Necromania (sometimes subtitled A Tale of Weird Love) is a pornographic horror film by Ed Wood, released in 1971.
[1] A young couple, Danny and Shirley Carpenter, drives up to an old mansion in suburban California.
[2] In a room decorated with occult-related items and containing a coffin, Danny and Shirley are greeted by Tanya.
They are there to see necromancer Madame Heles (pronounced "heals") for a solution to Danny's erectile dysfunction.
[2] Tanya leaves the room and encounters a man called Carl, who demands to have sex with her, claiming that he paid plenty to be the first to have her.
[2] Another young woman in a nightgown approaches Shirley and explains that this wolf died of rabies.
[2] Ed Wood produced, wrote, and directed the film under the pseudonym "Don Miller".
Rob Craig observes that certain elements of the original story were "slavishly" adapted, while others were altered or removed in their entirety.
[3] During the two-day shoot, Wood directed the film in a pink baby doll nightie and a bra.
It was so hot in the studio that actress Rene Bond fainted and the crew had to throw water on her face.
The pioneers of the subgenre were films such as Mona the Virgin Nymph (1970) by Howard Ziehm and Sex USA (1970) by Gerard Damiano.
[2] The idea of graphic sex as an integral part of an adult-oriented narrative was further explored in Last Tango in Paris (1972) by Bernardo Bertolucci, Sodom and Gomorrah: The Last Seven Days (1974) by Artie Mitchell, and The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976) by Radley Metzger.
[2] The spying eyes, seen through a painting are part of a trope derived from films featuring haunted houses.
[2] Craig sees the group sex sessions seen through the prism as a depiction of the then-ongoing Sexual Revolution.
[2] Thought considered lost for years, it resurfaced in edited form on Mike Vraney's Something Weird imprint in the late 1980s, then was re-released on DVD by Fleshbot Films in 2005.
The film magazine Cult Movies (issue #36) printed a detailed article about the rediscovery of Wood's Necromania and The Only House in Town.
Writing in AllMovie, critic Fred Beldin noted that "a few of the transvestite auteur's trademark eccentricities [...] emerge for those familiar with his work.
The score is wildly inappropriate, spy-movie style bombast, and occasionally, some amusing non-sequitur will slip out of an actor's mouth," and "despite Necromania's occult themes (which weren't completely unusual for the era), it's a fairly ordinary pornographic film, making for a strange coda to an otherwise wholly idiosyncratic career.
), there is very little in the way of plot or dialogue, but what lines are spoken are typical Wood genius," that "the up-close-and-clinical hardcore sex is anything but sexy, and in fact may invite fast-forwarding," and noted that "once you get past the genealogical bumping and grinding, Necromania is an enjoyable curio for Ed Wood fans and little more.