The Ed Wood, Jr. Acting Method

Edward D. Wood, Jr. The name alone implies a B-grade director, hack screenwriter and novelist (no matter how prolific) and inept producer more concerned with bringing his pictures in for paltry sums than making quality films. Another phrase applies to the illustrious Ed Wood Filmaking Process... good character actor. What the... ? Is he insane, you ask yourself? No, I am not insane. A critical examination of Wood's performances will more than explain the claim that Ed Wood Jr. was a good, effective character actor (with a few exceptions).

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Upon arriving in Hollywood in 1948, Wood's first "showbiz" job was, believe it or not, as an actor. He played the role of the Sheriff in a dinner theater production of The Blackguard Returns. By all accounts, Wood performed admirably working only for beer and pretzels. This is where he made the acquaintance of Crawford John Thomas, who was also a performer in The Blackguard Returns. The two actors turned themselves into film producers almost overnight and created Wood-Thomas Productions. Their first project was The Streets of Laredo (1948) and became not only Ed Wood's writing anddirectorial debut, but also his debut as a movie star, playing a cowboy. The project was never finished. In what available footage there is of Laredo , Wood performs admirably. He is upstaged by his horse, but dies when shot in the belly very convincingly. Moving on.

Cinematic Hell: The Giant Gila Monster (1959)

by Hal Astell

Director: Ray Kellogg

Stars: Don Sullivan, Fred Graham and Lisa Simone



One of two features produced back to back in 1959 by an independent production company in Texas called Hollywood Pictures Corporation, such a generic name that it was the second such company, this was the half that didn't even get the title right. At least The Killer Shrews starred a bunch of killer shrews, along with James Best from The Dukes of Hazzard, but this one just has a Mexican beaded lizard. Perhaps the filmmakers felt that The Giant Gila Monster made for a better title, even though most of the people watching couldn't pronounce it properly. It has two selling points today, beyond being a bad but fun film. Firstly, the font used on the promotional posters, though not on the title card, is the one memorably borrowed by Glenn Danzig for his bands The Misfits, Samhain and Danzig. Secondly, this is a monster movie with a real monster, because instead of putting a fake monster into real sets they put a real monster into fake sets.

Book Review: Hell Chicks by Ed Wood

by David Hayes 

Hell Chicks details the story of a band of girl bikers who terrorize the countryside. The group of them are insatiable nymphomaniacs, each with their own specialty. Hell Chicks marks Wood’s (writing as N. V. Jason) turn to truly hardcore pornography. As far as a story goes, there really isn’t much of one. The gang travels around, has sex and is finally tracked by the police and killed (for the most part). What Hell Chicks does have, though, are the patented quirky characters that only the mind of Ed Wood could devise.

The gang itself is made up of some of the worst sexual deviates in the world and all of them have names based on their particular specialty. Flame, the leader, has red hair—everywhere (wink, wink), Hot Lips is the finisher whose fellatio is beyond comparison, Pisser is a, well, she likes urine, Boobie has big, uuh… boobies, Syph has syphilis, Ankles grabs hers, Fingers uses hers, Sissy is one and Cherry doesn’t have one. That, dear friends, is the roll call of the roughest bunch of nymphos that ever straddled a motorcycle. They lived for sex, drugs and sex…in that order.

Book Review: Orgy of the Dead by Ed Wood

“No one wishes to see a man dance!”

— Criswell

Orgy of the Dead (A. C. Stephen Productions, 1965)

If one is expecting this book to be a virtual adaptation of Wood’s Orgy of the Dead (1965) screenplay and film, rest assured. Although the film was an hour and fifteen minutes, there was only 22 minutes of dialogue. The rest of the time was spent with bad strippers in pseudo-supernatural dances being leered at by the infamous Criswell (of Criswell Predicts! fame and immediately recognizable to any Ed Wood fan). The novelization of the film proves to be quite a bit more entertaining. The book itself is a compilation of some of Wood’s short stories. This book even includes an introduction by Forrest J. Ackerman (who invented the term “sci-fi” and served as Wood’s self-proclaimed “illiterary” agent for a time). Many of the stories in Orgy were published previously or subsequently (owing to the nature of the smut-biz). One of Wood’s best shorts, “The Night the Banshee Cried” is included in this volume at no extra cost to you and is one of the Orgy of the Dead standouts. The book itself was fairly successful. In a past conversation with Forrest Ackerman, he related a story about Wood and Orgy. Ackerman stated that Wood would call him at all hours, sometimes drunk, and finally, to end the intrusions, Ackerman negotiated the deal with Greenleaf to publish Orgy of the Dead. Needless to say, Ackerman was not a big fan of Wood’s writing or subject matter.

