Book Review: Purple Thighs by Ed Wood

by David Hayes

1968 was a VERY prolific year for Wood. He wrote around 10 novels (confirmed) including this one. Originally titled Lost Souls Delivered (the brilliant Wood euphemism for LSD), you may have already guessed that sex and drugs are the topic of Purple Thighs. Well, if one is prepared for the standard “let’s get stoned and screw” of a majority of 60s smut dealing with drugs, forget about it. Wood has crafted a nice little allegory with biblical (yes, biblical) proportions.

The first chapter alone details a very Wood-ian telling of Adam and Eve in the Garden. And now, an excerpt:
And it was the deepest of all instincts which caused her hands to immediately cover up the intimacies of her body when the bearded face of the man looked at her through the brush. An extremely handsome man, but a man with very long hair, almost as long as her own, and a beard which covered most of the lower part of his face… She liked what she felt in that new experience. Then the pleasure intensified itself when the new creature mounted her and their animal instincts gave each a sensation which would last an eternity; for all men and women for all time.

Movie Review: Our Man in Havana (1960, Twilight Time)

Reviewed by: Hal Astell

Set in Cuba before 'the recent revolution', it would appear from first glimpses that this just couldn't fail. Produced and directed by Carol Reed, with a screenplay by Graham Greene that was adapted from his own novel, and starring no less a Great British trio than Alec Guinness, Noel Coward and Ralph Richardson. Also credited before the title are Burl Ives, Ernie Kovacs and Maureen O'Hara, hardly minor names themselves. It's as great as it ought to be, but I was seriously surprised at the content. I thought it was a spy film, and it is, but it's also a comedy which I really wasn't expecting.

Greene introduces us to the characters through humour. Guinness is Jim Wormold, a mild mannered vacuum cleaner salesman and Coward is Hawthorne, a spymaster who comes to visit him with strange questions and an offer to meet him in the gents. What he's really doing is hiring him to work for the British secret service as the title character, part of his Caribbean network, and Wormold accepts so as to be able to finance his daughter Milly's expensive equestrian dreams. Ives is a friend of Wormold's, some sort of German doctor doing research into cheese or some such, and Kovacs is the Red Vulture, a notorious Cuban official with an interest in everything and everybody, most obviously Milly.

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).

BUY GLEN OR GLENDA STARRING EDDIE!

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.

Movie Review: The Chase (1966)

Directed by Arthur Penn

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

The African Queen, The Bridge on the River Kwai, On the Waterfront ….Quite an impressive resume. Producer Sam Spiegel had an unbroken string of unquestioned cinema classics. Spiegel’s follow-up to Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Chase is nowhere near as widely known, in spite of a star-studded cast list under the hands of the more-than-capable director Arthur Penn, just before he was to rocket to superstardom as the helmer of Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Diving into the Twilight Time Blu-Ray release (limited to 3,000 copies), these reasons become ever more apparent …

Movie Review: The Manson Family (2003 via 1997)

Nothing like delving into the nightmare world of Charlie Manson and his followers. Most of the US, and probably the world, know of the atrocities these people committed. And sometimes it can be interesting to get a peek behind the curtain inside a madman’s mind.

But this is not one of those times.

The Manson Family was shot like a documentary. A local television producer is tired of Charles Manson getting all the hype. Why is no one talking to the Family to get their side of the story? He puts together several interviews with the ‘where are they now’ members. In between those scenes, we are privy to flashbacks to 1969 and the events therein with Charles and his followers. And while all of this is going down, we get to watch a group of young people as they prepare themselves for…something by doing drugs naked, performing S&M, and worshipping Manson in someone’s mom’s basement because angst.

Movie Review: The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

by Hal Astell

Director: Joseph Green

Stars: Herb Evers, Virginia Leith and Leslie Daniels

Buy The Brain That Wouldn't Die on Blu-ray from Scream Factory

'Let me die!' a woman's voice repeatedly pleads before the title credits begin, in fact before we see anything. It's a disembodied voice out of nowhere that suggests a female version of Johnny Got His Gun, or at least that begins where that book and film ends. It's all very promising but sadly it's all downhill from there, which possibly explains why this was completed in 1959 under the title The Black Door but wasn't released until 1962 under its current more lurid title. It isn't without merit, as it does contain a number of memorable cult moments, not least one of the most abiding images of all sixties genre cinema, but it still can't live up to the title. It comes from the common mad scientist subgenre of horror/science fiction movies of the time but unlike their progenitor Frankenstein which remains as timeless as ever, this has already been superceded as the unholy transplantation of limbs and organs that it rages against is routinely beneficial today.



