Jail Bait

This was Ed Wood's second movie, but first feature film. Glen or Glenda had a horrible reception and seemed more like a semi-autobiographical documentary on transvestites, when it was 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 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, these 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 without anyone noticing). It also had 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. Basically, the story is about a guy who commits a murder, then he himself is murdered. His murderer tries to blackmail the original killers father (a prominent plastic surgeon) to alter 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 with a scalpel and a tub of hot water) and when the police finally start to catch up with killer #2, it's conveniently 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. Like I said, this isn't very 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.

Night of the Ghouls

Ed Wood's Night of the Ghouls is an unofficial sequel to Bride of the Monster. There are several references to "The Old Willows Place" (Dr. Vornoff's residence and lab that explodes in Bride of the Monster) and even Lobo, the kind hearted monster from "Bride" makes a reappearance (with much more gruesome make-up than before). A Swami scam artist that bilks people into believing that he can channel the dead, recruits an actress to plays a roaming ghost at night to frighten people. Unfortunately for her, a real ghost dressed in black is following her with the same intentions. As the Swami (who's actual name is Dr. Acula. (DrAcula, get it? Of course you get it, you just don't want it.) holds his fake seances, he fools people with the weirdest tricks. One is a floating trumpet, a guy in a white sheet scuttles by every now and then with a very whimsical tune that plays as he shuffles by. There was some other "floating" (obviously on a string) object that I couldn't identify. All this weirdness doesn't even phase the people at the seance. This cheap crap never even strikes the seance members in the slightest as strange or odd, they actually think it's "normal", although I use that term loosely. At the seance, two attendees are skeletons wearing cheap wigs. Eventually, after committing an endless list of criminal offences, the Swami isn't taken down by the law but instead by ghosts of the families that the Swami scammed. They crowd around him and the next morning, he's gone and the "ghosts" are now a pile of bones on the floor. This Ed Wood film came a little later in the game than most of his movies. You see, Ed didn't make movies, he made crap. Therefore was broke and fit the perfect stereotype of the starving artist. Since he was so broke, he couldn't afford to have this film developed. Decades later when Wade Williams bought the rights to Ed Wood's movies. He had the film developed decades after it was filmed, so that now we can enjoy this almost nearly lost classic. If you loved Bride of the Monster, then Night of the Ghouls should definitely be sought out. I think it's one of Eddie's better pieces of doo doo.

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 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, turned out to be 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 was... was it Lobo, the octopus or what Dr. Vornoff becomes after being zapped with his own raygun). Probably because the original title of this film was Bride of the Atom, but was changed so as to have a scarier sounding title. She gets too close, gets kidnapped, 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 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 differences is that he looks kinda burnt, with messed up hair and is wearing huge black 6 inch pump shoes. All through the movie, Ed tries desperately to match the stock footage to his own footage. He 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 the rubber one in the tree that doesn't 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 cult fans.

Orgy of the Dead

Orgy of the Dead was one of Ed Wood's last films. And if you thought Glen or Glenda or Plan 9 was bad, this farce makes them look like masterpieces. Towards the end of his life, he had already been a raging alcoholic for years and had begun making monster/nudie films. Light weight porn with a vague monster theme, basically. This movie has no plot at all and only the bare bones of a story. A young couple are traveling down the road and run out of gas near a cemetery. Day instantly becomes night as we move from an outside shot to a studio shot (one of Ed Woods favorite continuity goofs). They are tied up by a werewolf (you can actually see the actors whole neck because the mask is too small). The infamously incorrect self proclaimed psychic (and Ed's favorite drinking buddy) Criswell rises out of a coffin and gives some kind of speech about the creatures of the night, blah, blah, blah. He is obviously reading a cue card, as his eyes move back and forth. He even moves his head back and forth a little too. It also looks like he has on enough make-up to carve your initials in. He is joined by some Vampira wannabe that looks like Elvira's younger sister. Throughout the rest of the movie, the captive couple are subjected to striptease after striptease, by heavily endowed females jiggling around to a "spooky" soundtrack. Each girl comes out "dressed" as something different. There's the Voodoo girl, the jungle girl, the skeleton girl, the mummy girl, etc. They come out half dressed to begin with and "dance" around until all clothes are a distant memory. One after the other, like it's Halloween at a strip club. Then it abruptly ends when the couple untie themselves and escape. I truly believe that there's something out there for everyone, so if you like big bosoms and strippers on Halloween... this Bud's for you.

Glen or Glenda

This was Ed woods first real attempt at movie making and as many as he did, you'd think he would have learned something along the way. Umm, no. Ed's last movie was just as bad as his first. For those who don't know... good 'ol Ed was a transvestive with a particular liking for angora. When Christine Jourgenson (one of the first and definately the most famous) transexual ever, announed that she was once a man and had his sex surgically changed to that of a woman. The world was a bit shocked, but this story struck a chord with Ed and he auditioned for the director of the Christine Jourgenson movie that was set to be shot soon. Christine Jourgenson wanted money and money was a thing that eluded Ed Wood for most of his life. So they just decided to make a sex change movie anyway with a fictionalized story. Ed wood got the role only because he was able to produce the practically embalmed screen legend Bela Lugosi to be in the film. Ed took this as the perfect opportunity to reveal his own transvestisism and played the main role of both Glen and Glenda. It's Ed's story, truer than we ever wanted to know. A boring documentary about whether or not to tell his girlfriend about why her pink sweaters are always so stretched out. Only the last five minutes deal with topic of actual sex change. And Bela Lugosi (who is totally out of place) plays a sort of mad scientist role that pulls the strings (sorry... Pull De Strink!) The movie has an overall uplifting (yet narratively annoying) facade until it cuts to Bela, the we see lightening and hear thunder and for the moment at least, it's a horror movie (without much horror). After the doom and gloom comes happy Glenda turning down homosexuals in rude ways, letting us know that transvestites are definately not gay. It's got bad acting, cheap sets, nonsensical characters, and a terrible editing format. Which of course means that you'll love it. This by his own accounts is his true story, the bizarre makings of Edward D. Wood Jr.

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Plan 9 from Outer Space is ironically considered to be Ed Wood's greatest cinematic acheivement, while at the same time it has outright won the award for the worst movie ever made. Filmed with more goofs than one can count, it never ceases to make me laugh out loud. In addition to the cardboard tombstones that occasionally tip over and the rapid incontinuity that results from the scene changing back and forth from day and night like 6 times in a two minute span. Eddie wasn't interested in the "small details", only the big picture. This thinking led him to make some pretty cheesy flicks, to say the least. Ed Wood as usual would gather up all his friends and set out to make a really bad movie. Plan 9 is an alien (who look exactly like humans, even down to the current hairstyles of the time) plot to take over the world by reanimating the recently dead. They succeed somewhat, by raising only three "zombies". These consist of an old man (half played posthumously by Bela Lugosi using Eds home movies and half played by Eds chiropractor who kept his face hidden with his Dracula cape so that no one would notice that they were two different people) his wife (played by the recently unemployed Vampira) and a 500 lb cop (played by Tor Johnson, the gentle giant wrestler turned B-movie actor). Cheap sets, wooden dialogue, flying saucers that look mysteriously like paper plates painted silver (which wobble uncontrollably throughout the movie) and the most stock footage that Ed could get his hands on (and Ed sure did love his precious stock footage). All this amounted to an amazing cinematic experience (well, at least in Ed Woods mind).