Ed Wood Jr. is well known as the proto-indie filmmaker who made films by hook or by crook, but aspired to Hollywood success. Yet when he got his first shot at a feature, he made a bizarrely personal statement on alternate sexual lifestyles such as cross-dressing and sex-change, the semi-experimental Glen or Glenda (1953). He arguably blew his shot at a Hollywood career by this effort.
It is also known that Wood fell into the world of pulp novel writing in the early 1960's, which led to writing for skin magazines, and finally working in the production of skin movies (I am simplifying things quite a bit here.) His new film vocation followed the trajectory of increasing permissiveness in the second half of that decade, from topless features like Orgy of the Dead (1965) to frontal nudity and simulated sex movies, then finally to films with real sexual contact. Wood's Necromania (1971) exists in a "soft" or simulated sex version and also a "hard" version with a couple of minutes of "inserts" or edited-in shots of actual sexual intercourse, which were shot separately from the main feature. Yet even in this blatantly sexual film Wood had not fully entered the genre of "hardcore" and it was not believed he had participated as director to that degree.
The discovery of the lost Ed Wood-scripted and directed film The Young Marrieds (the movie is actually dated 1972 in the credits) reveals that Wood indeed finally entered into hardcore feature filmmaking—the antithesis of his desired Hollywood career---but that the issues of his first, "mainstream" feature were still very much his personal concern. Like Glen or Glenda, The Young Marrieds is preoccupied with alternative sexualities and how society views those. They both also function as a plea for tolerance by that society. The similarity can be readily proved by comparing the V/O "stripper bar" conversation early in The Young Marrieds with the trailer for Glen or Glenda. The viewer will be amazed by how Wood utilized virtually the same conversation in the same way in two films made almost 20 years apart. Further, the male protagonist in The Young Marrieds is put through an "eyes wide shut" type of sexual journey in which his confidently assumed macho heterosexuality is progressively challenged and undermined, to the final shocking confrontation which contradicts porn-genre expectations just as surely as Glen or Glenda contradicted Hollywood ones (note that I am referring here to the full-length version of The Young Marrieds which appears on the After Hours' DVD release, "Ed Wood's Dirty Movies" and not the Alpha Blue Archive version which is 8 minutes shorter.) It is my belief that Ed Wood was a bona fide film rebel and auteur who put his personal stamp strongly into his final film even though it was a low budget sex movie.
Lastly, even though I state that The Young Marrieds is a hardcore film, it actually isn't quite 'all-the-way', partly because the hardcore (or X-rated) genre wasn't fully established stylistically or even legally (i.e., obscenity-wise) at that date, and possibly because Wood was reluctant or unable to coax the proper performances for hardcore. The Young Marrieds lacks the requisite "money shot" in every sex scene, and the "lesbian" scenes are still simulated (it is known that Wood had a fascination-fear of lesbianism.) But as has been established by Ed Wood Jr. biographer Rudolph Grey, Wood went on to make fully hardcore sex in the "short subjects" for 8mm "loop" release that he wrote and directed for Swedish Erotica and other lines in 1972 and later.
It is also known that Wood fell into the world of pulp novel writing in the early 1960's, which led to writing for skin magazines, and finally working in the production of skin movies (I am simplifying things quite a bit here.) His new film vocation followed the trajectory of increasing permissiveness in the second half of that decade, from topless features like Orgy of the Dead (1965) to frontal nudity and simulated sex movies, then finally to films with real sexual contact. Wood's Necromania (1971) exists in a "soft" or simulated sex version and also a "hard" version with a couple of minutes of "inserts" or edited-in shots of actual sexual intercourse, which were shot separately from the main feature. Yet even in this blatantly sexual film Wood had not fully entered the genre of "hardcore" and it was not believed he had participated as director to that degree.
The discovery of the lost Ed Wood-scripted and directed film The Young Marrieds (the movie is actually dated 1972 in the credits) reveals that Wood indeed finally entered into hardcore feature filmmaking—the antithesis of his desired Hollywood career---but that the issues of his first, "mainstream" feature were still very much his personal concern. Like Glen or Glenda, The Young Marrieds is preoccupied with alternative sexualities and how society views those. They both also function as a plea for tolerance by that society. The similarity can be readily proved by comparing the V/O "stripper bar" conversation early in The Young Marrieds with the trailer for Glen or Glenda. The viewer will be amazed by how Wood utilized virtually the same conversation in the same way in two films made almost 20 years apart. Further, the male protagonist in The Young Marrieds is put through an "eyes wide shut" type of sexual journey in which his confidently assumed macho heterosexuality is progressively challenged and undermined, to the final shocking confrontation which contradicts porn-genre expectations just as surely as Glen or Glenda contradicted Hollywood ones (note that I am referring here to the full-length version of The Young Marrieds which appears on the After Hours' DVD release, "Ed Wood's Dirty Movies" and not the Alpha Blue Archive version which is 8 minutes shorter.) It is my belief that Ed Wood was a bona fide film rebel and auteur who put his personal stamp strongly into his final film even though it was a low budget sex movie.
Lastly, even though I state that The Young Marrieds is a hardcore film, it actually isn't quite 'all-the-way', partly because the hardcore (or X-rated) genre wasn't fully established stylistically or even legally (i.e., obscenity-wise) at that date, and possibly because Wood was reluctant or unable to coax the proper performances for hardcore. The Young Marrieds lacks the requisite "money shot" in every sex scene, and the "lesbian" scenes are still simulated (it is known that Wood had a fascination-fear of lesbianism.) But as has been established by Ed Wood Jr. biographer Rudolph Grey, Wood went on to make fully hardcore sex in the "short subjects" for 8mm "loop" release that he wrote and directed for Swedish Erotica and other lines in 1972 and later.