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Cinematic Hell: Santa Claus (1959)

by Hal Astell

Director: René Cardona

Stars: José Elías Moreno, Pulgarcito, José Luis Aguirre and Armando Arriola

Given that summer is here and the temperatures in west Phoenix are dancing around a hundred, I felt it was time for Mexican Christmas, courtesy of K Gordon Murray. He didn't just bring bizarre Mexican horror movies like The Brainiac north of the border, he brought a lot of bizarre Mexican movies for kids too, this one perhaps the most famous and the most bizarre of the bunch. Also, given that I'm writing while Arizona waits for SB1070 to become law and the substantial Hispanic population talks about the potential for racial discrimination, I couldn't help but read into this film commentary on how Mexicans see themselves. The best reality is found in fantasy, after all, and this one goes whole hog, way out there, because the Mexican Santa Claus, while obviously well known enough to get a movie of his very own, really isn't that similar to the equivalents we know from our own countries. In fact this Santa Claus mythology is well, rather customised.

Cinematic Hell: The Brain From Planet Arous (1957)

by Hal Astell

Director: Nathan Hertz

Stars: John Agar, Joyce Meadows and Robert Fuller

Buy The Brain From Planet Arous on DVD

Beyond sporting a title as outrageously inviting as The Brain from Planet Arous, surely a gift to any pornographic spoofer, this film opens with what appears to be Tinkerbell dancing around the Mesa of Lost Women. No wonder director Nathan Juran insisted on having his credit changed to Nathan Hertz, though Hertz is his middle name rather than a description of the reaction his own brain had to the finished picture. It can't be good when the director is embarrassed of a feature he made, even one that kicks off with an explosion and has make up by Jack Pierce, Universal's monster maker. We soon see why: we're about to be subjected to John Agar, who married Shirley Temple and debuted opposite John Wayne and Henry Fonda in John Ford's Fort Apache, but went consistently downhill from there. This is a bad film and yet it's only partway down the ski slope of quality that ended with him in Larry Buchanan movies like Zontar: The Thing from Venus.

Movie Review: The Black Scorpion (1957)

Directed by Edward Ludwig

Starring Richard Denning, Mara Corday and Carlos Rivas

Run time: 88 min.

Rated:G

　

Deep in the heart of Mexico a giant volcano has suddenly sprung forth from the earth, causing massive earthquakes and widespread devastation. In the small village of San Lorenzo not only are they dealing with lava-flows and earthquakes but with a giant, deadly six legged creature that has risen from the depths to wreak havoc on the local farmers and ranchers.

An American geologist, Hank Scott (Richard Denning) and his Mexican counterpart, Arturo Ramos (Carlos Rivas) are sent to investigate and report on the damage caused by the volcanic upheaval but soon after arriving in San Lorenzo find that the damage caused by mother nature is nothing compared to the trail of bloody death left behind by....The Black Scorpion.

In their first attempt at killing the giant insect, our two geologists, along with a young stow-away, are lowered by a crane down into a giant crack in the ground. Armed with only pistols and bug-spray they quickly discover that they are woefully ill-equipped for an extermination as they find that the cavern is infested with an entire horde of scorpions, as well as a ferocious trap-door spider the size of a beer keg and another creepy-crawly resembling a giant worm with claws. Barely escaping with their lives from the cavern, our two hero’s realize not only did they fail in their mission but that the entire horde of scorpions has followed them out of the hole and are now running loose and rampaging across the Mexican landscape. Soon after this the scorpions decide to start attacking each other and eventually only the alpha-scorpion is left alive, and is headed straight for Mexico City. With some quick thinking and the help of the Mexican Army, Hank and Arturo are able to lure the beastie into a soccer stadium using a truck full of raw meat as bait. It is here where the final battle takes place between the Black Scorpion and a fleet of army tanks and helicopters.

Movie Review: The Incredible Melting Man (Blu-ray, 1977)

When I first experienced The Incredible Melting Man on Mystery Science Theater 3000 more than fifteen years ago, I thought to myself  "as bad as this is, this is far from the mind-numbing crap that's usually on this show". I could actually get through this B-flick without the best riffers in the world (Joel, Mike, Tom Servo, Crow and the gang) throwing in their clever barbs every few seconds. Scream Factory has taken the liberty to put William Sachs’ The Incredible Melting Man out in an ooey-gooey special edition Blu-ray that is sure please fans of this messy little masterpiece.

