame. This she does for a long time, setting the precedent for all of the acts to follow.

While this is going on, director Stephen C. Apostolof (credited as A.C. Stephen) cuts away to Bates and Barrington as they come to and decide to investigate the music coming from the cemetery. They miss most of the next act, a streetwalker, but they watch in an unconvincing approximation of horror from the treeline as a girl who worshiped gold in life (also Barrington) is put through her paces. Her routine ends with Criswell imploring her two hunky helpers to “Throw gold on her” and “More gold” and “More gold” and “More gold!” It’s only after she gets deposited in a boiling cauldron of gold and emerges looking like she ran afoul of Auric Goldfinger that the two interlopers are caught by a Werewolf (John Andrews) and Mummy (Louis Ojena) and tied up so they can have a better view of the proceedings. Incidentally, when the Mummy speaks his voice is dubbed in such a way that’s oddly muffled, which makes it really strange when he banters with the Werewolf, who only howls and growls. They also stand off to the side for the rest of the picture and seem to get a lot more into it than the other four spectators, who can’t work up the energy to look even slightly enthused to be there.

And it’s hard to blame them, really, since the balance of the picture is taken up by half a dozen mostly interchangeable dance numbers punctuated by the occasional Wood-ism. (My favorite: “A pussycat is born to be whipped.”) Apart from the cat woman, who wears a full-body costume and is whipped throughout her number (a reference to the Ann-Margret vehicle Kitten With a Whip, maybe?), the others can only be distinguished by their outfits (which always disappear during a cutaway — it’s like the filmmakers were specifically prohibited from showing any actual stripping) and maybe a thematic prop or two. (For example, the bride who strangled her husband on their wedding night gets to keep her veil on the whole time.) Finally, the whole shebang comes to an end with the sunrise, which causes the creatures of the night to turn into skeletons (yes, the Werewolf, too), but as Criswell warns, they’ll return with the next full moon. Personally, I think one visit with them is more than enough.

In the wake of Universal’s success with The Wolf Man in 1941, two other studios rushed their own werewolf films into production, but only one of them had significant resources to throw behind it. The one that didn’t was Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation, which turned out The Mad Monster in record time, releasing it just five months after Larry Talbot first sprouted fur and ravaged the countryside.

Directed by Sam Newfield, a preternaturally prolific filmmaker who cranked ’em out at the rate of a dozen or more a year at his peak (and whose vast filmography includes such anti-classics as The Terror of Tiny Town, The Monster Maker and I Accuse My Parents), The Mad Monster stars George Zucco as a mad scientist whose theories on blood transfusions between species (which he believes will produce feral, unstoppable soldiers) got him laughed out of academia, forcing him to retreat to the swamp to conduct his unethical experiments in secret. There he injects the blood of a wolf into his slow-witted handyman Petro (Glenn Strange), who becomes a wolf man in a series of lap dissolves, and sets the savage beast on his critics. Well, that’s what Zucco says he’s going to do. Mostly he just lets Strange wander around the foggy swamp aimlessly — all the better to pad out the running time. There’s also a budding romance of sorts between cub reporter Johnny Downs and Zucco’s daughter (Anne Nagel), who believes he’s a great scientist without having any idea what he’s working on. Naturally she has to find out in the most dramatic way possible.

As it’s in the public domain, The Mad Monster has been packaged and repackaged several times over, and can be come by quite cheaply. Budget label Alpha Video has it by itself, but it can also be found in Mill Creek Entertainment’s “Horror Classics” 50-movie pack alongside a number of Newfield’s other PRC cheapies. The best way to see it, though, is with Joel and the Bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000 (it’s in Volume XIV from Shout! Factory). Even if they did tackle it in the show’s first season, when the writers were still working the kinks out, they gave it no quarter.

In comparison, 1942’s The Undying Monster has been treated much more respectfully on home video, but that’s what comes of having a major studio behind you. Produced by Twentieth Century-Fox on a substantially larger budget, the film was given a professional sheen by director John Brahm (who also did the 1944 version of The Lodger and 1945’s Hangover Square, released alongside The Undying Monster in the first “Fox Horror Classics” set) and cinematographer Lucien Ballard, who withhold for as long as possible the revelation that there’s something supernatural afoot at Hammond House.

Set at the turn of the century, The Undying Monster is in fact the dreaded Hammond Monster, which visits its curse upon siblings Heather Angel and John Howard, although they’re a bit blasé about it until it strikes them directly. That’s when Scotland Yard forensics specialist James Ellison and his eccentric assistant Heather Thatcher are brought in. The curious thing is they’re introduced in such a way that it seems like this is but one entry in a series of films featuring the duo, but that is not the case. The other major character is doctor Bramwell Fletcher, who clearly knows what’s going on from the start but is tight-lipped about it until the last minute. For a film that barely tops an hour, that doesn’t leave much time for the monster to do its thing.