Edward D. Wood, Jr. Movies

Edward D. Wood, Jr., is one of the great enigmas of American cinema. A marginal figure -- at best -- in his own time, Wood and his movies have become objects of fascination for legions of cineastes and pop-culture enthusiasts in the decades since his death in 1978. Not only have Wood's life and career been chronicled in books and videos, but they became the basis of a feature film -- made on a budget Wood could only dream of -- in the form of Tim Burton's Ed Wood in 1994. But not even Burton's movie captures the actual depth of appeal -- or strangeness -- of Wood's movies, with their off-kilter, otherworldly characters, compositions, and dialogue. They exist on a level all their own; the only movies that even come close might be underground filmmaker Jack Smith's homages to Hollywood, and they were far less ambitious than Wood's pictures, which sought mainstream respectability.
Most of Wood's movies were considered incomprehensible at the time of their original release and had all but disappeared from television by the end of the 1960s. In the summer of 1980, however, some 20 months after his death, the rediscovery of Wood began with the presentation of Plan 9 from Outer Space, which hadn't been seen on television in the NYC market in at least a decade, at New York's Beacon Theater. The capacity audience of nearly 3,000 was certainly the largest group of viewers ever to personally attend a single showing of one of Wood's movies. That screening, based on Plan 9 from Outer Space having been named "The Worst Movie of All Time," took place in conjunction with the posthumous presentation to Wood of the Golden Turkey Award as "The Worst Filmmaker of All Time." The "award" was singularly unfair; although he had always been in the running for the title, there were (and are) poorer filmmakers than Edward D. Wood, Jr., just as there are far worse feature films than Plan 9 from Outer Space (Wood himself even made a couple that were worse), though the screening and its attendant publicity were essential in heralding the wider discovery of his work.
Born in Poughkeepsie, NY, in 1924, Edward Davis Wood, Jr., developed a keen fascination with movies early in life, and as a boy shot his own amateur films. He was employed at a local theater, first as an usher and later an assistant manager, which allowed him to begin collecting movie posters, stills, and other memorabilia. He was especially fascinated by horror films, and this was the heyday of the first wave of classics in that genre for the sound era: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and Mark of the Vampire were among the titles that left an impression on him as a boy and would be reflected in his later work. It was also during this time that Wood began manifesting the sexual confusion that preceded the transvestism he displayed as an adult.
He came to Hollywood after serving in the Marine Corps during World War II, but with minimal acting skills melded to some vaguely good looks, Wood had very little to offer except enthusiasm. He mostly worked in shoestring theater productions, with the occasional extra and basic stunt work in low-budget films. By this time, Wood was also a full-fledged transvestite in his private life, with a special fixation on white Angora sweaters. And like most other habitués of the movie capital who didn't have some combination of talent, influential friends, or money of their own to open doors, he became a denizen of the lowest strata of the Hollywood social order, alongside other would-be actors, former stars who had fallen badly, and numerous poseurs. But Wood had goals beyond those of most of his friends and acquaintances: he wanted to write, produce, and direct movies. He got to make a few instructional shorts for Coronet Films and other low-budget productions, all uncredited, but this only whetted his appetite for more ambitious pictures. And he got his chance when the story of the sex-change operation involving Christine Jorgensen broke -- he was able to persuade George Weiss, a producer of cheap exploitation movies, that he was the man to make a quickie film about transsexuals to rush onto the market while the story was fresh.
Wood's resulting first feature, released variously as Glen or Glenda?, Transvestite, and I Changed My Sex, turned out to be an impassioned (albeit sometimes confusing) personal statement about transvestites and the personal consequences that many of them faced over their sexual confusion; about two minutes of the film, at the end, broached the matter of the sex-change operation that had been the supposed raison d'etre for the picture. The movie -- in which Wood starred (under the name Daniel Davis) -- was shot in 10 days for $35,000. Released in 1953, Glen or Glenda? wasn't seen or heard of much beyond the exploitation film circuit. Ironically, the movie was an object of fascination for decades among one group of filmgoers who cared nothing about sexual confusion; horror film buffs pondered and endlessly speculated about the picture, owing to the presence of Bela Lugosi in its cast. Glen or Glenda? was next to impossible to find, and even locating anyone who had seen it (or would admit to having seen it) was difficult; but there it was, a title in Lugosi's filmography beckoning horror movie buffs, represented by nothing more than a rare still in horror magazines.
