Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Jail Bait

     This was Ed Wood's second movie, but his first actual feature film. Glen or Glenda had a horrible reception and seemed more like a semi-autobiographical horror-themed documentary on transvestites, when it was originally supposed to be about sex changes. 

      I think with Jail Bait, Ed was just trying to make some money. Crime dramas were very big at the time and he thought he could cash in on it, then take the profits from that and make a sci-fi horror flick as was his usual M.O. Miraculously, a young Steve Reeves (Hercules) managed to make it into this little flick. 

     Crime drama wasn't really Ed's favorite medium, but he did the best he could with it. Not a bad story really. I mean, of course, it has all the trademarks of being an Ed Wood film... deplorable acting, totally improbable plots, and cheap sets. Speaking of sets, the ones used here are exactly the same ones from Glen or Glenda, (this being the first film following Glen or Glenda, I guess Ed thought he could successfully recycle sets without anyone noticing). It also had all the same actors which again just made it seem like Glen/Glenda was a murderer having plastic surgery to alter his/her face to escape the police or something, therefore watching them together is quite humorous. 

      Basically, the story is about a guy who commits a murder, then he himself is murdered. His murderer tries to blackmail the original killer's father (a prominent plastic surgeon) into altering his appearance to escape the authorities. The plastic surgeon thinks his son has only been kidnapped but soon learns that his son is dead. He performs the plastic surgery (at the guys' house, armed only with a scalpel and a tub of hot water) and when the police finally start to catch up with killer #2, it becomes a convenient time for the unveiling of bandages to prove that he's someone else. Amazingly, the father managed to completely alter his face to look exactly like his dead son that was wanted for murder. He's shot by the cops...the end. 

      As I said, this isn't all that much like most of Ed's stuff but still has that totally cheaper-than-cheap feel to it that we've come to love in all Ed Wood's movies.

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