Because it predates Dante’s career with Roger Corman (where Davison also got his start), The Movie Orgy serves as that rare artifact that reveals the raw inspiration for the sly, self-conscious sense of humor evident in Hollywood Boulevard (choppy enough to have been assembled the same way), Piranha/Gremlins/Explorers (tongue-in-cheek tributes to a time when fantasy was strictly B-movie fodder) and Matinee (a valentine to Cold War paranoia and Hollywood hucksterism). Its structure owes more to television than the big screen, with what little narrative exists frequently interrupted for commercial breaks.

Two features, The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and Speed Crazy, serve as the movie’s backbone, with Dante cutting out the boring parts and returning every so often to provide another scene (he also samples heavily from Beginning of the End, The Giant Gila Monster and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers — all Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorites). Relying on those clips to supply some semblance of forward motion, he then feels free to do loop-de-loops with other footage.

Savvy splices allow adjacent pieces of footage to comment on one another, as when film noir gangsters crack wise during Nixon’s famous Checkers speech or an informational dog-training strip cuts to a U.S. Marine recruitment video. In other cases, Dante collapses entire features into a single scene, as with an episode of Desilu’s Life & Legend of Wyatt Earp and the canine-come-home drama The Return of Rusty, or inserts subliminal belly dancing footage into commercials for kids’ products. For the grand finale, he orchestrates the explosive climaxes of at least half a dozen different B movies into a single apocalyptic shootout. (If I ever get another chance to see it, I’ll count how many times the words “The End” appear on screen. Dozens.)

These days, anyone with iMovie and a home computer can attempt a feat of this nature, but few have the sense of humor or savvy to draw from such varied sources. In his introduction last night, Dante feared the movie might seem overly dated, but this sort of ironic postmodern commentary is more popular now than ever (a handful of patently racist and religious-themed clips pack an even stronger punch in these politically correct times). And though Dante encouraged the crowd to saunter in and out at will, assuring them they wouldn’t miss anything, he’s assembled it in such a way that gags build on earlier clips (every Speed Crazy clip, for example, features racing maniac Nick Barrow offering a variation on the line, “Don’t crowd me, Joe” — a line Paul Rudd would repeat decades later in Dante’s Runaway Daughters).

If only every director sat down to create such a pastiche of their favorite footage, we’d have a better idea of their influences. The next best thing is series like Dante’s Inferno, where fans can watch entire features (although, if Quentin Tarantino’s grindhouse bonanza was any indication, the full-length movies can seriously test an audience’s stamina). Both programs — as well as lineups hosted by Eli Roth and Edgar Wright — were the brainchild of the New Beverly Cinema, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in May. The following month, Diablo Cody picks her favorite hipster flicks.