The relationship between Wood and Lugosi was essential to what little success Wood enjoyed, and provided the actor with some of the last work of his career. The one-time stage and film star had begun falling on hard times in the late '30s, and by the early '50s he had publicly revealed an addiction to morphine, the origins of which dated back to wounds suffered during his military service in the First World War. Apparently, Wood could see in Lugosi enough of his remaining charisma and talent so that it made sense to bring him in to whatever he was working on, whenever he could. In 1953, when no one else was willing to hire him, Wood put Lugosi into Glen or Glenda? Lugosi himself was choosy enough to turn down the lead role in Wood's first "mainstream"-focused feature, the crime-drama Jail Bait (1954) -- the part went, instead, to former silent screen star Herbert Rawlinson, who died the night after shooting was completed. But the Hungarian-born actor did star in Wood's Bride of the Monster (1955) and agreed to star in the movie that became Plan 9 from Outer Space. It was a true symbiotic relationship, for Wood needed Lugosi as much as Lugosi needed him thanks to lingering public memories of Dracula, and the re-release of most of the Universal horror library of the 1930s, the actor was still a bankable name on theater marquees and also a solid marketing and talking point with potential backers, who remembered him from better days. What's more, contrary to accounts that end Lugosi's history of box office successes in the 1930s, the actor had been in successful movies during the Second World War (Return of the Vampire) and after (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). Lugosi's presence in Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer Space ensured that both movies were at least discussed when they opened and were later widely shown on television, which wasn't true of any of Wood's other films. What's more, his three films for Wood, although they weren't remotely in a league with Lugosi's work of the 1930s, were the most interesting movies of his later career.
Wood had a filmmaker's soul and he reportedly idolized Orson Welles. He was hemmed in, however, in terms of what he did with film, by his middle-class background and his existence on the marginal side of life, owing to his transvestism. As a filmmaker, Wood's approach to directing a scene was recalled by the late Steve Reeves -- who co-starred in Wood's 1954 crime drama Jail Bait -- in an interview with Roy Frumkes in Perfect Vision magazine: "[He] let you do things the way you wanted to, and if they weren't quite right he would direct you. The shoot lasted two or three weeks for me, off and on." That "off and on" was typical of a Wood production, for he usually secured his financing during production. He would proceed with shooting when he had the money to pay for it, a day here, two or three days there.
As he got more ambitious in his subject matter and movies, Wood began to reach far beyond his grasp, and while his movies didn't exactly get "better," he did make more interesting and entertaining mistakes. The small flaws and odd touches in Jail Bait turn into truly bizarre shots and scenes in Plan 9 from Outer Space, and continuity, along with forward momentum, dissolves almost entirely in parts of Night of the Ghouls. But among the fascinating elements of both movies are what comes through of Wood's admiration for some of the finer horror movies of the 1930s. Maila Nurmi (aka Vampira, as she was credited), may have had no respect for Wood or his script for Plan 9, and so did her role mute, but Wood did capture her in poses and shots startlingly similar to those of Carroll Borland in Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire; Valda Hansen as "The White Ghost" in Night of the Ghouls, replaced a recalcitrant Vampira, is even more an effort at capturing Borland's presence from the Browning classic. Indeed, the whole plot of Night of the Ghouls, involving a confident man and false walking dead people, recalls elements of Mark of the Vampire, though without the energizing presence of a Lionel Barrymore, a Lionel Atwill, or a Jean Hersholt. Indeed, part of the fun of watching Wood's movies is seeing how much enthusiasm he displays for the films he knew and loved as a boy. It's akin to watching an 8mm film by one's younger brother or nephew, or a classmate, trying to emulate the movies and the filmmakers they admire, as amateurs. Except, of course, that Wood was 30-something, not 10 or 12, and working with (some) professional actors and a professional crew, all reasons why he did occasionally succeed, if only for a shot or a scene, such as Tor Johnson's Inspector Clay, rising from the grave midway through Plan 9. And he succeeded sufficiently so that his ambitions grew with each new movie, perhaps faster than his ability or his grasp of the essentials of filmmaking.
It's almost as though the further he advanced in his work and career, the odder and bigger the seams were that started to show in his work. And, as a result, in tandem with the occasionally successful scene, such as Johnson's entrance as a walking dead man, his movies became more interesting, if not necessarily "better." And even more startling is the fact that Wood's ineptitude was catching. His work as a screenwriter seemed to inspire other filmmakers to errors, excesses, and flaws of the same sort, if not identical in nature. He didn't direct The Violent Years, for example, but the movie still has many distinctive "Wood-ian" touches -- threadbare sets, odd camera angles, weird blocking -- that the filmmakers Franz Eichhorn and William Morgan couldn't avoid in the course of translating his script to the screen. It's almost as though an osmosis process, involving unintended errors, took place in whatever he put his hand to, even indirectly. The Astounding She-Monster is a case-in-point; Wood was only a consultant and advisor for first-time filmmaker Ronnie Ashcroft, yet somehow the movie, with its mix of mistakes, the vaguely pacifist message of its script, and its emaciated budget, does resemble aspects of Wood's own output, though it does lack some of the energy that Wood brought to his pictures.
