Now Ed Wood Jr is notorious for topping so many lists of the worst film directors all time. I can actually think of a couple of worse directors than Wood but he would definitely make my All-Time Five Worst Directors list. On the other hand, as a screenwriter and novelist he was surprisingly interesting and entertaining. You’ll always get touches of Ed Wood craziness and weirdness but he was quite capable of taking a deliberately tongue-in-cheek approach and as a writer his craziness could be, in its own odd way, inspired.
I don’t think I will ever again be tempted to watch another movie that he directed but if I see his name listed in the credits as screenwriter of a movie then I will seek out that movie. I consider The Violent Years, a juvenile delinquent movie that he scripted, to be a must-see movie.
Peter Perry Jr directed a whole slew of nudie movies in the 60s and they’re all good-natured and offbeat and enjoyable. Perry understood how to make a nudie movie that offered more than just naked ladies.
Revenge of the Virgins deals with an Apache tribe trying to stop gold prospectors from moving into its territory. There are only a handful of tribe members left. Less than a dozen in fact. They are all young, female and incredibly hot. They all spend the entire movie topless. The leader of the tribe is a blonde babe. She was kidnapped and raised by the tribe.
Melvin Potter (Charles Veltmann Jr) and his wife Ruby (Jodean Lawrence) have just arrived in a small town out West and hope to buy the saloon. They need money.
Grizzled old prospector Pan Taggart (Stanton Pritchard) may be able to help them. He knows where there is an abundance of gold for the taking. They will need to hire some gunmen. The local Apaches are not friendly.
The expedition sets out. Five men and a woman, all armed. They don’t trust each other too much, with good reason.
And then suddenly an arrow comes from out of nowhere and the expedition is one man short. They know the Apaches are now stalking them although they don’t know that the Apaches are all gorgeous young babes. They may be gorgeous bare-breasted babes but they’re dead shots with a bow and they’re smart enough not to contemplate a frontal assault. Their plan is obviously to pick off the members of the expedition one by one.
This would be the time for the expedition members to present a united front but they’re still planing to double-cross each other. And those Apache gals just keep stalking and shooting and then scooting.
That’s it for the plot but it’s a perfectly serviceable plot for a B-western.
What makes the movie interesting is the tone. Right at the start we get a voiceover that tells us that it may be just a tall tale told by old prospectors around the campfire. Clearly we’re not supposed to take the movie too seriously. But it does not become an out-and-out spoof nor does it indulge in out-and-out goofiness. In fact it gets rather dark at times. This is a story of a party of people being stalked by warriors who are smart, skilful, ruthless and remorseless. There’s a certain atmosphere of doom and desperation descending upon out gold-crazed adventurers. They haven’t even set eyes on the amazonian warrior girls who are slaughtering them one at a time.
When people talk about Ed Wood Jr there’s a tendency to focus on his most famous and most catastrophically inept movies as a director, such as Plan 9 from Outer space. It’s actually much more interesting to look at Wood’s forays into relatively conventional storytelling, both as director (in his attempt at a noirish crime thriller, Jail Bait) and as screenwriter (in the hugely entertaining girl juvenile delinquent movie The Violent Years) and as a novelist. What makes these efforts fascinating is that they are fairly straightforward but with a slightly off-kilter tone and occasional WTF moments.
Revenge of the Virgins follows that pattern. The plot is slightly outlandish but it does not venture into the world of the crazy and impossible. The tone is just slightly odd in an unsettling way. Is this trying to be a gritty dark-edged western or is it deliberately trying to be offbeat? Is it intended to be tongue-in-cheek? It’s hard to be sure, and that’s what makes it interesting.
Revenge of the Virgins is also, in a weird kind of way, a girl gang movie. And Ed Wood was obsessed with girl gangs.
The Apache maidens are all extremely pretty and if you’re into bare breasts you won’t be disappointed.
An oddball movie but I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. Highly recommended.
I’ve reviewed the classic Ed Wood-scripted juvenile delinquent movie The Violent Years (1956) and his wild juvenile delinquent novel Devil Girls. And I’ve reviewed Jail Bait (1954), the only movie directed by Wood that is almost watchable.
I’ve reviewed quite a few of Peter Perry Jr’s sexploitation movies and I recommend all of them - The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966), Kiss Me Quick! (1964), My Tale Is Hot (1964) and The Joys of Jezebel (1970).
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