Blood Orgy of the She-Devils

Ted V. Mikels is sometimes lumped together with Ed Wood, Ray Dennis Steckler and Herschell Gordon Lewis as a director of good "bad" movies. This is incorrect. He makes BAD "bad" movies! They stink! Mikels is probably the only director who can take a trashtastic title like 'Blood Orgy of the She-Devils' and make it boring. In fact I sometimes think Mikels is responsible for the most boring movies ever made. Not arthouse Warhol/Antonioni/Tarkovsky "boring" (which I can appreciate), but looking-at-your-watch-every-ten-minutes boring. Now this is quite an achievement when you're dealing with potentially sensational material concerning witchcraft and political assassinations! I found this movie a chore to sit through. And no, there is no "blood orgy" and the "she-devils" dance a lot but keep their clothes on. Awful on every level.

"Blood Orgy Of The She Devils" - an awesome title, that raises hopes for an ultra-sleazy and gory 70s Explotitation effort full of gratuitous female nudity, chopped off limbs etc. Unfortunately Ted V. Mikels' film, which is nonetheless slightly entertaining for its trashiness, is a very tame, and often boring yawner, that does not nearly come up to what the title promises. As it often was the case with films with an extremely low budget, this was given a title that has little to nothing to do with the actual film in order to lure viewers into theaters. The film itself is an absolutely ridiculous mess, but even though often too boring, it has its amusing moments. The film has a ridiculous and confused plot dealing with witchcraft, which revolves around an occult voodoo circle lead by a witch named Mara. Mara has supernatural powers which she can use to communicate with the dead as well as for other black magic purposes. When she includes a pretty young woman in her unholy circle, the girl's boyfriend and best friend consider a doctor who is an expert for the occult. The doctor, basically the hero of the film, is constantly talking in 'sophisticated' nonsensical phrases about witchcraft. The performances are terrible, but terrible performances are something I can forgive in low-budget cinema. What I missed were the exploitative factors, namely the expected gore and sleaze. The popularity of Michael Reeves' British Horror masterpiece "Witchfinder General" starring the great Vincent Price spawned a number of violent 'Hexploitation' films about witch-hunts, most prominently the notorious (and great) "Mark Of The Devil". Director Mikels also tried to jump on the bandwagon here, and "Blood Orgy Of The She-Devils" therefore includes two flashbacks to the time of witch-hunts, which are incredibly corny, but probably even so the best scenes in the film. Mikels is probably best known for "The Corpse Grinders" of 1972, which has a certain cult status, and which I have yet to see. "Blood Orgy Of The She Devils" is certainly not the nasty Exploitation film the title suggests, but merely a quite tame, and very very silly little film that mildly amuses but bores even more. It somehow reminded me of "Snake People", an extremely odd low budget-production which happened to be one of the last films starring the great Horror icon Boris Karloff. The difference is that this one doesn't star Karloff. "Blood Orgy Of The She Devils" has its amusing moments, and fans of (awful) cult cinema can consider watching it. Others should avoid it. I personally don't regret watching it, as I was somehow entertained by it, however, I made sure to write this review the day after watching it, since I will probably have forgotten it entirely in a week.

I spent $5 on a VHS copy of this film. I want that $5 back. I mean, think of all the gumballs I could have bought instead!

There's no orgy, there's little blood and Leslie McCrae hasn't learned to dance any better since her terrible turn in "The Girl in Gold Boots." Everyone in this film looks like they swallowed a quart of Nyquil before filming began. The plot...was there one? I saw this film less than six months ago and I can't remember much about its central storyline. Maybe it's a subconscious defense mechanism that caused me to block it from my memory. It's AWFUL! It tried too hard to be arty, and fails because nobody's art is going to be taken seriously when you have scantily clad go-go dancers wiggling around with long spears.

Big yawn.

T.V. Mikels movies often have outlandish plots and titles but the execution almost always lacks excitement. This PG-rated hokum about suburban occultism will have your mind wandering half way into it and fully asleep by the end. So what's good about it? I did like the electronic score and the harem of dancing girls swaying to a native bongo beat in their castle. Whoever played the head witch put some gusto into her performance but overall this movie is a real drag. Even more dull than watching this movie is watching it with Mikels' audio commentary on the DVD. If you've seen the episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show on Mikels you know that he's a lovable eccentric but he barely says anything on the commentary.

I think I may be turning into a cinematic masochist. After suffering through two of Ted V. Mikels' abominations--"The Astro-Zombies" (1967), one of the world's worst, and "The Corpse Grinders" (1972), which is marginally better but still decidedly crummy--I had to rent out the Mikels-produced 1977 effort "The Worm Eaters," another incredible stinker. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson, but no, I then had to go out and rent Mikels' 1973 witchcraft epic "Blood Orgy of the She-Devils," and I guess I got what I deserved. In this one, a coven of hotty SoCal witches is led by a high priestess named Mara (Lila Zaborin). What little plot there is to speak of deals with the coven sacrificing the occasional male chump to Satan, some foreign agents who ask Mara to kill a U.N. ambassador with her voodoo powers, a (surprisingly well-done) seance ceremony, and a college professor who battles the high priestess. As usual in a Mikels film, the acting, scripting, lighting, editing, directing and FX are all rock-bottom deplorable, but at least--unlike, say, "The Astro-Zombies"--the story is comprehensible here, outlandish as it may be, and Zaborin intones her lines with great intensity. Some gratuitous scenes of witch torture from what I gather is supposed to be the 1600s only make the picture weirder than it would have been otherwise. Anyway, perhaps Michael Weldon, in my beloved "Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film," puts it best concerning this movie: "From the man responsible for 'Astro-Zombies,' so don't expect quality of any kind." I guess I'm a hopeless case, though, because now I'm searching out Ted V. Mikels' other 1973 masterpiece, "The Doll Squad"...