Our friend Joel B lent us a box set of Edward D. Wood Jr's three major films, complete with faux-pink angora case! How could we resist that? Answer: We could not!

Stefan, clearly the better man, had more to say than Keith. But Keith is taller. So, uh... take that, Stefan.

Bride of the Monster (1955)

"The screen's master of the WEIRD...IN HIS NEWEST and MOST DARING SHOCKER!

Despite the fact that this film contains a woman and a monster, at no time is there a monster’s bride. There isn’t even a monster’s fiancé. Oh well. In any event, this film started our trilogy of Ed Wood’s biggest films (which were featured in the Tim Burton Biopic Ed Wood) and frankly, it’s a good way to start. It’s not as overwhelmingly bizarre as Glen or Glenda and not quite as astonishingly goofy as Plan 9 from Outer Space. It’s basically Ed Wood at half-power. The film is about Bela Lugosi, a scientist who “tampered in God’s domain”. That domain? One of atomic supermen, mentally challenged (or maybe just foreign) henchmen and big octopi. It wasn’t until I saw this film that I realized that the Earth that God has created is seriously messed up. Anyway, to the film.

OK, so Lugosi is a crazy Russian scientist who was hunted and feared because he tried to make an army of atomic supermen, not realizing that an army of regular men, while not super-strong, is less likely to give you (or die of) cancer. Well now he’s stuck in an American swamp, kidnapping passers by and putting them in a machine which is supposed to turn them into an atomic superman but ends up killing them. This is probably due to the fact that he’s a mad scientist, and the idea that bombarding people with atomic radiation will likely kill people rather than turn them into supermen. Now if he used gamma radiation, that’s a different story.

Meanwhile, Lugosi has a retarded assistant named Lobo (Tor Johnson), who strangely enough is somehow able to get the drop on people, despite making no attempt to be stealthy and clearly weighing three times more than me, who is about 217 pounds (wish I could say it was all muscle folks). However, Lobo falls for a female girl reporter who is supposed to be Lugosi’s next victim, causing the two to have a falling out of sorts. Lobo beats on Lugosi and straps him to his own machine. Amazingly, Lobo is actually able to make Lugosi’s stupid monster machine work.

OK, I got to say that I have never seen a movie monster take so much punishment in such a short period: First, as mentioned, Lugosi is knocked shitless and is then turned into a monster (a process which has killed everyone else, by the way). Then he’s wandering through his swamp and has a boulder rolled at him (from a small hill), which knocks him into a pit where his giant man-eating octopus dwells. Then, before the octopus can really take a bite out of Lugosi, a stray bolt of lightning blows them both up. Wow! I’m surprised that an elderly morphine addict could simply survive portraying most of those events (seriously, that foam boulder looked heftier than most).

Overall this is certainly the least insane of Ed Wood’s films, but it is still truly bad. It’s also really, really fun if you have people to heckle with. In any event, whenever I watch these films, I always wonder what the wrap party was like. I think there was a little detail in Ed Wood (great film), but really, I’m just curious. And I’m not talking about the usual direct to video b-movie cheapies (which, since they finish filming within the week, is probably just pizza, punch and water cooler-esque chatter). If there’s anyone out there who has been to a B-Movie wrap party, please, please tell me what it was like.

Glen or Glenda (1953)

"He Loved Women So Much, He Dared To Dress Like One!"
"What am I... MALE or FEMALE!"
"The strange case of a "man" who changed his SEX!"
"Strange Loves... of those who live and love but can not marry!"
"What Was "His" Sex...? A Daring Expose Of A Modern Problem..."

For those of you who don’t know, this is Ed Wood’s film about transvestitism and sex changes. When it was made it was shocking for several reasons: It tackled taboo issues, it wasn’t really anti-transvestite or sex change, the film maker, the infamous Ed Wood, was a transvestite, and the film is absolutely insane. The plot is basically Bela Lugosi narrating the narration of a doctor who’s talking to a cop. He talks about Glen, a transvestite and then about sex changes. But it doesn’t get really insane until the 10-minute dream sequence!