The plot is actually quite simple: Alex Rebar plays Astronaut “Steve West”, a man on a mission to take space exploration that much further than anyone before him. He does, but at a price, because now he is sitting in a hospital bed, gradually melting away thanks to a solar flare while gazing like a lecher at Saturn. After killing a rotund nurse, he emerges from the hospital, on the loose and suddenly an aggressive murderous creature. Fast on the syrupy heels of our cannibalistic melting creature is Dr.Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) who’s out to capture West before he gets too powerful during this sloppy metamorphosis.

Movie Review: Monster (One 7 Movies, 1953)

If you’re in the mood to expand your Mexican horror film viewing horizons look no further than Italian cult movie distributor One 7 Movies' latest, Monster. Mexico has brought us some cool horror flicks over the years with movies like The Brainiac, Curse of the Crying Woman and the awesome awfulness of Night of the Bloody Apes. Monster is an obscurity that has slipped through my paws over the years so it's nice to finally see it on any format.

Chano Ureta's Monster is essentially a different take on Frankenstein and Phantom of the Opera with a few tweaks here and there. We start off in what is essentially the Mexican answer to the Regal Beagle, where Nora, a young attractive reporter is meeting her boss to talk about the mysterious Dr. Ling. Nora really wants to interview Ling and find out just a little bit more about his "eccentricities". What she doesn't know of course is that he is a deformed/maniac/genius who's been hiding his hideous face over the years by using a scarf and various masks. The best way to describe Ling's features would be Rocky Dennis from Mask crossed with a mixture of character-actor Irwin Keyes.

Movie Review: Jungle Drums of Africa (1953)

Directed by Fred C. Brannon
Starring Clayton Moore, Phyllis Coates and Johnny Sands
Run Time: 167 minutes


Back in the early 50‘s, television was just beginning to become a threat to the motion picture business, and one of Hollywood’s responses to the growing popularity of television series’ was the Serial. Which was usually some type of adventure story-line told through several chapters, with each chapter ending in some type of cliff-hanger situation where a main character was placed in a near-hopeless situation, which in theory would keep people, especially kids, coming back to the movie theaters every week to see how their favorite characters escaped certain death. Some serials were great entertainment, with some of my personal favorites being- Flash Gordon (Universal, 1936) and The Masked Marvel (Republic, 1939-43), while others were not so good.

Cinematic Hell: Robot Monster (1953)

by Hal Astell

Director: Phil Tucker

Stars: George Nader, Claudia Barrett, Selena Royale, John Mylong, Gregory Moffett, Paela Paulson and George Barrows

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For a bad movie, and this is a really bad movie, it's a quintessential low budget fifties scifi romp, perhaps even more fun to watch than Plan 9 from Outer Space. If it had been released half a century later it would still be in movie theaters today with cult audiences heckling the screen on a monthly basis with producer/director Phil Tucker kept busy flying from screening to screening to sign autographs. I'm sure he would have plenty to talk about during a Q&A too, given that he shot the film for a measly $16,000 in only four days without any sets, and somehow managed to make it in 3D and with stereophonic sound too, the first time that had been done on a scifi film. If Tucker was alive today, I'd try to introduce him to James Cameron. Avatar may have earned two billion dollars on the basis of its 3D ticket prices but that's only eight times its cost. Robot Monster grossed a million bucks and that meant more than 62 times what Tucker spent on it.

Movie Review: Cosmic Monsters (1958)

Director: Gilbert Gunn
Stars: Forrest Tucker and Gaby André

I think my favourite hobby is listening to Robert Osborne introduce monster movies on TCM. It may be that he secretly loves the things but I don't think so. I think he feels embarrassed every time they come up, but he's a professional and he does his job well with just a hint of a smile at the realisation of what sort of material he's introducing. Then again this one begins as a pretty intelligent monster movie as such things go, made in the UK by Anglo-Scottish Pictures, sourced from a story by René Ray. Sure, the introduction is more than a little melodramatic ('Man goes forward into the unknown but how does the unknown react?'), but it settles down quickly into a thoughtful movie. It's actually hilarious to hear such rationality about science juxtaposed with a rampant sexism. 'A woman?' cries Dr Laird when he's told that his new computer operator is a member of the fairer sex. 'This is preposterous! This is highly skilled work!'

