Orgy of the Living Dead

and starring A. Zombie as Sir Not in This Triple Bill

Back when I was putting together material for Zombie Awareness Month 2012, I had originally been planning on sharing a 1972 trailer for a horror triple bill called “Orgy of the Living Dead,” which you can see below courtesy of one tommytoploader:

So why did I choose to hold onto it until now? Because there’s not a single zombie to be found in any of the movies! Revenge of the Living Dead is merely a retitled version of the early slasher The Murder Clinic, Fangs of the Living Dead is a vampire movie and Curse of the Living Dead is actually an edited version of Kill, Baby, Kill! with a new name!

The company behind the triple bill, Europix International, definitely pulled out all the stops for this promotion. In addition to the above trailer, they created multiple promotional posters, a pressbook and even providing “shock insurance.” While my source for that last gimmick claims that it’s a variation of a gimmick used for William Castle’s Macabre, my research has found a similar, earlier offer used in the promotion for The Screaming Skull.

Thanks to its appearance in numerous trailer compilations and wide availability online (which I suspect is due to the website Bleeding Skull having once offered it as a downloadable Quicktime file prior to the creation of Youtube), “Orgy of the Living Dead” is still popular to this day and is the subject of much discussion. The trailer’s claim of having driven the fictional John Austin Frazier insane still lives on, with some mistakenly thinking Night of the Living Dead drove a viewer mad!

Europix went on to create a similar trailer for their 1974 double bill of I Dismember Mama and The Blood Splattered Bride, which is even more NSFW than “Orgy of the Living Dead” and can be seen thanks to this upload by ranarchy666:

Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas has written an excellent article that not only chronicles the early days of Europix International, but also reveals the mastermind behind the “Orgy of the Living Dead” campaign (Alan Ormsby) and the actor playing Mr. Frazier (Victor Bumbalo)! It also reveals that cult film director Bob Clark was also involved in the filming of the “Orgy of the Living Dead” trailer. I have also heard rumors that he was involved in creation of the above double feature trailer, but I have yet to find any hard evidence for the claim at this time.

UPDATE: I’ve since found scans of the pressbook for the above double feature, which devotes entire pages to the Up-Chuck Cup and trailer!

1 ping

  1. […] looked in an old newspaper, the article has been unchanged. You can learn more about the promotion here. You can also read the original pressbook and see what the insurance certificate looks […]

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