Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Loop Odyssey, Part 14 by Greg Dziawer

This week's film has that touch of mink.

As the 1970s wore on, hardcore pornography deepened its roots as a mass cultural object. This was a pioneering era that can never be replicated. We know now, more than ever, just how active Edward D. Wood, Jr. was in the sex film industry during these crucial years. And although we have a great deal more to learn, it's widely accepted that Ed played a role—multiple roles, really—in the production of 8mm silent porn loops.

The SE logo as it looked in 1978.

More than any other, the brand that led the charge of pornography into America's bedrooms was Swedish Erotica. I'll refrain from repeating myself and instead direct you back to previous articles in which I've obsessed over the ephemeral details in these short erotic films. Swedish Erotica loops were marketed directly to consumers rather than theaters or arcades. You had to supply your own projector and screen, and the films originally lacked sound, but at least you could watch them in the privacy of your own home.

Until the late 1970s, Ed Wood worked for a company called Art Publishers, Inc, which released Swedish Erotica films and tie-in magazines. The company was run by Noel Bloom, son of porn publisher Bernie Bloom. A decade earlier, Bernie had hired Ed to work in the West Coast office of Pendulum Publishers, Inc., which initially specialized in adult magazines and paperbacks. When Noel began producing adult loops in the early 1970s, he naturally recruited old pro Ed Wood to work on them.

The Swedish Erotica loop series arguably peaked in 1978. Well over a hundred loops were released to the home market that year. Ed passed in December of that year, but he had been penning subtitles for Bloom-family loops at least as far back as 1972, and he continued receiving paychecks from Art Publishers, Inc right into the final year of his life.

I've been transcribing the subtitles from dozens of loops for the last few years. These subtitles are odd throwbacks to an earlier, more primitive era of cinema, almost like the intertitles from silent movies. I've increasingly come to believe that the subtitles for the Bloom-family loops were written by Ed Wood himself. He likely wrote box cover summaries and even loop titles as well.

And that brings us to our next specimen: Swedish Erotica loop #146: "Blond Mink." This film, released near the end of Ed Wood's life, may not feature the most stellar set of subtitles I've come across, but it deserves some attention nevertheless.

The loop begins with a title card and credits. Three crew members are listed, but their names are different from those credited in earlier Swedish Erotica loops. A rather straightforward sex scene then ensues. Prolific porn performer Paul Thomas, a talented adult director in his later years, stars alongside blonde-haired Sindee Moore, who appears here without her usual colorful neck scarf. While the earliest Swedish Erotica loops developed narratives and characters and were shot with a careful artistry, those pretenses had almost completely evaporated by 1978. In "Blond Mink," the guy simply shows up at the girl's place, and they immediately get it on. Strangely, though, one last pretense was hanging on by its fingertips—the subtitles.

We are getting close to the end of the subtitled loops by Swedish Erotica #146, and the evolution of the subtitles through the mid-'70s mirrors the evolution of the narratives and artistry. The subtitles are so superfluous by 1978 that their existence seems utterly unnecessary. You'll see what I mean as you read the following transcript.

BLOND MINK 

Guy: YOU LOOK GOOD. 

Guy: GIVE ME YOUR TONGUE. 

Girl: OHHHHHH...GOD... 

Girl: FILL ME WITH YOUR TONGUE.

A pair of mink stoles.

That's it—a measly 14 words spread across four lines, totaling about ten seconds of screen time during this seven-and-a-half-minute loop. Incredibly, the last line appears while Paul and Sindee are still engaged in oral foreplay, loooooong before the loop's literal climax. In the earlier Swedish Erotica loops, that moment would have been accompanied by plenty of panting UMM's, OHHHH's, and AHH's. 

For those keeping score, "Blond Mink" has an average of 3.5 words per line. It's not the lowest average I've seen (that's 2.6), but by far, it's the least number of lines. As with other latter-day Swedish Erotica loops, the subtitles appear fittingly in purple.

Why even bother with the subs at this point? Old habits die hard, apparently. The subtitles died, too, roughly around the same time Ed passed. It's plausible that this is his work, but the text is so scant that there's too little evidence of Ed's unorthodox, highly distinctive writing style. That said, we do have two ellipses in the third subtitled line, punctuation oft-employed by Ed. And in 14 words, "tongue" appears twice. Ed's adult paperbacks and magazine short stories are rife with slashing, piercing, and darting tongues, either when his characters are kissing or when (as here) they're engaged in oral sex. The OHHHHHH, meanwhile, is just exemplary.

