A Bloody Good Time 9.24.09: Ed Wood - The Best Worst Director Ever

Posted by Joseph Lee on 09.24.2009

A tribute to a man whose work probably doesn't deserve it.

Logo courtesy of Benjamin J. Colón (Soul Exodus)

Welcome again to A Bloody Good Time.

Last week I went over the dumbest moments in the Child's Play series. and I thought I'd take a look at the feedback before we go to this week...because that's what I always do.

save_us.djs asked: What about when Chucky showed up on the TurnerTron during Nitro and argued with, I think it was, Rick Steiner? That was pretty lame, too.

Well, I didn't include this because of two reasons. 1)I haven't actually seen the segment in question and 2)even if I had, it didn't take place in the films so it doesn't count. That'd be like saying Robocop rescuing Sting was one of the dumbest moments in that series.

Guest#2573 defended Seed of Chucky: Seed of Chucky was never intended to be a full-on horror movie. In interviews, Mancini said it was always intended as a dark satire on gender identity based on his own experiences as a gay man. I don't understand why people still aren't able to accept this. It's not really a horror movie. It's more a pastiche of queer cinema, which is why Glen or Glenda was heavily referenced and why John Waters made a cameo. They're both icons in the gay community. People just see Chucky and assume it's a horror movie. It owes more to Pink Flamingos than any of the other films in the Chucky serious.

I'll be as blunt as possible here. I don't really care what Seed of Chucky was intended to be. These movies are not high art, they're slasher films about a three foot doll that kills people too stupid to know how to fight him off. The reason people see Chucky and assume it's a horror movie is because Chucky is a horror character. We expect to see a film similar to the rest, which is why we watch them. If Mancini wanted something new, he should have created something entirely new.

There were a number of posters who commented that the Child's Play series was "stupid", because it's a "killer doll" that someone should easily be able to fight off. So I'll just repost what I added to the comments, because it seems like more people would read it that way. The reason Chucky is able to kill about 90% of his victims is because he catches them off guard. Chucky's really big on the element of surprise. Most of the people he kills don't even believe in him. You'll notice the ones that do believe in him and are ready usually escape death. Except for Whitehurst in 3, but that's his own fault.

BKS tried to explain the unexplained: For the unexplained deaths, I believe the cops believe Andy did it but being they have no evidence and that he was 6-8 years old they couldn't do anything. That's why when his adoptive mother found her death husband she blamed him because he had a history of it. Good column, though, Seed will be what made my favorite horror film as a kid seem like a joke.

Well, if that's the case, they would have sent him to a psychiatric ward similar to the one he was in briefly in the original. He would not have been put into the adoption system so soon after a mass murdering spree like that, even if he was innocent.

David returns, continuing his anti-Rob Zombie tirade: HE RAPED HALLOWEEN! HOW COULD YOU NOT WANT HIM DEAD?!

Because I'm a sane and rational person who knows they are just movies.

With that nonsense out of the way, let's go into this week. I'm done with countdowns for this week because I've got a big one coming up. What is it? Well, I'll let you know at the end of the column. For now, let's talk about Ed Wood.



What would the world be like without the career and films of Ed Wood? Well, probably the same, but we'd have no one to compare Uwe Boll to (more on that later) and Tim Burton's best film and Johnny Depp's best performance would be attributed to another film than the 1994 classic based on Wood's life. But however small it may be, I'd like to believe Ed Wood left some sort of a mark on the world of film. Most people look at him and see a man who used people for money while making some of the worst cinematic disasters ever captured on celluloid. As the film and several biographies have later shown, he was actually a man with a tremendous love of film and a zeal that rarely goes unmatched. He loved to make movies. His only problem was that he just couldn't make good ones.

Edward D. Wood, Jr was born on October 10, 1924 in Poughkeepsie, New York. He was the son of a postal worker and a mother who wanted a girl. Ed Wood was a weird kid, some would say, because he had an interest in films and pulp fiction. He would skip school to go to the movies. He collected comics, stole old prints that theaters threw out and of course, wore women's clothing. Okay that isn't exactly normal.

As I mentioned, Ed's mom wanted a girl. It was believed that in her displeasure with a son she would make the young boy wear skirts and dresses. This is something that would make Wood a transvestite (although he was heterosexual) later on in life. He even claimed to have fought in World War 2 with women's underwear underneath his soldier's uniform. He joined a carnival and played a bearded lady with his own prosthetic breasts. Between this and his fascination with the occult and the bizarre, Ed Wood's style of filmmaking would be shaped quite early.

Ed Wood moved to Hollywood in 1947, starting out as a scriptwriter. He wrote and directed several television commercials, as well as a few made-for-television westerns such as Boots, The Sun Was Setting and Crossroad Avenger. It wasn't until 1953 that Wood received his big break, as he was allowed to make a semi-autobiographical tale called Glen or Glenda?,



Glen or Glenda began as a sexploitation film called I Changed My Sex, based on the life of Christine Jorgensen (the first person ever to have gender reassignment surgery). When Jorgensen refused to get involved, probably because it was an exploitation film, Ed Wood decided to write a tale more about his own life and make it a sympathetic portrayal of transvestites. This was likely unheard of in the fifties, back when I Love Lucy was one of the highest rated television programs.

Wood decided that since he was the writer and the director already, he would go ahead and star in it as well. To help out, he would get the legendary Bela Lugosi...who was not far from dying and at the time was addicted to a number of drugs, to play "The Scientist" a narrator who really has nothing to do with the rest of the film. The "pull the string" moment is infamous for being incredibly awful. But even though I feel bad for Lugosi for spending the twilight of his career making this kind of film, Ed Wood was a big fan of his, and at least he was chosen because someone wanted to genuinely work with him.