Wood may have had a filmmaker's soul, but he lacked a filmmaker's mind. The spirit was willing, but the judgment and, undoubtedly, the talent, were lacking. Other filmmakers -- even Alfred Hitchcock in North by Northwest -- have occasionally had problems with continuity, mismatching shots in the same scene, but with Wood, even such basics as matching day and night shots were seemingly beyond his ability. Yet his movies are not without interest. Writing in Randy Simon and Harold Benjamin's Edward D. Wood Jr. -- A Man and His Films, philosopher M.J. Kelar cited Wood as a perfect example of "anti-genius." In describing the spellbinding nature of Wood's work, and the process of absorbing it as a member of the audience, Kelar's essay "Signals From a Dark Saucer" cites "the viewer's rapt anticipation of the next wrong move. It is the mirror image of what one feels while watching a work by a master, and awaiting the next splendid piece of information. These feelings stand opposite one another in just the way that the feelings of going up in an elevator, and of going down in an elevator, stand opposite one another."
Wood's Jail Bait, his first "mainstream" film, may be the strangest crime drama ever made, in such details as the "revelation" scene in which Don Gregor's corpse tumbles out from behind a curtain, standing erect; the uncovering of Vic Brady's surgically altered face; and Lieutenant Bob Lawrence's (Steve Reeves) brief, bare-chested scene in the detective squad room. The aliens in Plan 9 from Outer Space, for all of their foibles and occasional eccentricities (like the fey, effeminate manner of several of the males), are the most normal-speaking and normal-acting characters in the movie. And nothing and nobody in Night of the Ghouls, Wood's long-lost sequel to Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer Space, is normal. Restricted in his budgets and shooting schedules, and limited in his writing (especially where dialogue was concerned), but perhaps a little more comfortable with sexually tinged argot that the typical screenwriter, Wood at his best created grotesque but spellbinding visions of humanity, filtered through the prism (or was it a prison?) of his own mind. Alas, the public didn't see it that way. His movies were largely unseen and usually not reviewed, and were most often reviled when they ended up being written about at all.
From Glen or Glenda? in 1953 until The Sinister Urge in 1960, Wood's best efforts went pathetically awry. He managed to survive the death of Lugosi in 1956 by including a couple of minutes of silent footage of the actor, from a film that was never made, in Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Lugosi's "presence" in the movie and name in the credits raised enough interest to get the movie released, but Wood's career was on borrowed time after that. He was so hard up for funds to finish Night of the Ghouls, his first post-Lugosi film, that the movie became the property of the lab that processed it because Wood couldn't pay the bill. Monetary problems had plagued Orson Welles throughout his career, but he could always finance another few weeks' shooting on a production such as Othello or Chimes at Midnight by making an appearance on television, or in someone else's film as an actor for a quick $100,000. Wood had no such options -- the best gig he ever had to pick up some extra cash was by turning in the screenplay to the low-budget jungle adventure movie The Bride and the Beast, one of the strangest movies of that genre, in 1958 -- and possibly making a little money as a consultant to Ronnie Ashcroft on The Astounding She-Monster that same year. Just as his first movie as a director, Glen or Glenda?, was somewhat autobiographical and starred the director, so his last full feature as a director, The Sinister Urge (1960), had an autobiographical element, of a darker nature. Posters from Wood's own productions are seen in the office of the pornographic filmmaker, representing his prior work, and Wood himself was in the process of descending into that netherworld of exploitation filmmaking and writing, even sleazier than the extreme Poverty Row surroundings his work had occupied up to that point. During the 1960s and '70s, he scratched out a living writing pornographic novels; he may have written over 100 paperbacks with titles along the lines of Raped in the Grass and Young, Gay & Black. He also occasionally scripted, acted, and directed ultra low-budget exploitation movies, such as Orgy of the Dead. It was a sad existence for Wood and his wife Kathy (and their dogs), and it ended in late 1978, after the last in a series of evictions, when the director died, apparently of heart failure, at the age of 54.
Starting just five years later, Wood's name became synonymous with jokes about bad filmmaking, but his movies were suddenly also counted among the most watched B-pictures of any era. Tim Burton's tribute film cemented his reputation with mainstream audiences, and in the 21st century his best work can still attract large audiences to theaters. In July and October 2009, 31 years after Wood's death, showings of Plan 9 from Outer Space featuring commentary by the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 went out to hundreds of theaters in the United States, drawing thousands of filmgoers. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide