Ed Wood (1994)

Edward D. Wood, Jr. is often regarded as the worst director in cinema history. He might have been destined for obscurity if it wasn’t for the 1980 book “The Golden Turkey Awards” by Harry and Michael Medved.  In their book, Wood was voted the “worst director of all time” and his magnum opus Plan 9 from Outer Space was voted “the worst movie of all time.” This brought Wood new found fame among bad movies aficionados, who eagerly sought out his body of work.  Wood was a fairly interesting character, not only was a bad movie auteur but also – a World War II vet (he survived one of the bloodiest battles in the South Pacific); a writer of lurid pulp novels; a pornographer (after his failed career in Hollywood he relegated himself into making hardcore porn); and a transvestite.  His pseudo-documentary Glen or Glenda is (rightfully) ridiculed for its sheer ineptitude, but it’s also one of the most personal movies ever committed to celluloid – it’s based on Wood’s own struggles to come to terms with his cross dressing.   His movies are genuinely unique, even if they are terrible. He was a true auteur!  It is no wonder that Tim Burton was compelled to tell Ed Wood’s story – he is the ultimate misfit. 

It is important to note that Ed Wood is not your typical Hollywood biopic. It only focuses on a small portion of Wood’s life (1953 – 1959) and completely plays around with the facts – it glosses over Wood’s alcoholism and omits his brief marriage to Norma McCarty. It recreates the behind the scenes of three Wood movies – Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster, and Plan 9 from Outer Space – but skips over the making of Jail Bait (which was shot on the same sets as Glen or Glenda).  While most of Wood’s stock company is portrayed in the movie, Lyle Talbot is noticeably absent (even though he appeared in three of Wood’s movies).  

There are also a lot of liberties taken in the storytelling (mostly for comedic effect); in the movie, while making Bride of the Monster, Ed talks Bela Lugosi into wrestling with a rubber octopus in a pond, when in reality it was a stunt double (this is even more obvious in the cleaned up DVD of Bride of the Monster).  There has been a dispute as to how Loretta King was cast in Bride of the Monster – in the movie, Ed mistakenly believes that Loretta has the money to finance the entire production (after she lends him two hundred dollars) and he cast her in the lead out of obligation, while Loretta King claims that she was contacted by Wood, via her agent, and that money was never a factor.  I tend to be believe King’s account of the story, because while filming Bride of the Monster Wood ran out of money and had to briefly shutdown production until he could get financing – so,  if King was cast under false pretenses, then wouldn’t Wood just recast the role once production started up again?  It should be noted that it was Dolores Fuller, Ed Wood’s ex-girlfriend and one time lead actress, who kept pushing this story about Loretta King. Initially, Fuller was supposed to play the heroine in Bride of Monster but Wood eventually cast King in the role.  There is a theory that Wood lied to Fuller about the circumstance of King’s casting in a desperate attempt to let his girlfriend down gently.  “I desperately wanted to cast you in the lead role, baby, but she has all the money.  I need to placate her whims.”  Either way, Fuller’s account of Loretta King is second hand, at best, and is fairly biased towards Ed Wood.   Also, despite what the movie claims, Loretta King was not allergic to water.  

The movie is less of a biography of Wood and more a retelling of his life through a fairy tale lens.  Wood, as played by Johnny Depp, is an enthusiastic, good natured young man who is looking for the big break. He desperately wants to make movies but just can’t seem to get his foot into the door.  He finally gets a chance when he learns that sleazy producer, George Weiss, is making a biography of Christine Jorgenson and Wood manages to convince Weiss he is the man for the job because of his cross dressing history.  Weiss grudgingly hands Wood the assignment and then is dismayed (albeit briefly) that Wood’s script has nothing to do with Christine Jorgenson, but he really doesn’t care too much about the content as long as Wood delivers the movie on time and it makes a profit.  The running gag throughout the movie is that Wood often has to swindle his way into making movies; he’ll do anything because the ends justify the means.  When his landlord tells him that his church is interested in making a series of movies on the apostles, Wood tells him that they should invest their money into a proven genre (science fiction) and then they can use the profits from that film to finance their apostle movies.  He then persuades the church to fund Plan 9 From Outer Space (they later regret the decision after seeing Wood’s absent minded approach to filmmaking).  When they point out all errors in a scene, Wood barks back, “movies are not about the small details, they are about the big picture.”  What is incredible about this scene is that, despite the legitimate criticism of his backers, we find ourselves siding with Wood. The movie does such an excellent job of portraying Wood as an underdog figure that we naturally root for him, despite his lack of talent. 

