Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 243: The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen (1999) [PART 1]

Steve Apostolof, aka A.C. Stephen, has his day in the sun.

"Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck." Remember that one?

Ed Wood on a lucky penny.

Since pennies are worth so little today, you have two choices when you find one lying on the floor or the ground somewhere: pick it up or leave it be. Personally, I'm a penny picker-upper, and I think it's because of that little rhyme we all learned as children. It's somehow comforting to think that these essentially-worthless little coins might be good luck talismans. It redeems them somehow. Ennobles them.

Ed Wood is the lucky penny of directors, except he's a lucky penny that we keep discarding and rediscovering in an endless cycle. Most people look at Eddie and see only a talentless drunk who made cheap, bad movies—a one-cent piece not even worth picking up—but every once in a while, some observant passerby spots him and decides that, yes, it's worth the effort to reach down and retrieve him from the pavement.

Interest in Ed Wood remained high throughout the 1990s, and the spotlight on Ed was wide enough that it shone on some of Eddie's collaborators and contemporaries. Case in point: Stephen C. Apostolof aka A.C. Stephen (1928-2005), the Bulgarian-born softcore director with whom Ed made eight movies between 1965 and 1978. Ed served as a screenwriter, assistant director, and even occasional actor in Steve's movies. While Apostolof was understandably conflicted about being reduced to a supporting player in the Ed Wood saga, it's undeniable that Wood's notoriety brought Steve's movies back into public view for the first time in years.

At least two different companies, both quirky specialty labels, rereleased Apostolof's movies on home video back then. In Los Angeles, Rhino Home Video released its own edition of Orgy of the Dead (1965), plus three volumes called Saturday Night Sleazies (1990-1991). Meanwhile, up in Seattle, Something Weird Video launched its own series of Apostolof reissues. When I was doing my research for the book Dad Made Dirty Movies (2020), I frequently relied on those SWV editions of Steve's films, including Motel Confidential (1969) and The Divorcee (1969).

The tape I wanted.

But one particular item remained elusive: a 1999 compilation tape from Something Weird called The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen. This is a career-spanning compilation of various Apostolof clips from the 1960s and 1970s, including footage from several of the films Steve made with Ed Wood. Somehow, I've never managed to snag a copy of this tape, and it's become a pretty rare collector's item in the quarter-century since its release. After getting sniped at the last second during an Ebay auction, I gave up.

Fortunately, reader and Ed Wood superfan Brendon Sibley was kind enough to digitize his copy of The Erotic World and send it my way. As with the last film Brendon sent me, the faux-Italian pseudo-documentary Mondo Oscenità (1966), there is simply too much here to cover in one article. Instead, I will make this into a two-part series, perhaps three if necessary. I very much thank Brendon for making this material available to me.

The generous, 108-minute compilation begins with a true rarity: the short film Bachelor's Dream aka The Bachelor's Dreams (1967). Steve Apostolof made this 33-minute featurette so that it could be shown in front of his own movies on double feature bills. That way, he could control both halves of the program and get all the box office receipts instead of only half. What's interesting to Ed Wood fans is that Bachelor's Dream is built around some black-and-white test footage that was originally shot by Bob Wilson during pre-production on Orgy of the Dead. Steve merely dusted off this footage, shot some new wraparound footage (some of it in color) to go with it, and added a flimsy storyline to tie it all together. Voila! Instant movie!

A vintage one-sheet for the film.

Bachelor's Dream is an obvious, unmistakable ripoff of Russ Meyer's groundbreaking softcore feature The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959). The setup is exactly the same: an eccentric, middle-aged man travels around to various locations in his hometown and fantasizes about seeing nude women wherever he goes, and it's all accompanied by wry commentary from an unseen narrator. Steve Apostolof didn't even pretend to change the Mr. Teas formula a tiny bit. He took every last bit of it: the goofy guy, the topless gals, the know-it-all narrator, and the slyly humorous tone. If it ain't broke...

The title character of Bachelor's Dream is one Abner Bidle (a one-film wonder apparently playing himself), a gaunt, bespectacled nerd with Brylcreemed hair and crooked teeth. He looks like he could have been an administrator at your school if you'd been a kid during the Eisenhower years. Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Bart works at the burlesque house and finds that Principal Skinner is one of the regulars? Yeah, Bachelor's Dream has that vibe. Come to think of it, I had a band teacher who looked just like Abner.

Viewers familiar with Orgy of the Dead will be acquainted with most of the cast and crew of Bachelor's Dream. Several of that film's dancers (including Colleen O'Brien, Bunny Glaser, Nadejda Dobrev, and Barbara Nordin) appear here, as does Apostolof regular Lou Ojena, mysteriously billed as "Louis Ojarof." Additionally, the music was composed by Jaime Mendoza-Nava (billed as "Igor O'Gigagousky"). Some of the Bachelor score is taken directly from Orgy, though there are some newly-composed motifs here, too.

The film opens with businessman Abner Bidle, dressed incongruously in a suit and tie, striding through a lovely park with a nudie magazine tucked under his arm. He ultimately reaches a bench and begins to browse through the publication. All the while, a cheerful narrator tells us about Mr. Bidle's mindset:

May we take you into the wonderful dream world of Abner Bidle, a man with a great power of insight. It is a quality given to few: the dreamers, those who through their own mind can achieve the satisfaction of their heart's desire, love. It is his lunch hour and time for his usual stroll through the park, where the beautiful background of nature serves to inspire his every thought. There's much depth to Abner Bidle which most people wouldn't understand. Abner Bidle is given to fancy, a fancy which only comes out in his daydreams. Perhaps in his loneliness, he has made his life more real. Perhaps in his dreams, all the love the world has shut out from him comes true.

A real "Eleanor Rigby" type, this Abner Bidle. Sorta gets ya right here, doesn't it, folks?

Abner's first fantasy involves a dancer named Lila performing alone on an otherwise-empty stage in a theater where Abner himself is the only patron. This is some of the aforementioned black-and-white test footage for Orgy of the Dead. Lila is portrayed by Colleen O'Brien, the flame-haired streetwalker from Orgy. There's no striptease element in the scene. Colleen just comes out in her panties and slinks around the stage for a few minutes, using a feather boa as her only prop. She uses the boa in Orgy as well, so it was likely part of her act. 

Occasionally, there's a reaction shot of Abner Bidle in the audience, alone and totally transfixed. I could not help but think of a similar scene in American Beauty (1999) in which Kevin Spacey imagines Mena Suvari is dancing just for him. (I realize Mr. Spacey is disgraced, but that doesn't mean I can't use his movie as a point of comparison.) We'll get reaction shots like this of Abner throughout Bachelor's Dream.

A side-by-side comparison: Bachelor's Dream and American Beauty.

At this point, like The Wizard of Oz (1939), Bachelor's Dream boldly switches to color for a sequence in which Abner Bidle shows up at the house of a young lady for a date. I'd have to guess that Steve Apostolof used his own home for this, so if you want to see how a softcore "Executive Filmmaker" was living in 1967, this is your chance. The decor is very much of its time, let's say, and the bar is well-stocked. Think of Henry Hill's house in Goodfellas (1990). Also, this entire film was shot silently, so the "dialogue" we hear between Abner and his date was crudely added ex post facto. The actors' mouths don't even move!

The premise of the scene is that Abner's ladylove, Doris (a blonde with a Goldie Hawn pixie haircut), sneaks upstairs to take a bath in her curiously coffin-shaped tub while Abner avails himself of the liquor. By the time she gets back down, he's too drunk to be any use to her. She leaves him passed out on her living room floor while she goes out for a night on the town. What's notable here is that, as of 1967, Steve Apostolof was not showing full frontal nudity in his films. Only two of the notorious "three B's" were acceptable at that point in movie history. So poor Doris practically has to twist herself into knots to avoid showing any pubic hair. Also, it must be noted that the actress' tan lines are so well-defined, she looks like she's wearing a white bikini!

After this, we return to the scene of Abner in the park, looking through his nudie magazine. This sets up even more of the Orgy of the Dead test footage. This time around, we see Bunny Glaser (who performed the "Indian Dance" in Orgy) and Nadejda Dobrev (who played the "Slave Girl"). Abner Bidle is still the only one in the audience, though his scenes were filmed well after the fact and edited in later. The dancers are really quite lovely, though the closeups of Abner and his alarming dental work tend to spoil the mood just a bit.

Now it's time for more color footage, as Abner fantasizes about Doris' roommate, Sally, who is first glimpsed in bed, half-heartedly reading a magazine and smoking. She is topless and tan, and our ever-present narrator speculates that "she must be a dancer." She performs a free-form dance routine in what I'm guessing was Steve Apostolof's own bedroom. Steve must've been living pretty high back then, since there's a balcony looking out over the city and a TV set with a stereo built into it. There are also lighting fixtures that resemble giant Christmas tree ornaments dangling from the ceiling.

A beauty product from the 1960s.

As Sally's dance routine wears on, she begins to snuggle with some stuffed animals, leading the narrator to ask, "Who gave her a key to The Bunny Club?" (At the time, those who wanted to enter one of Hugh Hefner's Playboy Clubs had to present a key with the company's familiar rabbit-head logo.) Sally then sits down in front of a vanity mirror and we see a forgotten beauty product from the past: Silk'n Satin hand and body lotion from Pacquin. Doris joins Sally for a girl-on-girl rubdown scene that uses the lotion. Once again, Doris must contort herself in order to avoid showing too much.

There's just time enough in the movie for one last black-and-white fantasy sequence, and again we return to the Orgy of the Dead test footage. Our dancer this time is bubbly blonde Barbara Nordin, who danced with the skeleton of her husband in Orgy in one of that film's more memorable sequences. As Ms. Nordin wobbles in Bachelor's Dream, the narrator describes her as "a bowl of Jell-O on shapely pins." Her gyrations provoke a standing ovation from Abner Bidle. He even loosens his tie! But his adventures have now come to a conclusion, and the narrator reminds us: "The bachelor's world is really made up of beautiful dreams!" The end.

Incidentally, you might be wondering if Ed Wood himself wrote Bachelor's Dream. The answer, in my opinion, is no. The original screenplay is credited to one "Jason Adler," a pseudonym for Steve Apostolof. Unfortunately, Bachelor's Dream was released during a period (roughly 1966-1971) when Steve and Ed were on the outs. So it's not likely that a job like this would have come Eddie's way. Besides, even if Steve had needed some help on this script, there were other writers in his Rolodex.

Next time around, we'll look at what else The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen has to offer us. I do hope you'll come back for a second helping.