Memories of hardcore Ed Wood

The Young Marrieds is a hardcore porno movie made in Hollywood in 1971, but it's so much more than that. It's also the last ever film known to be directed by Ed Wood Jr., the cross-dressing man of destiny who gave us Plan 9 From Outer Space. For that reason alone, The Young Marrieds is already more important, historically, than—I dunno—Life of Pi. If Johnny Depp in an angora sweater is the image of Wood that you cherish, from the 1994 Tim Burton biopic, maybe stop reading. In reality, the so-called world’s worst filmmaker spent his last booze-soaked years churning out sex-movie screenplays and cheap novels with titles like The Oralists, Raped in the Grass, and To Make a Homo. His own directorial efforts were assumed to end with the softcore flick Necromania, also in 1971 (for which Wood also shot some XXX inserts.)

That was until local porn archeologist Dimitrios Otis stumbled on a 16mm print of The Young Marrieds among the detritus of the Venus Theatre, back when the jizz-stained curtain came down at the Main Street grindhouse for the very last time in 2007. To his amazement, Otis realized that Ed Wood’s last film, at that point, only existed as a rumour. And so plans were hatched to restore the film and release it on DVD to a world that would receive The Young Marrieds like a lost chapter of Finnegan’s Wake. Because I’m an extremely important person, and also because I whined like a total bitch about it, I was given a private screening. By this point, The Young Marrieds had only been viewed by Otis, Wood biographer Rudolph Grey, and myself—along with the billion or so furtive and haunted-looking men who caught the film in their local porno palace back in the ‘70s, bless their crippled dicks.

And I can’t begin to imagine, assuming they were paying attention (they weren’t), what those guys made of dialogue that was an even deeper shade of purple than star Louis Wolf’s tumescent cock. The Young Marrieds is, by every measure, classic Ed Wood. As it ends, a voice intones, "Let us be patient, tender, wise, and forgiving in this strange task of living. For if we fail each other, each will be gray driftwood lapsing into the abyss." Now that’s what I want from a dirty movie! In retrospect, seeing The Young Marrieds was like gazing upon Cleopatra’s beauty or witnessing the flight of the fabled Oozlum bird. I should have gone blind. Instead, I just looked forward to the official release of the film—which never happened. And so The Young Marrieds became a rumour all over again, albeit one with a bit more flesh attached.

Anyway, with the restoration of vintage Vancouver porno Sexcula—and since Straight readers clearly share my profane cinematic interests, judging by the ridiculous number of people who read our little piece about it—I decided to open the book again on The Young Marrieds. And guess what? After a whole bunch of false starts, Otis tells me that the film is finally set to be released in the fall. In the meantime, let us be patient, tender, wise, and forgiving. We’ve waited this long to see a movie you’ve never heard of, a few more months won’t make any difference.

Georgia Straight, May 2013