The heart of the movie is the relationship between Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi (wonderfully played by Martin Landau).  There is an interesting dynamic between the two men - Wood is a fairly young man struggling to get into the movie business while Lugosi is washed up movie star who has been forgotten by the industry.  The two of them are kindred spirits despite their age gap.  Wood’s relationship with women is pretty much secondary:  His girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, leaves him midway through the movie and his courtship of Kathy (his second wife) is extremely rushed.  The two of them meet while Bela is in rehab and then Ed Wood woos her at a carnival. 

 Burton really isn’t interesting in this aspect of Wood’s life (probably because it is too conventional for his sensibilities).  The most moving scene in the movie is not when Ed wins over Kathy, but rather when he persuades Bela, hopped up on pain killers, to check into rehab. Up until this scene, the movie was been fairly light hearted, but this scene is extremely nightmarish.  Everything is a state of disarray– Bela’s household is a complete mess and he his babbling incoherently. At one point he pulls out a gun and insists that Ed and him should kill themselves. Ed defuses the situation by calmly talking Bela down and then driving his friend to rehab.  Both of the actors are spot on in their performances – Landau is so good that  you can genuinely feel  Bela’s pain and confusion, and Depp rather effectively underplays the scene - instead of trying to compete with Landau, he basically stands back and gives Landau room to perform. It is a nice give and take between the two talented actors.  This is the rare instance where Ed is the voice of reason. He is clueless most of time, but when it comes to his friendship with Bela he is absolutely committed.  

There is the criticism that Wood exploited Bela Lugosi’s name to further his own career – this view is largely expressed by Bela Lugosi, Jr. in the documentary The Haunted World of Ed Wood.  Lugosi, Jr. views his father’s work with Wood as being the absolute “bottom of the barrel” and a total disgrace to his father’s memory.  In all fairness to Junior, he isn’t wrong – his father’s appearances in Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster are huge step down from Dracula, The Black Cat, and, hell, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. However, what Lugosi, Jr. conveniently overlooks is that his father’s career had already reached the bottom of the barrel long before his association with Ed Wood. The year before Lugosi appeared in Glen or Glenda he starred in a truly execrable comedy called Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla  (which featured the second rate comedy duo  Sammy Petrillo and Duke Mitchell – a Martin & Lewis knockoff).  Truth to be told, if you take the time to look at Lugosi’s filmography, you will find that the bad movies greatly outnumber the good ones. While it’s true the Wood movies are bottom of the barrel, it’s a bit disingenuous of Junior to blame Wood for his father’s downfall.

 Did Wood exploit the Lugosi name? Definitely.  Was it sole reason he cast Lugosi in his movies? Definitely not.   While a few curious filmmakers might have been drawn into by Lugosi’s billing on the movie poster, the fact is he wasn’t exactly a major star at this point in his career.  In the 1950s he was pretty much forgotten – it wouldn’t be until the sixties that he would become a cult figure. I believe Wood genuinely cared about Lugosi and did whatever he could to get his friend work – like writing a nonsensical role in the pseudo-documentary Glen or Glenda. I’ m sure having Lugosi as his “star” persuaded investors to fund his movie, but the fact is these roles seem tailor made for Bela (especially the made scientist in Bride of the Monster).  To be honest, other than the Wood pictures, the movies Lugosi made in the 1950s are pretty forgettable.  

There is an interesting parallel between Ed Woods friendship with Bela Lugosi and Tim Burton’s friendship with Vincent Price – they were both fairly young filmmakers who befriended aging horror icons.  Vincent Price did the narration for Burton’s animated short, Vincent, and then later appeared in Edward Scissorhands, while Lugosi spent his final years making movies for Ed Wood.  However, unlike Wood before him, Burton managed to find mainstream success fairly early in his career (his third feature length movie was Batman) and Price never quite reached the bottom of the barrel that Lugosi did.  Lugosi spent most of his career living in the shadow of Dracula, while Price managed to adapt with the times (most people from my generation know him for the rap he did on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”) 

Is Edward D. Wood, Jr. truly the worst director of all time? Is Plan 9 from Outer Space the worst movie of all time? My answer is a staunch…..NO!!!!  Granted, it’s this title that made Wood a posthumous celebrity but it’s simply not true.  Sure, Ed Wood’s movies are bad, but they are also fairly watchable.  There is also a nice sincerity about Wood’s movies – he genuinely loved the medium of filmmaking and wanted to tell compelling stories.  Unfortunately, his movies are interesting for all the wrong reasons but at least the passion there.  In all honesty, Wood often displayed some flashes of competence – the nightmare sequence in Glen or Glenda is genuinely creepy and disorienting;  Bela Lugosi is genuinely good in Bride of the Monster; and there a few atmospheric shots of Tor Johnson and Vampira wandering through the cemetery in Plan 9 From Outer Space.  I can think of a few filmmakers that are more deserving of the worst director of all time:  Coleman Francis, Larry Buchanan, Dwain Esper, to name a few.  These filmmakers were in the movie industry for monetary gain and would gladly have given up the craft if they could find an easier way to make money.  There also plenty of movies that are infinitely worse than Plan 9 from Outer Space, I will gladly name a few:  The Creeping Terror, The Beast of Yucca Flats, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Child Bride, Mesa of Lost Women, They Saved Hitler’s Brain, and Larry Buchanan’s entire filmography. Compared to these movies, Plan 9 from Outer Space is a veritable masterpiece.  