Buy Cosmic Monsters [VHS]

The Movie Burrito: Volume 4 - Cultaminated

by David Hayes

Gigantis:The Fire Monster (1955)

This is the oft-ignored follow up to the original Godzilla! In this piece of foam rubber brilliance, Anguirus (a spiked turtle-type monster handily ripped off by Gamera) fights Godzilla. Tokyo is leveled again. Roll credits and get cracking building the next giant creature.

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The Woman Eater (1957)

Follow me here. A mad scientist has a giant carnivorous tree. In order to keep it happy he feeds it slutty half-clothed women. The tree gets so happy it makes a serum that can raise the dead. I have a sin to admit. I really enjoy giant plant movies. That said, The Woman Eater needs help. It’s sad when Ed Wood’s Venus Flytrap does it better. It’s sad that I can say that anything Ed Wood did was better.

Interview: Director Sid Pink

by David Hayes

David Hayes interviewed the late great Sid Pink over a decade ago. Sit back and enjoy his discussion with the cult legend.

“Might as well do this now, I don’t know how much longer I’ve got left,” jokes Sid Pink. Heralded as one of the industry’s most daring, innovative and overlooked writer/director/producers, Sidney Pink sits back in his Florida home not even hinting that the man behind Angry Red Planet (1959), Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962), Bwana Devil (1950) and Reptilicus (1961) is anything but your average retiree. As one of the first truly successful independent film producers in the United States and abroad, Sid Pink is in a league all his own.

After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 1936 with a degree in business administration, Pink traveled to the starry-eyed land of Hollywood. He eventually landed a job as Production Budget Manager with Phil Krasne’s Grand National Pictures. While there, Pink worked with the great James Cagney and Tex Ritter. His first production for Grand National, and with James Cagney, was Something to Sing About (1937). “I learned a great deal from Jimmy Cagney. He was an “Old Show Business” kind of guy… undefeatable. He taught me things at Grand National that I used up until my last few pictures.” When Cagney resigned from Grand National, the ship was quickly sinking and Pink found work as a Production Manager with Harry Cohn’s Columbia Pictures. Pink created the Production Budget Department at Columbia that would keep track of the production budget on every picture, with a detailed report delivered to Cohn everyday. Cohn, a notorious blow-hard that treated people like dirt, called Pink into his office one day and threw a tantrum concerning the latest budget report (that Pink had not gotten to review yet). “In my own colorful language, I proceeded to tell Cohn off. He shut his mouth and stared at me while I outyelled him. By the time I got to the second floor I was met at my office with my paycheck and my employee pass was pulled.” Pink said goodbye to Columbia Pictures and Harry Cohn over a misplaced decimal point. Pink stayed out of filmmaking until 1950, and then came back with a vengeance. He made Bwana Devil, with Robert Stack, the world’s first 3-D color movie. This would be just the tip of the iceberg for Sid Pink’s role as a “film innovator.”

Movie Review: House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Directed by William Castle

Starring Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart and Richard Long

Director William Castle was more then just a film maker, he was a showman, the undisputed king of B-movie's during his time. He was the “gimmick guy”, and when you stepped into the theater to watch one of his movies you would always be entertained, from flying skeleton's floating through the theater for House on Haunted Hill, to electrified theater seats for The Tingler.

And although his movies were never considered great during their time, they always made money and most are now considered true cult classics of this early age of horror movies. In fact, director Alfred Hitchcock was so impressed with the success and style of House on Haunted Hill, after watching it he decided to try his hand at making his own low budget horror movie. I think it was something called Psycho.

Cinematic Hell: Chained for Life (1951)

by Hal Astell

Director: Harry L Fraser

Stars: The Hilton Sisters

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We're here to be entertained and take our minds off things, says Judge Mitchell, but I wish I could take my mind off this. It's a unique story full of fascinating moral and legal questions that centre around a pair of Siamese twins committing murder and matrimony. Some are posed on the wild publicity material. 'What happens in their intimate moments?' the posters ask us. 'Is it legal to marry a Siamese twin?' 'Can they have a normal love life?' You'd think it was a porn film from all this salacious hype but it's far from that. It's a low budget exploitation picture from 1951, loosely based on real events in the lives of the Hilton Sisters, Daisy and Violet. Yes, long before Paris and Nicky there were Daisy and Violet, and they were as unlike the modern Hiltons as you could comfortably imagine. By all accounts they were pleasant, intelligent, talented ladies who simply happened to share a circulatory system. They're the Siamese twins from Tod Browning's Freaks.