Ed Wood seems to think that he’s a wiz with dialogue. In his films he has some of the most bizarre attempts at witty banter. But in this film he has the most insane attempts to be deep ever. This includes “Beware of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep. He eats little boys - puppy dog tails - big fat snails.” And interestingly enough there is no dragon, metaphorical or otherwise. Then there’s a scene with a guy going to sleep and the narrator says that he’s meeting Morpheus, God of Sleep. Jesus, the man’s just going to sleep. I can see him narrating me eating breakfast:

Ed Wood is insane. His attempts at visual metaphor really just turn out to be surreal nonsense. It’s like he’s trying to say something about men, women, gender, Satan and zombies, but I have no idea what Ed is trying to say. It essentially comes out looking like Mel Brook’s Eraserhead (minus the Jewish jokes). For some reason, it should be noted, Satan doesn’t have horns but he does have giant horn shaped eyebrows. They’re actually scarier than anything else in this film and I pray that they were just special effects rather than a guy with monstrous eyebrows. It just scares me is all.

Other than that I have very little to say about this film. It really speaks for itself... at great length... whether it should or not. Man this is an overly narrated movie. We have Lugosi narrating as a mad doctor (don’t ask me why), a doctor narrating to a police officer and perhaps a few others, I can’t quite remember. Ed Wood’s style of film making was truly bizarre and confusing, his message unclear and his film poorly edited. Still, I will give Ed Wood some credit: I got an A off of him recently when I did a presentation on him and "ideas of unintended humour" at my Humour course at university. Thank you Ed Wood! Now, keep Satan away from me!

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

"Unspeakable Horrors From Outer Space Paralyze The Living And Resurrect The Dead!"
"Aliens Resurrecting The Dead! Flying Saucers Over Hollywood!"
"As the screen's greatest shock star Bela Lugosi is back to haunt the Earth in a terrifying revelation of things to come!"

What can I possibly say about this movie that hasn’t been said before? It’s nothing but inept material that transcends badness and becomes something of an enigma for generations to puzzle over. How can anyone make a film that bad? How can Ed Wood not see that any attempt at witty banter turned into the horrible mutilation of dialogue? I feel sorry for Ed Wood, but the fact is, the badness of these movies rests entirely on his shoulders. Today, most filmmakers can point their fingers at a producer if something goes wrong. Wood, on the other hand, has no one to blame but himself. Though he could try the Baptist church that funded this film I suppose. (I’m not joking. The entire cast and crew were baptized.) Well, there’s a lot to say about the film, but since most has already been said, I’ll talk about the stuff that stuck with me.

Strangely, when Keith put this tape in the machine for the first time it refused to play. Apparently it needed to be rewound on a non-shitty VCR, but until then we were under the suspicion that the tape had put up with so much shit, it had just had enough. It wanted a break. Still, we put in another movie and that worked, so it wasn’t an entirely logical argument. Still, interesting theory nonetheless.

The alien leader in this film is the mincing-est homosexual space alien in the history of film. OK, I don’t really know or care what his sexual orientation is but he makes very fey hand gestures whenever beckoning someone. He also looks rather bored while doing so, despite the fact that they are discussing a weapon that will destroy the universe. Yeah, that’s who I want running my planet: A mincing bored guy. To be fair the other aliens aren’t much better: One is a positively insane guy who spends almost all of his time berating humans and the other is a woman who adds nothing to the film. These two are so inept at defeating Earth that they use only a couple UFOs which they use to just fly around in and have only three zombie henchmen, who turn on them whenever their gun is jammed. (For Space God’s sake, you know how to make a weapon that can destroy the universe and you can’t control three zombies?)

Another aspect of the film that I find unnerving is the relationship between Jeff Trent (civilian airline pilot) and his wife. Jeff spends far too much time away and his wife says that she uses his pillow to keep her company: “Sometimes in the night when it does get a little lonely I reach over and touch it, then it doesn't seem so lonely anymore.” Maybe it’s just me, but that seems kinda creepy. I don’t know why exactly. I mean, it’s not like she said she’s having sexual relations with the pillow. There’s just something wrong about it that I can’t put my finger on.

Probably my favourite line comes from a gravedigger. Little known fact: Gravediggers are some of the funniest men alive. It began in the early 1600’s with William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, during a scene in which two gravediggers have a humourous conversation about death while digging up Yorick’s grave. Sure it doesn’t seem as funny now, but way back then it was cracking up both the shit of the unwashed commoners and the unwashed by heavily perfumed nobles and royal folk. Here, a gravedigger, who is spooked, utters: “I don't like hearing noises, especially when there ain't supposed to be any.” So essentially he’s saying that even if there are supposed to be noises, he only tolerates them. Geez, I know people who hate a lot of strange things, but the ability to hear takes the cake in my book.

Well, I have little left to say of this film except that it’s one of those films that leaves you constantly rubbing your eyes in disbelief. And while that leads to raw bloody eyes, it’s also what leads to bad movie watching. Just remember: Never view these films alone. It’s never as fun and leads to headaches.

The Ed Wood Trio

The main thing I've learned from this Ed Wood marathon is that movies about Ed Wood are better than Ed Wood movies. Grab one of the documentaries about him, or watch Tim Burton's Ed Wood, and you'll have a great time. Watch an actual Ed Wood movie, and the time will not be so great. However, the catch is that in order to fully appreciate the movies made about Ed Wood, you really gotta watch Ed Wood's movies at some point.

Mostly, the problem with Ed's movies is boringness, and Ed is not unique in this respect. Badness doesn't bother me, in fact, I love badness. But boringness, that one's a killer. I've found that most movies fail due to excessive length, poor pacing, and a lack of ideas. It doesn't matter whether the ideas are good or bad, they've just gotta be there.

Ed Wood's movies had me drifting off quite a few times, but honestly, I don't think his movies were really that much worse than other b-movies of the time. He made a few colossal stumbles, which were very memorable and great to watch, but for the most part nothing that terribly terrible was going on. At least, not in Plan 9 and Bride of the Monster. Glen or Glenda, on the other hand, is wacked. Plan 9 may be the Worst Movie of All Time, but Glen or Glenda deserves an award for so accurately portraying the experience of living in the mind of a crazy person.

Normally, getting a glimpse of what life would be like without a firm grasp on rational thought is very harrowing. That's what I felt like while I watched Buffy Season 7, and it was a truly horrifying experience. But that same trait made Glen or Glenda my favorite Ed Wood movie. Holy cats, it was messed up. It's the film that makes me feel bad for Edward Wood, because he clearly had some things he wanted to get off his chest. He had a point of view and a cause that was important to him, but when it came time to express it to the world he totally spazzed out. He went into convulsions of weirdness and spewed out a nonsensical, non-linear and not very convincing defense of the transvestite lifestyle. When it was over all I could think was, "Poor Ed. He really thought this was good. But boy, was he wrong."

Bride of the Monster was still worth watching just for the ending. Crap, did Bela ever die. He got hit by a boulder, was run over by a train, shot by a cannon, had a planet crash into him, was struck by lightning and was shot, twice! I was so impressed by the carnage that I obviously can't even remember the details, as they were blasted from my brain and replaced with pure awe. That's truly the kind of ending that I would call "a humdinger".

Plan 9 From Outer Space is the movie that makes me not feel so bad for Mr. Wood. I mean, c'mon, Ed! Would it kill you to do a second take? People are knocking over cardboard headstones, here! But it had lots of good scenes, the king of which was the "Alien Explanation Scene":