 While Ed Wood was a critical success, it was a complete dud at the box office. This isn't too surprising given that the vast majority of movie goers probably have never heard of Ed Wood - his movies appeal to a fairly niche audience. Ed Wood is not only Burton's most personal film, but it also signified the end of his "Golden Era."  Beginning with Pee-Wee's Big Adventure in 1985 and ending with Ed Wood in 1994, Tim Burton had nearly a decade of solid film making under his belt. He was truly a unique movie director - but after the financial failure of Ed Wood his movies became increasingly more inconsistent and, worst of all, forgettable.   He has basically relegated himself to big budget remakes of classic movies and TV shows- with the occasional "personal" film thrown in for good measure.  His newer movies feel less like a personal statement and more like a corporate product meant for mass consumption.  I'm not going to begrudge Tim Burton his success (he absolutely earned it) but it's shame to see a once unique and extremely original filmmaker get swallowed up by the Hollywood system.

Credits

Cast: Johnny Depp (Ed Wood), Martin Landau (Bela Lugosi), Sarah Jessica Parker (Dolores Fuller), Patricia Arquette (Kathy O’ Hara), Bill Murray (Bunny Breckinridge), Jeffrey Jones (Criswell), Lisa Marie (Vampira), George “The Animal” Steele (Tor Johnson), Juliet Landau (Loretta King), Mike Starr (George Weiss), Max Casella (Paul Marco), Brett Hinkley (Conrad Brooks), Clive Rosengren (Ed Reynolds), G.D. Spradlin (Reverend Lemon), Vincent D’ Onofrio (Orson Welles), Ned Bellamy (Dr. Tom Mason), Rance Howard (Old Man McCoy).

Director: Tim Burton
Writers: Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski.
Running  time: 126 min.

Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

Mesa of Lost Women is regarded as one of the worst movies ever made and with a good reason; it's an extremely incompetent piece of cinema. It is so inept that the "Lost Women" of the title are fairly incidental to the actual plot of the movie. This is the IMDB synopsis of movie:

A mad scientist named Aranya is creating giant spiders and dwarfs in his lab on Zarpa Mesa in Mexico. He wants to create a master race of superwomen by injecting his female subjects with spider venom.

This isn't entirely incorrect, except that Aranya has probably less than ten minutes of actual screen time, despite Jackie Coogan's top billing.  When we first meet Aranya, he is showing off his experiment to fellow scientist, Leland Masterson. He hopes to make a race of superwomen by injecting them with a venom taken from a giant spider. This venom has made these women almost indestructible, yet unfortunately, it has transformed Aranya's male test subjects into dwarves.  Dr. Aranya hopes that Masterson will join him in his quest to make a species of super women, but Masterson denounces him. Disappointed, Aranya has his mute, sexy assistant Tarantella inject Masterson with a serum that transforms him into a raving lunatic. After this brief scene, Aranya completely vanishes and doesn't reappear until the film's climax.

The film is told in the flashback from the point of view of pilot Grant Philips...or is it? Just as soon as Grant begins tell his story, an omniscient narrator (Lyle Talbot) hijacks his account and begins to fill the audience in on how it all really began. The narrator is extremely condescending towards the characters in the movie, often mocking their bravery and intelligence. Other times, the film will cut to a close up of a character and the narrator will tells us their thoughts. When Grant starts talking about the Spider Women, there is a close up of the character of Pepe (who is has heard tales of such monstrosities), and the narrator starts chiding him for keeping his mouth shut.

The movie opens on a medium close up of man, just then a pair of hands (with claw like finger tips) crawl into frame and grab the guy's face. The camera pans over to reveal an attractive brunette. She pulls the man in for a kiss and he (understandably) doesn't offer up any sort of resistance. However, his immense joy is short lived as her kiss proves to be lethal and he falls down dead. Just then an off screen voice asks,"Have you ever been kissed by a girl like this?" Then the opening credits roll. Initially, I thought that this was a flash forward into the story, considering that man being kissed reappears a few minuter later. I was wrong.

