Monday, December 10, 2007

Bride of the Monster

     Another one of Ed Wood's classics in the can. This is officially Bela Lugosi's last movie. He is credited and seen briefly in one of Ed's later films called Plan 9 From Outer Space, but this is only because Ed happened to have some home movies of Bela and wove them (not so gracefully) into the plot. 

      Anyway, this movie is an attempt at a Sci-Fi thriller, but like all of Ed's other work, it turned out to be pure crap. Dr. Eric Vornoff (Bela) has been run out of his native country and bought an old house out in the woods called "The Old Willow's Place". Armed with his muscleman slave Lobo (wrestler Tor Johnson) he plans to use nuclear technology to create his own army of "super beings". 

      A nosy newspaper reporter named Janet Lawton is investigating the legend of the monster at the Old Willows Place (technically we're never really told what the monster is... was it Lobo, the octopus that dwells in the ditch outside the house, or what Dr. Vornoff becomes after being zapped with his own raygun). The original title of this film was Bride of the Atom, which made much more sense in regards to the storyline, but was changed to Bride of the Monster so as to have a scarier-sounding title, even though the "monster" part of the title had not been fleshed out in the movie's plot. 

   Janet gets too close, gets kidnapped, is forced to dress like a bride, and is strapped to a table, apparently to be one of the first people that Dr. Vornoff plans to turn into a super being. Lobo saves her at the last minute and instead straps the doctor onto the table in her place. Dr. Vornoff gets zapped by his own machine and turns into something, not sure if it's a super being or if it went terribly wrong and made him into a monster. The only noticeable difference is that he looks kinda burnt, with messed-up hair, and is wearing huge black 6-inch pump shoes. 

      All throughout the movie, Ed tries desperately to match endless stock footage with his own footage but fails miserably. The doctor has a pet octopus, which at the end of the movie ends up eating the good doctor for dinner, but nevertheless looks faker than fake when compared to the stock footage of a real octopus. The same with a snake in a tree... a shot of a real snake and then a shot of a rubber one in a tree that doesn't even move. 

      And as a final flaw in the movie, Dr. Vornoff's residence/laboratory explodes at the end for no reason and the explosion is stock footage of an atomic bomb that would have destroyed half the globe, yet everyone near the house isn't even blinded as they look upon what's become of a mad geniuses work. True crap, and is therefore strongly recommended for all cult fans.

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