Blood Orgy of the She Devils (1973)

It’s time once again to ride the Ted V Mikels roller coaster of rubbish, as 88 Films allows UK trash film enthusiasts to get our brains fried with this little number from 1973. Your tolerance of this one will depend very much on how you got on with previous 88 Films Ted releases THE CORPSE GRINDERS and THE DOLL SQUAD. If you haven’t seen those, you may need your loins girding further before you leap in.

Cue animated swirls, a girl’s eyes and some weird moaning noises as the credits play out. Then we’re witness to what was probably advertised as ‘an exotic satanic ritual’ but isn’t. A man in a nappy is speared by several lovely young things presided over by Mara (Lila Zaborin and pretty terrifying in her own right) and a bloke who looks a bit like Patrick Troughton in a Viking costume. There are some more women with insanely big 1970s hair, a boom mike shadow, and then we’re privy to a plot to assassinate the Rhodesian ambassador to the UN by means of black magic. For some reason these plot machinations cut abruptly to a man strangling a girl to the sound of a cuckoo clock going off. No, I don’t know why, either.

The next day. “Young” couple Mark and Lorraine (Tom Pace and Leslie McRae) discuss “all that occult stuff” while completely ignoring what looks like a dead koala bear that’s presumably fallen out of an aeroplane on its way from Australia and landed on their picnic rug (see above). Mara plunges a doll into the biggest brandy glass ever shown on film and the ambassador chokes to death. The baddies don’t want to leave any loose ends and so everyone at Mara’s castle is shot dead. Mara turns into a cat, brings her servant back to life, and wreaks revenge. The gunman suffers a voodoo death of what looks like a terminal rectal injection of chilli powder followed by an unconvincing fall through a window while his boss gets pins stuck in him.

There are some long conversations about witchcraft and a flashback to “the seventeenth century” where men with 1970s sideburns torture a witch and another is stoned with foam rubber rocks. There’s another ritual, Ted’s LA castle (doubling as Mara’s lair) glows greeny-blue, and some experts are called in to solve the problem. Everyone dies which leads to a fairly grim ending where the experts wander about among the bodies. The End.

BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE DEVILS lasts just under 80 minutes but feels longer. However, there are enough moments of jaw-dropping unintentional mirth that if you’re an enthusiast for the so-bad-it’s-good it’s definitely worth a look. 88 Films’ DVD preserves the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and there’s a commentary by Ted as an extra. Otherwise you get a Ted V Mikels special 88 trailer park reel and a very good essay on the movie by Calum Waddell that’s actually worth spending more time on than the film itself. As good a version of one of Ted’s films as you could hope for, trash fans will love it. Just watch out for the falling koala.

88 Films are releasing Ted V Mikels' BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE DEVILS on Region 2 DVD on 18th August 2014.