(archive.org / DVD) THE MOVIE ORGY is a mesmerizing, epic camp pastiche of media footage and materials from the 50s and 60s that subversive film auteur Joe Dante (GREMLINS, THE ‘BURBS) assembled as a film student.
It originally ran seven hours long and was a mutating roadshow film, toured around college campuses and, every time it was screened, they’d edit new bits in, snip out other sections and otherwise re-assemble the film. As you might expect of a film that is seven hours long, has no real narrative so speak of, and was screened on college campuses in the late sixties and seventies, this isn’t a film you sit and watch sober, but a film you experience with others, where it provides part of the color of the communal experience.
THE MOVIE ORGY has been since been edited down to four and a half hours and, as it consists solely of stolen content, and the only way to properly see it is in a museum or makeshift underground theater (which is how I caught it, as Dante briefly came to Chicago to screen GREMLINS 2 and HOLES at the gorgeous Music Box Theatre, then screened THE MOVIE ORGY at a tiny little art space on the opposite side of town). However, there is a bootleg DVD out there, and it’s also available to stream via https://archive.org/details/the-movie-orgy. It’s perfect background material for however you’re managing to entertain yourself in this cold, dark, withdrawn wintertime.