(Note: I’m very proud of this, the first feature, far as I know, ever published on the discovery of Ed Wood Jr’s lost XXX feature, The Young Marrieds. A pox on the Vancouver Courier for its failure to archive the article online, even before the paper folded—the reason, I suppose, it’s never cited in the many articles written since—although I have this faint recollection that they were never particularly fond of the piece, or me. I’m relieved that I could track down a transcription on a now defunct cult-movie message board before it disappeared forever. The Young Marrieds was eventually released in two separate DVD versions by two separate companies and it turns out the story of the film is more convoluted than we knew back when Vancouver Porn Archaeologist Dmitiri Otis stumbled on a 16mm copy at one of the city’s last porno theatres. His story is convoluted too, involving jail time in the US for reasons I was never privy to. But he’s a good guy. I have very fond memories of watching this movie projected on the wall of his shitty Eastside Porno Archeologist’s apartment one grey Vancouver afternoon back when I was young and still unwise in this strange task of living.)

You wouldn't know it from Tim Burton's 1994 biopic, but the most intriguing part of Ed Wood Jr's life came after Plan 9 from Outer Space. With little else except a bottle and a typewriter that went in and out of hock until the day he died in 1978, the "World's Worst Director" remained an invisible but prolific writer during the '60s and '70s, churning out countless potboilers for low-rent Hollywood publishers servicing the raincoat brigade, with titles like Death of a Transvestite, Purple Thighs, and Young, Black, and Gay. While these literary efforts have been documented comprehensively by Wood's biographer Rudolph Grey, his filmic output at this time has remained comparatively murky. Bits and pieces have emerged over the years, including a feature length porno called Necromania, but one of the biggest mysteries in the blighted life and sodden filmography of Wood has finally been solved, and it happened right here in Vancouver. 

Dimitrios Otis is the self-styled "porn archaeologist" behind the website realboogienights.com. In documenting the history of the adult film industry in his hometown, in particular the Venus Theatre on Main Street, Otis was given the opportunity to purchase the cinema's extensive library of vintage 16mm films. A coincidental encounter with Rudolph Grey's Wood bio Nightmare of Ecstasy got Otis doubly excited about the otherwise anonymous reels of livid flesh, tumescent members, and hirsute permissive-era boxes now in his possession. In particular, a glancing reference to a 1971 movie called The Young Marrieds caught Otis's eye, although Grey's book offered little information outside of the title.

"I recognized The Young Marrieds from the list I have," Otis says, “so then I had to find the reel, match the numbers, and look at this thing. I'm unspooling it, the title comes up, and it says The Young Marrieds." Otis grins broadly. "Once I saw the pseudonym he used, I knew it was Wood."  A private screening at the Ridge Theatre confirmed the film's pedigree, from the unmistakably overripe dialogue to its extremely idiosyncratic theme, and the myriad moments of ineffable Woodsian weirdness and ineptitude that come in between. Otis decided to get behind the restoration of The Young Marrieds, which now officially stands as the very last feature film directed by the most pitied and despised—albeit the most entertaining—filmmaker of all time. As Otis remarks with some gravity, "I feel I have a certain obligation to get it out there." One person who predictably agrees is Grey, who assumed The Young Marrieds was simply an alternate title for a movie called The Only House.

"Ed caused the confusion by not listing it in his resume," Grey explains over the phone from his New York home. "He used one of his writing pseudonyms for director credit, and that's understandable. L.A. vice were busting people left and right at that time." As Grey implies, the 1972 flick is heavy on skin, although Otis prefers to keep a lid on just how much "wood" to expect from Wood and also the pseudonym he uses, at least until he can secure a release (negotiations with cult film specialist Synapse having recently stalled). He's equally cagey about the movie's subject matter, although both he and Grey were knocked out by its "subversiveness." Teases Grey: "The Young Marrieds has certain similarities to his first feature, Glen or Glenda, Wood's criticism of 'middle class morality,' which naturally plagued him his entire life, being a transvestite." Otis concurs. "Where the theme goes is pretty rare,” he says. “I think it's a very personal film of Ed Wood's." 

A screening for the Courier confirms why Otis and Grey are so excited. The Young Marrieds is dynamite. The tale of a young couple's struggle to overcome their "hang-ups," it's far from being just endearingly awful; there's also enough of Wood's familiar touch to serve as a rock-bottom demonstration of the auteur theory, including moments of sideways fetishism and an orgy sequence hysterically punctuated by a prop that refuses to behave itself, which Wood almost turns into a sub-plot in and of itself. Grey, meanwhile, is blown away by the film's "transcendent, other dimension-like sequences," and points out that its director cared enough to invest "humour and energy" into what was probably a three-day project at best. "The beauty of it is hearing Wood's dialogue," Grey states, "and the surprises, which I won't ruin here." 

Significantly, Grey is most moved by the film's hilariously portentous, yet oddly resonant final shot. As the ocean crashes against jagged promontories, a voice-over 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…" This is supposed to be a porno? "It would appear," Grey concludes, "the last words Wood wrote to be heard on the screen were, '...lapsing into the abyss.' Now, there's something to think about."

Vancouver Courier, March 2007