Duke Moore Movies
Duke Moore was a would-be actor and friend of writer-director-producer Edward D. Wood, Jr., who spent his whole screen career in movies written or directed by Wood, starting with the 1948 western Crossroads of Laredo. Moore's biggest and most memorable role was as the police lieutenant investigating the mysterious deaths at the cemetery in Plan 9 From Outer Space, and almost more memorable than his inept line delivery are his moves with his service revolver. He played essentially the same role with a different name in Wood's next movie, Night of the Ghouls, which remained locked up in the laboratory thanks to Wood's inability to pay the fees for processing until the 1980s, almost a decade after Moore's death. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide- 1960
A series of pornography-related murders has Lt. Carson (Kenne Duncan) frustrated, not only because the killer remains at large but also because the smut peddlers are distributing their disgusting products to high school kids at ice cream shops. They raid illicit photography studios, but it's not enough; Gloria Henderson (Jean Fontaine) runs the racket from a comfortable distance, and she's funded by "the syndicate." With a steady stream of naive hopefuls arriving in Hollywood with stars in their eyes, casting is no problem and the desperate, shamed girls aren't quick to blow the whistle. The director of these dirty films, Johnny Ryde (Carl Anthony), warns Gloria that her henchman Dirk Williams (Dino Fantini) is seriously unhinged. He's the one responsible for all the sex crimes, which he commits after long, loving exposure to their pornographic pictures. Eventually Dirk gets sloppy and the cops find his fingerprints on some very sleazy evidence, which leads Gloria's mobster backers to demand his execution. The whole dirty scheme goes awry, though, and the police are finally able to purge the community of the smut gang. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
Night of the Ghouls (which was also known as Revenge of the Dead) was Edward D. Wood Jr.'s first attempt at making a horror film without any contribution, either in a true performance or through the presence of archival footage, from Bela Lugosi, who had died three years earlier. The plot, which was as confusing as most of Wood's scripts, seems to make it a sequel to Bride of the Monster and, to a lesser degree, Plan 9 From Outer Space, incorporating events and characters from both, including Paul Marco's portrayal of the ubiquitous Officer Kelton. (Indeed, some Wood scholars have referred to the three movies as a group as "the Kelton trilogy," since he is the only character to turn up essentially the same in all three films.) Duke Moore, who portrayed the detective lieutenant in Plan 9 From Outer Space, is back in this film, and now he seems to be identified as a specialist in bizarre and unusual cases, making him sort of Ed Wood's distant precursor to The X Files' agent Fox Mulder and The Night Stalker's Carl Kolchak. This time there are strange goings-on, including disappearances and ghostly apparitions, at a mysterious house in a remote part of town. It turns out that this is the same house (rebuilt) and the same locale where Bela Lugosi's mad scientist was creating zombies in Bride of the Monster, and that Tor Johnson's Lobo is still there, somewhat the worse for wear. Instead of a mad scientist, however, the man behind the mayhem is a phony mystic named Dr. Acula, played by ex-cowboy actor Kenne Duncan. None of it makes too much sense, as though anyone needs to be told that, knowing that this was an Ed Wood movie, but parts of it are fun in that unique way that Wood's movies can be -- the strange word usages and dialogue patterns, as well as odd characterizations, mismatched shots, and incomprehensible plot elements all weave their eerie spell on the viewer willing to absorb them. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Criswell, Kenne Duncan, (more)
With its incoherent plot, jaw-droppingly odd dialogue, inept acting, threadbare production design, and special effects so shoddy that they border on the surreal, Plan 9 From Outer Space has often been called the worst movie ever made. But it's an oddly endearing disaster; boasting genuine enthusiasm and undeniable charm, it is the work of people who loved movies and loved making them, even if they displayed little visible talent. In Plan 9, alien invaders attempt to conquer the world by raising the dead, starting with an old man dressed in a Dracula costume (Bela Lugosi, in a few minutes of left-over footage grafted into this film), his much-younger and well-proportioned wife (Maila "Vampira" Nurmi), and a remarkably overweight police officer (Tor Johnson). Often funny and consistently entertaining (if almost always for the wrong reasons), Plan 9 From Outer Space is an anti-masterpiece if there ever was one, and as Criswell so brilliantly puts it, "Can you PROVE it didn't happen?!?" Its legendary director Edward D. Wood Jr. was played by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic, Ed Wood. One of the DVD releases of Plan 9 From Outer Space includes the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion, an exhaustive and entertaining look at the making of the film that runs a half-hour longer than the feature to which it pays tribute! ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bela Lugosi, Mona McKinnon, (more)
- 1948
This is the recently discovered, restored and re-edited first film of Hollywood's all-time worst filmmaker. It is the companion piece to the documentary The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr. Unlike his other sci-fi oriented films, this short is a western that is so bad that some may find it funny. Shot in two days, with one take per scene, it is the story of an amoral cowpoke who steals the pretty gal of the good-guy. The bad-guy marries this girl and then turns her into little more than a slave. Later, her former boyfriend saves her by killing her husband in a gun-fight. To justify the shooting, he proves that the late husband was a murderer and a robber. Scenes to look for include the gun fight in which the cowboy's horses keep wandering in front of their blazing guns. As the original soundtrack was never recovered, the film is narrated via voice over by Dolores Fuller, an actress and former lover of the quirky Wood. Fuller also supervised the original musical score for the film by Elvis songwriter Ben Weisman. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1948
Definitely not to be confused with the 1949 Paramount release starring William Holden or the Larry McMurtry 1995 television mini-series, this 20 minute unfinished "western" marked the first helpless Hollywood effort of legendary bad filmmaker Edward J. Wood, Jr. Together with a friend, 18-year-old John Crawford Thomas, the 23-year-old Wood produced his little epic in 16 mm on a one-day shooting schedule at the Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, California, apparently blowing Thomas' inheritance in the process. A few other scenes were filmed several weeks later in Griffith Park, but then Wood ran out of funds or acquaintances with ready cash (a recurring problem for the young auteur). The footage was shelved and basically forgotten until its reemergence in the 1998 documentary The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Based on the Western ballad, Streets of Laredo (or Crossroads of Laredo, as it is also known) starred Duke Moore, an amateur actor who would later be immortalized portraying the hapless Lieutenant Harper in Wood's masterpiece, the unforgettable Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956). Wood himself appears as a villain, proving beyond any doubt that he never before rode a horse, and there is a girl (Ruth McCabe), a parson, and a bartender. The footage flies by in a speed comparable to the old Keystone comedies and is eminently worthy of the notorious Wood. Both the Iverson Ranch and the nearby Spahn spread had become used to pedestrian filmmaking by 1948, having played host to such pedestrian outfits as PRC and Monogram for years. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