Here's the moment I mentioned earlier. In case you're wondering, the buffalo have nothing to do with anything.



The film itself is widely called one of the worst ever made (something another Ed Wood film would go on to top) and even today, it is. But you can't fault Wood for showing a passion for making a personal film. If anything, this was the only case where it wasn't entirely his fault! Okay, most of it was, but meddling studio producers and execs were made that it was not about gender reassignment and so not only did Ed Wood have to add scenes of that in, but softcore sex scenes were included as well.

Wood's next film is actually in public domain, if you feel inclined to track it down. Jail Bait (1954) was a crime film. After a robbery goes awry, a thug kills his partner and blackmails a doctor for a new face. I think The Sting had a similar story. The film is also notable for being the first film role of bodybuilder Steve Reeves, who would go on to play Hercules in a couple of films later that decade. Considering how bad Wood's other films are, Jail Bait actually seems to slip under the radar. His next wouldn't be so lucky.



Ah yes. Bride of the Monster, released in 1955. This film is about a mad scientist who wants to create a race of "atomic supermen" to conquer the world. This film is one of Wood's more famous works, due to several things. One is the "atomic supermen" speech. Another would be Wood's use of stock footage, sometimes in ways that made no sense in relevance to the plot. Finally, there was the octopus. As hilariously renacted in the Burton film, the actors had to trash in the water to make it appear as though the octopus was attacking. This was because of the fact that the internal mechanism was missing. There are also rumors that Wood stole the octopus, but those have been denied.

Bride of the Monster also featured Bela Lugosi and also wrestler Tor Johnson as the titular monster. Wood would go on to use Johnson in a few more of his films. In the next four years, Wood would write a few more films and even direct a couple (Final Curtain and The Night The Banshee Cried, both in 1957) before he began to work on his most famous film to date. You may have heard of it.



Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959). The fact I can just mention the title and you know everything you need to know says how famous (or should that be infamous) this film is. It's both Ed Wood's worst film and yet his most celebrated due to it's cult status. The film "stars" Bela Lugosi. He had, of course, died shortly before this film was made, and the scenes he appears in were silent footage created for other films. Wood's dentist played the role of the vampire for the rest of the movie, keeping a cape over his face so the audience would think it was Lugosi. I'm amazed that didn't work, too. It actually starred Tor Johnson and Vampira, among other no-names.

What, exactly, is wrong with Plan 9? Well, I could point to the hubcap flying saucers as a good place to start. Wood's films were made so quickly, and on such a shoestring budget that it was nearly impossible for him to ever make a good film. For example, he would rarely have more than one take per scene, even if that scene was flawed. He just wanted to get the thing done so he could have made another film. With no budget and an inept director, it's no wonder that Plan 9 was a bad film, but what made it the so-called "worst film of all time"?

Did I mention the fact Ed Wood's dentist replaced Lugosi and covered his face? Did I mention the hubcap flying saucers (with clearly visible strings)? I thought I did. But there are a number of other inane moments that just leave you with a sense of "what am I watching?" Criswell's narration about "future events affecting you in the future", The "saucers" being described as having a "cigar-shape" (when they clearly don't), Tor Johnson getting stuck in a grave, the film constantly changing from day to night in the same scene, and many more errors. It was probably no more rushed than any other of his films, but for some reason it ends up being the worst...outside of the vocal minority that sees it for the entertainment value it has and praises it as a cult classic...kind of like Troll 2.

But you know what? I'd argue that Plan 9 From Outer Space is a better film than anything Uwe Boll has ever produced. At least I'm entertained by Plan 9, even if it's for the wrong reasons. At least the guy behind the camera loved filmmaking and wasn't doing it to get rich (which Boll does whether the film is successful or not). Ed Wood never really made much money off of his films. His films weren't successes financially or critically, yet he kept making them. Why? Because he loved making movies. Boll keeps making films to line his pockets. That's why I don't agree when people call Uwe Boll "the next Ed Wood". As you can clearly see in interviews and his films, Boll is nothing like Wood. The only link is their bad films, and like I said, I'd much rather watch Wood's.

After that interruption, let's continue with the rest of Wood's career. He would direct a few other horror films like The Sinister Urge and Night of the Ghouls, but none of them ever reached the infamy that his previous works had. In 1965 he would go on to full-on erotica with Orgy of the Dead, a film he wrote but didn't direct. He did, however, direct various pornographic films The Love Feast, Take It Out in Trade and Excited. He would spend the rest of his career in this genre, as well as writing scripts for other films, until the day he died in 1978. He also wrote a number of sex and crime novels. It's interesting to note that Wood died the same way he found Lugosi before he died: nearly broke and struggling to make ends meet.

After Wood's death, a number of books were written about his life and career in Hollywood, which shed new light on him and revealed his love of filmmaking. He was sort of despised prior to that point. Ed Wood was created in 1994 by Tim Burton, and as I said, I think it's the best Burton film ever, as well as Johnny Depp's best performance. If you ever wanted insight into the man, that movie is a good place to start.

I will always have respect for Ed Wood. Yes, his movies are terrible, but the man got to do something that I doubt I'll ever get to. He got to work in the profession that he had an unyielding love for. He got to live out his dream and make movies for a national audience. Good for him.

Next week, I take on another big project. You see, next week is the start of October, which means I'm going to provide another month-long undertaking. While not as big as The Greatest 100 Horror Films ever made, I am doing another countdown. The Twenty Greatest Horror Franchises, in which I'll use a franchises overall critical and commercial success, as well as my own opinions, to gauge which series is the best. It will be four entries per week (as I plan to write a lot about each series) for the five weeks of October. It begins next week, so come back here to see what made #20-17.