SPOILERS INCLUDED Apart from 1953's Mesa of Lost Women, the films of Ron Ormond have been impossibly hard to track down. His shunning of the exploitation film world, bad distribution deals and his 1981 death denied generations of a fine body of work. Apparently after initial playdates The Monster and the Stripper didn't surface again for decades. Although adverse to filming upfront sex and violence, to survive in `this crazy rat race they call showbiz' Ormond seems to have concocted The Monster and the Stripper to recall both Russ Meyer's mammary fests and Herschell Gordon Lewis's BloodFeasts. Credited with editing, writing, producing, directing and casting his family in roles, Ormond also takes centre stage (under his real name Vic Narno) in the pivotal roles of Nemo. Puffy eyed, with dark Roy Orbison glasses and a frankly dreadful wig, Nemo owns the hottest strip club on `a jungle of flesh' New Orleans Bourbon Street. One mean customer gangster Nemo deals in drugs and eliminates anyone who stands in his way. When one toothless wonder rips him off Nemo forces him to drink a whole black mucus ridden spittoon before he is polished off. In contrast June Ormond is Bunny, a motherly eccentric in control of the ever bitchy strippers. Nemo attempts to woo innocent Nashville singer MaryJane by promising to make her a big star for a price, `all good little girls are bad once in a while' he lechers. This doesn't fare too well with the club's star attraction Titania, an incredible whitetrash stripper with bucket loads of eye make-up and gravity defying hairdo whose `brains are wasted in that beautiful body'. All this would make the movie a potent crime drama with a sleazy backdrop but Ormond hasn't even got started yet- juxtaposed with the overripe melodrama we're treated to lots of acts auditioning for a place in Nemo's place- a hippy stripper, a French psychedelic painter `bon', a couple of harmonica players, even the 50 plus Bunny joins in a dance number with LSD references. There is certainly enough strippers among that motley crew but what of the famed monster?. Well in the neighbouring swamps of Louisiana a huge `Swamp Thing' has been dismembering cows and pulling clueless farmers to a watery grave. As portrayed by giant rockabilly singer Sleepy LaBeef, Ormond's monster is quite a sight- a sort of huge werewolf caveman with unkept hair, fangs, giant eyebrows and a stoned look on his face. After reading about the monster's exploits (`SWAMP MONSTER STRIKES AGAIN') Nemo figures that the monster will propel him to the big time and sends his henchman Mr Gordon to catch the thing. Also along for the ride are two rednecks, Coe and Stud, plus Tim Ormond as backwards teenager Tim. Of course this `big peckerwood' is more cunning than these four tools- Stud gets the stuffing pulled out of him (literally), while Coe has his arm pulled out of its socket, then is beaten to death with the fleshly severed limb all in lip smacking `voluptuous color'. Finally the swamp thing is brought back to Nemo's place as a mighty Joe Young style attraction. He grunts and growls through MaryJane's blues number and Titania's `wild dance of passion' but the grossest part of his act involves biting off chicken's heads and gobbling their insides all `in the spirit of the late PT Barnum'. Offstage the bitching continues with a catfight between Titania and her unwanted protege that momentarily allows the Swamp Thing to escape, tearing off one of Titania's breasts in the process. Finally after a botched drug deal Nemo takes MaryJane hostage in the middle of a shootout, only to run head on into his rampaging prize attraction who promptly crushes his head, making him haemorrhage like a tap. For a film mostly shot in a studio, Monster and the Stripper remains an extremely atmospheric experience- an opening monologue about the history of New Orleans seems at first out of place in a film that has little in common with anyones idea of fiction, but with its stories of executions, heavy drinking and Halloween celebrations it does paint a picture of a place only slightly less unusual than the plot that proceeds it. It was if Ormond was trying to convince the viewer that if any of this could take place it would happen in a place as crazy as New Orleans. What is most frustrating is that The Monster and the Stripper remains the husband and wife teams sole attempt at a late Sixties sex and violence exploitation film. That it passes with flying colours and makes you wonder what else we lost out on in the event of them taking the highroad. Either way Monster and the Stripper would have been a hard, near impossible act to topple with a charm unto itself, catchy on the ball dialogue and memorable characters. A berserk bombastic mix of sometimes conflicting genres, there has been no film like it before or since, making Monster and the Stripper one of the best kept secrets from the underbelly of American cinema and a movie that is every bit as wild, bright and vibrant as the burlesque houses and side shows that inspired it.
Review of The Exotic Ones
