The Movie Orgy is a five-hour onslaught (some versions run shorter, others, longer) of B-movies, old commercials, and outdated (even at the time it was made) Americana and propaganda. It was directed, edited, and compiled by Joe (Gremlins) Dante and got him enough notice to get him a job cutting trailers for Roger Corman. It’s like an early version of a fan-made horror mixtape. It’s often crude and some of the editing is a bit choppy. It’s definitely overlong, but fascinating all the same.
It opens with a hodgepodge of movie stills, film clips, and scenes from cartoons. We then get several condensed versions (sort of like one of those old Castle Films 8mm home movies) of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Giant Gila Monster, College Confidential, Beginning of the End, and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. The best of the mini features are the snippets from Speed Crazy where criminal Brett Halsey lashes out at anyone who “crowds” him.
These sequences are occasionally interrupted by vintage commercials, newsreel clips, and scenes from old TV shows. Other bits include low budget Biblical films, industrial shorts, Ann-Margret selling savings bonds to help the Vietnam war effort, Abbott and Costello doing their Susquehanna Hat Company routine, an old timey military filmstrip on women’s hygiene (which shows women how to pop blisters, explains their period, and talks about menopause), and Nixon’s “Checkers” speech. I guess the best way to describe it is channel surfing with a short attention span.
As much fun as a lot of this is, I can’t imagine being able to get through this in one sitting. I watched it in twenty-to-thirty-minute increments over several weeks just before bed, and it did the trick nicely. Even then, it was kind of a long haul, but the final montage of giant movie monsters from King Kong to The Giant Claw to The Amazing Colossal Man destroying cities is totally worth the wait.
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