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!
var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;