Book Review: Watts Collection by Ed Wood

Aahhh, the complications and tragedy of the Watts race riots in 1968 were nothing but story material to Wood. It is also rumored that Wood’s apartment was firebombed after the reading public got their hands on these two volumes and Toni…Black Tigress. Whatever the outcome, Wood provides a unique version of the riots and the participants therein. Watts… the Difference begins the two-part story and Watts… After finishes this particular epic.

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Rocky is a young black man in Los Angeles. Now, Rocky is a good kid… but through no fault of his own has gotten mixed up in a Black Panthers-type organization, one which he wants no part of. The organization, which has adopted Swahili as its language, is a separatist movement. Young Rocky is in way over his head. For a majority of the novel, Rocky is already a movie star and relating the riots to Angie.

Ed Wood: King of Smut?

by David Hayes



Edward D. Wood, Jr. has been called "The Worst Director of All  Time" and is a winner of the Golden Turkey Award. He has made some of the most laughable, and entertaining, films to ever come out of the independent Hollywood  scene. With classics like the hastily constructed Plan 9 From Outer Space (1958) and the  surrealistically autobiographical Glen or Glenda (1953) Wood has placed an indelible mark on the art of film production resulting in a big-budget life story by movie giant Tim  Burton, titled Ed Wood (1994). There is a lesser-known sidelight to Wood's career as a  producer-writerdirector-actor, almost another career entirely. Edward D. Wood, Jr. is one of  America's most prolific short story writers and novelists.

Beginning in 1963, just to make meager ends meet for his wife Kathy and himself (insert: "booze"), Wood began to write for some of the major California smut publishers (this does not include Wood’s unpublished, 1948 novel The Casual Company, a Marine comedy that led to his disastrous stageplay of the same name). He would continue to write novels, short stories and essays for the next fifteen years, until his death on December 10, 1978. In that time, Wood, under quite a large number of pseudonyms, is known to have penned at least 80 novels, hundreds of short stories and a slightly lesser amount of non-fiction. There are more Wood-writings discovered every year, usually under another of his many pseudonyms. Publishers like Gallery, Pendulum, Calga, Pad and others would publish sex, smut and sleaze novels at a breakneck pace through the sixties and seventies, and Wood, by all accounts, was the largest on staff "producer," meaning the volume of his work was a great deal more than his fellow writers. At the same time, Wood wrote many soft and hard core porn screenplays for A. C. Stephen, Jacques Descent and Joe Robertson.

TV on Blu-ray Review: The Twilight Zone: Season Four (1962, Image)

There have been many outstanding television shows throughout TV history. Few though have stood the test of time like Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone series. When I think of a show I enjoyed as a child like Tales From The Darkside, that’s all it really is, a show I enjoyed as a kid. It’s cheap and in many episodes just plain dull. Even the best of shows from yesteryear exhibit a sense of datedness. Twilight Zone, while not completely without its quirks, has such a power over viewers that didn't even grow up close to the era of its birth (1959 though the 1960s). There's almost a theatrical feeling to watching an episode: The writing is first-class (Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson and creator Rod Serling), the production value was as good as features at the time, the acting was quality and the guest stars that frequently popped up in episodes were certain to draw viewers. Image Entertainment are giving The Twilight Zone some more Hi-Def love by putting together yet another season for the Blu-ray market with Twilight Zone: Season Four.

Buy The Twilight Zone: Season 4 [Blu-ray]

Movie Review: Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Here is a welcome addition to my DVD collection from HD Cinema Classics: an HD re-master of Phil Karlson’s taught and tough late noir, KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL. Coming at the end of the noir cycle, it is one of several tough-minded pictures of the early to mid fifties with the word “Confidential” in the title. Although I am fond of Jack Arnold’s HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, I think it’s fair to say this is the best of them. It is full of surprises, edgy brutality and moral ambiguities. It deserves to be better known than it is, which is why this new release is so very welcome.

Buy Kansas City Confidential on DVD
 

Karlson was a work-a-day director of Hollywood programmers who always brought some honesty and style to his work. I suppose he is most know today for the best of the “good ol’ boy” revenge movies, WALKING TALL. But he was also responsible for Dean Martin’s THE SILENCERS, the memorable ALEXANDER THE GREAT television pilot with William Shatner, and KID GALAHAD, with Elvis Presley. In his early career he directed several hard-hitting crime dramas like the excellent THE PHOENIX CITY STORY and 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE. And, although the payoff doesn’t quite satisfy on the level of its terse, nail-biting build-up, KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL stands with those as among the best of Karlson’s output. In many ways it plays like an early dry-run for RESERVOIR DOGS and may well have been one of Tarantino’s influences for that masterful crime drama.