The title, too—and I'm again suggesting it was likely Ed's invention—is productive to interrogate. Knowing Ed's penchant for grammatical errors, I first thought it odd to see the word BLOND without an E. Upon further study, used as an adjective, Ed may have been right to utilize the masculine form of the word, especially in the United States. 

And then we come to the word MINK. Minks are carnivorous mammals related to otters, weasels and ferrets. We know them best for their fur. I have two of my grandmother's mink stoles, the old-fashioned kind with the heads still on, in my attic right now.

The blonde—the word is feminine if used as a noun and generally derogative—does, in fact, eat meat in the film, so perhaps being carnivorous is the reference. Given his angora affliction, it's also possible that Ed Wood had fur on the brain. Somehow, though, I don't think so. In one of his blond(e) moments, Eddie seemingly confounded "mink" and "minx." 

Urban Dictionary defines a minx as "an alluring, cunning, or boldly flirtatious girl or young woman. [She] has unusual seductive powers such that she could commit acts that would otherwise be considered inappropriate, while still maintaining an air of class or poise." That perfectly describes this film's leading lady. Surely, this is what Ed meant the title to reference. 

Ed Wood could very well have penned the box cover summary for this film as well. Though characteristically overheated in the most generic manner of porn, the word "luscious" jumped out at me as a word Ed used often for a full decade, going back to his magazine work at Pendulum.

A summary of the film. Note the spelling change in the title.

You can watch "Blond Mink" here. And keep watching this space for more dizzying updates as the Wood Loop Odyssey continues to spin out of control.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Dziawer Odyssey, Part Four

Eros and Tana from Plan 9 wearing some of Ed Wood's favorite accessories

 
Eros and Thanatos: A Neck Scarf Odyssey

"Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies."

Ezekiel 1:11

I've mentioned before that the Swedish Erotica pornographic loop series on which a destitute Edward D. Wood, Jr. labored in the early 1970s ultimately adopted silk and chiffon neck scarves as de rigueur attire for its actresses. These fashion accessories—in a variety of colors, typically saturated, some even adorned with patterns—became signatures of the series. The scarves also show up across several related loop series produced by the Bloom family from 1975 to 1978 and even beyond. Danish Films, Danish International Films, Swedish Erotica Classics and—needless to say—the flagship Swedish Erotica series all extolled the scarf.

In my research, I learned that Ed was cashing a check from Art Publishers, Inc. (a classy-sounding alias for the Bloom/Caballero/Swedish Erotica porn empire) for the better part of the last two years of his life, a period in which he was previously thought to be unemployed. Those scarves, then, were with him for most of the decade.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Erotica Odyssey, Part One by Greg Dziawer

You can't spell Swedish Erotica without Ed.

"A couple of times I had to let [Ed] go, 'cause the drinking got too much. And he'd call me up and say, 'Pappy, pappy, I need you.' And I said, 'Are you straightened out now?' 'I've straightened out now, I swear.' I said, 'Okay, come on back to work.'"

-Bernie Bloom, Nightmare of Ecstasy

"How many times did I plead with Ed to stay with Bernie and a regular guaranteed paycheck? He tested Bernie too many times. When Bernie fired him, it broke his heart."

-Kathy Wood, Nightmare of Ecstasy

Just when was Ed's last job that provided a regular paycheck? When was he last fired by adult magazine publisher Bernie Bloom? Despite the invaluable anecdotes in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr., specific dates regarding Ed's life and work are increasingly difficult to pin down as the 1970s wore on.

What we do know is that Ed left Golden State News, a prolific West Coast adult slick magazine distributor and publisher, along with its general manager, Bernie Bloom, circa 1967-68. Bernie incorporated Pendulum Publishers, Inc., his own publishing company, the East Coast arm of adult mag mogul (and later convicted murderer) Michael Thevis, in 1968. Although the interpretation of events presented in Nightmare is open to debate, the common wisdom and reasonable inference until now is that Ed was last fired by Bloom in roughly 1973-74. His outpouring of hundreds and hundreds of short stories and articles across the Pendulum-family of magazines, including Pendulum, Calga, Gallery Press, and its unincorporated imprints SECS Press and Edusex, slows to a trickle then, and subsequent Pendulum-family magazines that contain Ed stories are most often reprints.

Through his remaining years, Ed's known work becomes increasingly sporadic. But in the suitcase Ed packed and carried away from the Yucca Flats apartment – his last and final eviction mere days prior to his death – he inadvertently left behind one final clue about his work in the last few years of his life: a stack of 1977-78 paystubs from Art Publishers, Inc. (No TurboTax in those days.)

Ed Wood's final paystubs from 4-6-78 and 3-30-78.