This opening scene is disconnected from the rest of the story; it only serves to set up how dangerous the Spider Women really are. It leads you to believe that the plot will revolve around Spider Women luring unsuspecting (and extreme dense) men to their dooms. However, the Spider Women prove to a complete non-threat to our protagonists; their role consists mainly of close ups as they stare on, from afar, at our hapless heroes. Even Tarantella, the main Spider Woman, turns out to be a rather inadequate villain. She shows up long enough to do a "seductive" dance at a complete dive of a bar, only to be shot for her effort.  Earlier in the film, Dr. Aranya says that Tarantella is virtually indestructible and could live for hundreds of years, yet the film never properly explores this idea; we get a brief glimpse of it when Tarantella literally walks off her bullet wound. After her apparent "resurrection," she disappears from the proceedings (she briefly reappears at the movie's climax). This is rather a wasted opportunity as Tandra Quinn actually has great screen presence and could have made for one memorable vamp, instead she is absolutely wasted in relatively small role (even though she graces all the movie posters).

Tarantella's dance reminds me greatly of Salma Hayek's seductive snake dance in Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Til Dawn. Tandra Quinn and Hayek play fairly similar characters; there's an aura of mystery surrounding both women due to their silent nature (though Hayek has a few lines in From Dusk Til Dawn), and both of them strut their stuff at a sleazy bar while the male protagonists leer on, much to the disgust of the sole female in the group. Of course, Hayek is much more scantily clad than Quinn and her character has an actual function to the story, while Tarantella vanishes from sight. Tarantella's dance is the highlight of the film and, once seen, is extremely hard to forget.

The real "heart" of the film are the characters Grant Phillips and Doreen Culbertson, who develop a budding romance as the film progresses. Grant is a handsome, individualistic pilot, while Doreen is an insecure, gold digger. She is set to marry the nebbish (and significantly older) businessman Jan van Croft, however, fate, taking the form of insane scientist Dr. Leland Masterson and a downed airplane, intervenes. Masterson, after having shot Tarantella, abducts Jan and his soon to be trophy wife and forces Phillips to fly him to safety. However, the plane crash lands on the very same mesa where Aranya is performing his experiments. It turns out that this crash landing is no accident as it is revealed that Jan's servant, Wu, is really Dr. Aranya's lackey. His sole mission was to bring Masterson back to Aranya. How Wu was able to track Masterson's whereabouts is never revealed; he just happened to be at right place at the right time. Character development is fairly slim in this movie and even that doesn't occur until that last fifteen minutes of the movie; Grant and Doreen have a heart to heart while everyone else is asleep. The two share a passionate kiss, but Grant pulls away and apologizes to Doreen for taking advantage of the moment. Then the film jump cuts to a long shot of the two star crossed lovers as Doreen tries to persuade Grant that she has heard a noise coming from the woods. This is an extremely jarring edit; the audience never hear the noise Doreen is shouting about and it happens in mid sentence. I don't if it's just a poor print of the movie or complete incompetence on the part of the filmmaker, though I suspect the latter. The brief interlude between Grant and Doreen was probably shot later on in production (as a pick up) and the editor haphazardly spliced it into the film, hoping the audience wouldn't notice the jarring edit.

Other than Tandra Quinn, the most memorable thing about Mesa of Lost Women is its extremely repetitive score by Hoyt S. Curtin; which consists mainly of a flamenco guitar and a piano. Legendary schlockmeister, Edward D. Wood Jr., like it so much that he later recycled it in his crime film Jail Bait. However, this is not the Mesa's  only ties to Wood, it is narrated by his frequent collaborator, Lyle Talbot, and his (then) girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, can be briefly glimpsed as one of the Spider Women. Great minds think a like!

It's often hard to explain the appeal of bad movies like Mesa of Lost Women, after all, they are the absolute nadir when it comes to the cinema, but their disjointed nature often gives them a surreal quality that is often lacking in movies that are intentionally campy. Mesa of Lost Women often plays like a nightmare; the juxtaposition of beautiful women and dwarves (not to mention a giant spider) gazing directly at the camera is very unnerving at times.

Credits

Cast: Jackie Coogan (Dr. Aranya), Tandra Quinn (Tarantella), Harmon Stevens (Dr. Leland Materson), Robert Knapp (Grant Phillips), Paula (Mary) Hill (Doreen Culbertson), Nico Lek (Jan van Croft), George Burrows (George), Chris-Pin Martin (Pepe), John Martin (Frank), Allan Nixon (Doc Tucker), Richard Travis (Dan Mulcahey), Samuel Wu (Wu), Dolores Fuller (Blonde Watcher In Woods), Katherine Victor (Car Driver Spider Woman).
Narrated by Lyle Talbot.

Director: Ron Ormond, Herbert Tevos.
Screenplay: Herbert Tevos, Orville H. Hampton.
Running Time: 70 min.