Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Loop Odyssey, Part Two by Greg Dziawer

You'd need your own projector and a screen to see much of Ed Wood's work in the 1970s.

"When Caballero first started [as Cinema Classics], they just did 8mm movies. They'd put one-liners, captions, on the bottom of the screen, just like silent films. They gave Ed a hundred bucks to write ten movies. There had to be fifty lines in each movie, minimum."

-Phil Cambridge

Pendulum-family magazine artist and friend of Ed Wood

(source: Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy)

The Swedish Erotica logo in purple.

The general consensus these days credits Ed Wood as writer/director of the first 19 (likely beyond) Swedish Erotica loops. First sold via mail order to the home-market in 8mm, circa 1973/1974—in my estimation, some of the loops were shot a year or two earlier—the series laid the first foundational stone of one of the paramount brands of the so-called Golden Age of porn. In this week's Ed Wood Wednesdays, we're taking a closer look at one of these loops, endeavoring to discover a fingerprint or something like it.

And that matters because, beyond this series, Ed may very well have worked on 800+ loops in some capacity, as early as 1968, through the mid '70s. Editor. Director. Writer. Actor. Boxcover summaries. And, perhaps his mainstay in this channel, onscreen captions.

The seventh loop in the Swedish Erotica series—following Wet & Wild and preceding Girl on a Bike—-Park Lovers stars John Holmes and a female performer commonly misidentified as porn actress Eve Orlon, whose credits include The Undergraduate and Fugitive Girls. (More on her later.)

There are 32 captions in this particular loop, totaling 115 words. That's an average of 3.59 words per line, these captions ranging from one to seven words in length.

I gave my plain-jane handwritten transcriptions of the captions to my partner Kitten just minutes after I had completed them. She reacted with disdain, and pointed out to me what should have been obvious: the reductionist, cro-magnon level of sheer pornography. The inherently discordant cinematic presentation, with its relatively elaborate pans and candy-colored sets, ossifies into an, at best, outmoded past. The worst of it enters the sad realm of "It only hurts at first."

Buck up! This is porn!

On to the captions, and my approach is slightly interpretive. Ofttimes, neither actor's mouth moving in concert with the caption,, but the overall context generally identifies the speaker.

PARK LOVERS: The Captions

Holmes: HELLO THERE.

Holmes: DO YOU LIKE BEARS?

Girl: BUT I HAVE SEEN ALL THE ANIMALS.

Holmes: LET'S TAKE A WALK THROUGH THE ZOO.

Girl: OKAY. 

Holmes: LOOK AT THE TURTLES.

Girl: YOUR APARTMENT IS JUST GROOVIE.

Holmes: THIS IS MUCH BETTER THAN THE ZOO.

Girl: UNBUTTON ME.

Holmes: OHHH BABY....

Girl: KISS IT.

Holmes: I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO SHOW YOU.

Girl: OH MY GOD....

Girl: UMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Holmes: SUCK BABY.

Holmes: LAY ON YOUR STOMACH.

Girl: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

Holmes: JUST WAIT.

Girl: IT FEELS SO WARM.

Girl: DON'T HURT ME.

Girl: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....

Girl: IT HURTS, IT HURTS.

Girl: NO NO NO....

Girl: TAKE IT OUT, TAKE IT OUT.

Holmes: IT WILL STRETCH.

Holmes: NOW.

Girl: AHHHHHHHH.

Girl: MY BRA IS TOO TIGHT.

Holmes: OH BABY, YOUR ASS IS SOOOO TIGHT.

Holmes: SUCK IT OFF BABY. 

Holmes: EAT IT. EAT IT. 

Girl: UMMMMMMMMMM, GOOD.

Those lines were written by Ed, bet on it.

The female performer, as we mentioned, is not Eve Orlon, as commonly misidentified. In an adult film forum that shall remain nameless, a user named Goldfinger made his case on this subject in response to a list of loop credits that had been posted:

Eve Orlon

So this has been bothering me. There's an ID in this list that I believe is incorrect. What bothers me isn't so much that I think it's wrong on this particular index, but that the error seems to be universal. [Name redacted]'s index states that the model in SE 7 and SE 10 is Eve Orlon. [Redacted] is not alone on this. Every index or ID-whatever on Swedish Erotica loops that I have run across says the model is Eve Orlon. It could be that the same error has been perpetuated as "fact." 

I could be wrong, but I don't think it's her. The model in SE 7 and SE 10 doesn't look like Eve Orlon to me. 

I will admit there are similarities. But the differences are pronounced: face, facial expressions (the SE model puckers her lips quite a bit, Miss Orlon puckers rarely), breasts (Miss Orlon's are smaller), nipples (Miss Orlon's are smaller in diameter and puff somewhat when aroused), etc. 

Of course the telling feature is obvious: The model in SE 7 has a very strong and very distinct cleft chin. It is a Kirk-Douglas-type of chin dimple, and it's there regardless of her expression or facial muscle movements. A distinguishing characteristic that doesn't change much with age. Eve Orlon has a smooth chin; not chiseled, but certainly not cleft. 

As the model in SE 10 has been ID'd as the same as the model in SE 7 (by [Redacted], among others), and the girls in the catalog pictures are obviously the same girl, then it can be stated that Eve Orlon is not in SE 10, either. 

Bottom line: The identity of the SE 7 and SE 10 model remains unknown.

It's not the only instance of an incorrectly identified performer in the first 19 Swedish Erotica loops either. We'll get to more later. The follow-up loop referenced above, Hollywood Starlet, is Swedish Erotica #10, starring the same pair.

Join us in the future here at Ed Wood Wednesdays as we investigate that and more, tumbling headlong down rabbit-holes of Woodology. And remember: Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut.