Legendary Awfulness: Edward D. Wood, Jr.

There are those in cinema who are remembered and celebrated because of their genius: Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Truffaut, Fellini, Wilder, and so on. But only one filmmaker is remembered and celebrated for his lack of talent: Edward D. Wood, Jr., the mind behind such “classics” as Plan 9 From Outer Space, Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster. He was the Orson Welles of bad movies, writer, director, producer and actor, but if Welles is one end of the spectrum, then Wood is the other.

“Now wait a minute,” you might argue, “there are far worse films than the ones Ed Wood made. What about Manos: The Hands of Fate?”

True.

Manos: The Hands of Fate is far worse than anything Wood did (with the possible exception of Glen or Glenda), but Hal P. Warren was nice enough to stop after one wretched film. Wood kept going.

“What about Coleman Francis?” you might argue.

What about him? Where is the big budget Hollywood biopic starring Johnny Depp about Coleman Francis? Where are the DVD box sets of the complete works of Coleman Francis? Where are the biographies of Francis (who the good folks at “Mystery Science Theater” nicknamed “The Cinematic Poet of Parking”)?

They don’t exist.

Wood is the crown prince of bad movies, the face of bad movies, the patron saint of bad movies, if you will. A man whose personal life was just as bizarre as the pictures he made. Unlike the others named above,  Wood has made an indelible mark on the history of motion pictures.

Well, at least a footnote.

There are those who view Wood as little more than a scam artist, a man who could talk people into anything, including (but not limited to) funding his awful films. A man who took advantage of a frail, all-but-completely forgotten actor like Bela Lugosi, forcing him to appear in these terrible motion pictures.

But then there are those who view Wood as a dreamer, a man who, like a child, so looked forward to the finished product, he didn’t take the time to do it right. A workaholic, who wrote as fast as Kerouac, but whose publishing history is more like Kilgore Trout’s. Someone who never really grew up, who still viewed comic books and pulp novels as high art in an un-ironic way.

Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in between.

In a film like Bride of the Monster, one can see that Wood, had the cards been cut in his favor, could have built a career out of directing B pictures, the programmers that Hollywood shat out to fill a bill. He might even have ventured into television. You could view him as a precursor to Roger Corman, indeed, had Wood lived longer, the two might have collaborated. Certainly, Roger could have appreciated Wood’s breakneck speed. Bride of the Monster is by no means a good movie, but it is arguably Wood’s best film, the one with the most coherent plot and the one where the bad effects leave the least sour taste in one’s mouth. Really, is Bride of the Monster any worse than Revenge of the Creature (released that year from Universal as a follow-up to their massively successful Creature from the Black Lagoon) or This Island Earth (also 1955)? Sure, the stock footage doesn’t match up and that is a very, very rubber snake that Tor Johnson fights, but couldn’t you also point at the laughably bad effects in World Without End (currently on DVD in the same set as Sci-Fi classics Them! and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms)?  Plan 9 From Outer Space may be more popular, but I will argue that Bride of the Monster is the better film. (But, what do I know? I also prefer La Strada to La Dolce Vita.)

Let’s talk about Plan 9 From Outer Space, Wood’s crowning “achievement.” The plot concerns aliens who use their technology to raise the dead, turning them into zombies that attack humans. With the human race destroyed, the effeminate aliens can conquer the world.  Why the aliens only resurrect three people in as many days is a mystery. As is why they concentrate all of their efforts on one tiny cemetery that seems to be in the middle of nowhere (featuring the infamous cardboard tombstones). Night of the Living Dead this is not.

And yet…

The basic plot, the nugget of idea that rests at the creamy center of Plan 9, is not a bad one. Really, in other hands, the idea of aliens raising the dead to be their unholy army is kind of a cool one. What could James Cameron or Steven Spielberg do with such an idea? Thus, we must come to the great truth, whether we are talking about cinema, the theater, novels or even oral storytelling: It’s not the tale, it’s the teller. This truth is the reason that so many remakes are awful.

The stories of the making of Plan 9 From Outer Space are well-known Hollywood lore, many of them recreated for the biopic Ed Wood, including, but not limited to, the cast and crew being baptized to secure funding from a church, Bela Lugosi being doubled by another taller man, who no more resembled Lugosi than I do and, of course, the cheap plywood sets. They are as famous as “the shark didn’t work” (Jaws), “Bergman didn’t know who she loved” (Casablanca) or “it’s chocolate syrup” (Psycho).

So, why hasn’t Ed Wood been relegated to the dustbin of cinematic history? Why are there box sets, retrospectives and biopics? Why isn’t Ed Wood forgotten? What is it about his bad movies that separate them from others bad movies? Perhaps it is the boyish optimism, the sense that spook houses and brutes with a heart of gold appeal to the ten year-old in all of us. Perhaps it is because in spite of the wretchedness of the ones he made, you know that Ed Wood loved movies, perhaps he gravitated more towards serials and B-pictures, but then, so does Quentin Tarantino.

When I first discovered the films of Edward D. Wood, Jr., it was through the film Ed Wood, and then through “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” both of which hold Wood up as an object of ridicule. Lately, I find myself laughing at his films less and less, instead, I observe them, as a curious species. Awful films that are well-known. When I saw a “Rifftrax Live” presentation of Plan 9 From Outer Space, the theater was nearly at capacity. Would such a turn-out occur for Citizen Kane or Sunset Boulevard or any number of so-called “great” films?

The Ed Wood box set I purchased contained Bride of the Monster, Glen or Glenda, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Jailbait and Night of the Ghouls. In one evening, my wife and I watched every one of them, in order of release. My thoughts are this:

Glen or Glenda is, at times, completely incomprehensible, random footage is inserted, in an effort to pad the film. Sadly, this padding is so incongruous, it makes one feel like someone put the wrong reel on. It is nearly Wood’s autobiography, the story of a closet transvestite, complete with over-the-top Freudian sequences of Glen’s fears about coming out to his girlfriend (the scene of him unable to lift the tree of her because he’s dressed as a woman and therefore not a “real man” is particularly memorable). Also in this film is a second story, one that is largely forgotten, about Alan, who decides to have a sex-change operation. I felt that the reason this story is so largely forgotten is because even Wood didn’t care about it. He wanted to talk about transvestites, not hermaphrodites.

Jailbait is rarely talked about is Wood’s canon, and it is easy to see why. It is the only Wood film that I would describe as boring. The others, as awful as they are, are fascinating, while Jailbait is a pseudo-noir about gangsters, plastic surgery and murder. What could have been a lesser episode of “The Twilight Zone” instead becomes a dull picture that makes you wish you were watching Out of the Past or Rififi instead.

Much has already been written about Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space, so I’ll skip them and talk briefly about Wood’s only “comedy:” Night of the Ghouls. For the first time, Wood seems to be in on the joke, as this film seems to make fun of itself. It is a quasi-sequel to Bride of the Monster, featuring the return of a scarred Lobo and numerous references to “what happened years ago.” But, Wood’s jokes fall flat and the whole thing comes off like a high school play that you’re only sitting through to see your child recite his lines. Is it Wood’s worst film?

Hard to say.

What is Wood’s worst film? Excluding the soft-core porn that he wound up directing, and focusing solely on the feature films that he wrote and directed, it would be hard to nail down one or another. A convincing argument could be made for Jailbait for its insipidness and poor pacing. You could also say Glen or Glenda, for its randomness and lack of coherence. Or is it Night of the Ghouls, a picture that wanders around aimlessly for sixty-nine minutes?

Is the argument itself silly? Is arguing Wood’s worst like arguing Kurosawa’s best, in that it all boils down to personal preference?

The bigger question is this: Why, after all these years, is the name of Edward D. Wood, Jr. still around? Why is he the patron saint of bad movies?

And, perhaps most puzzling, why do we still watch them?

Maybe it’s because we are all interested in the mysterious and the unknown, for that is why we are here.