It's fascinating to watch these movies and see public opinion, as distilled through scriptwriters trying to please the largest audience possible, change over the decades. This film is only half a century old, but it already seems quaint and dated to those of us who have benefited from or know people who have benefited from the very transplant techniques that are derided by the characters as immoral, unethical and insane. Much of the problem is that the overtly schlocky characteristics of a mad scientist are so much easier to write than his more sophisticated drives, especially if you ignore the idea that science is constantly moving forward; and naturally scriptwriters of schlocky low budget genre movies from the fifties and sixties really couldn't give a transplanted rat's ass for anything sophisticated. They could happily start at 'Burn the witch!' and work backwards from there to generate a salacious heap of scientific gobbledygook.

Movie Review: Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962)

Directed by Henry Koster

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Mr. Hobbs (Jimmy Stewart) yearns to take a romantic holiday with his gorgeous wife (Maureen O'Hara). However, a vacant beach home on the Northern California coast proves too good to resist, and so the Hobbs bundle up their youngest daughter Katey (Lauri Peters) and only son Danny (Michael Burns) along with their Finnish cook (Minerva Urecal) and head out to later join their two older, married daughters and their husbands and children at the cottage. Said “cottage” turns out to be a Victorian ruin that makes the Bates Mansion in Psycho (1960) look positively inviting. Straight away, troubles ensue. Katey is far too self-conscious with the braces on her teeth, and dear old Dad must pay the boys at the yachting club to dance with her. Everything works out and Katey begins a chaste romance with beach bum Joe (teen idol Fabian Forte). Mr. Hobbs drags son Danny for a boating adventure that almost turns tragic – but turns into a bonding experience for both. The older daughters' families seethe with neurosis, one long unemployed son-in-law abandoning the home to seek work. Landing a job offer, it is up to Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs to entertain his prospective employers (John McGiver and Marie Wilson). Things go disastrously, but everything turns out alright in the end.

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.

BUY ORGY OF THE DEAD BY ED WOOD!

Movie Review: The Black Torment (1964)

By Greg Goodsell

Directed by Robert Hartford-Davis

Buy Black Torment on DVD

Eighteenth-century aristocrat Sir Richard Fordyke (John Turner) returns to his country estate in Devon with blushing bride Elizabeth (Heather Sears). They are met with an extremely chilly reception, as the nearby villagers are dealing with the rape and murder of farm girl, which with her dying breath declared Fordyke as her killer. This simply can’t be true, as Fordyke has just spent the last three months in London with his new wife – but skeletons, literally and figuratively begin to emerge from the family’s closet. Elizabeth learns that her husband’s previous wife, Anne, leapt to her death from a high window as a mysterious ghostly woman in white is seen haunting the grounds, chanting “murderer!” Even more illogical things begin to occur around the newlyweds. A leather craftsman comes forward to insist that Fordyke ordered a new saddle in person while he was ostensibly in London, with his dead wife’s name stitched upon it. Is our hero mad, or being haunted from malevolent spirits from beyond the grave? Bodies pile up, and the truth is shockingly revealed.

Cinematic Hell: Manos: Hands of Fate (1966)

by Hal Astell

Director: Harold P Warren

Stars: Tom Neyman, John Reynolds, Diane Mahree and Hal Warren

Buy Manos: Hands of Fate on DVD

Ask any random moviegoer what the worst film of all time is and they'll generally throw back Plan 9 from Outer Space because they just don't know any better. It has to be the mostly widely seen really bad movie of its era, it features more outré celebrities than any John Waters movie ever made and it got special attention in the high profile Tim Burton/Johnny Depp biopic of its director, Ed Wood, so it's simply the easiest choice. Ask people who actually know about the really bad films, though, people like the writers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and films that make Plan 9 from Outer Space look like Citizen Kane (well not quite but you get the picture), and they'll come up with a whole bunch of other suggestions. The one that tends to sink through all the dross to the very very bottom is this one, Manos: The Hands of Fate. It's supposed to be a horror movie but Quentin Tarantino, who owns what may be the only 35mm print of the film, calls it his favourite comedy of all time. Now I've finally seen it, I can understand why.

Movie Review: Madame O (1967, aka Zoku akutokui: Joi-hen)

Directed by Seiichi Fukuda

Michiko Sakyô plays the Madame O of the title, a highly successful female surgeon with issues. The frowning, matronly Sakyo is all business at the clinic, but come nightfall she paints on a smile and hits all of Tokyo ’s seediest gin joints to pick up men. After a roll in the hay, Madame O reaches for her lancet, marks her male prey and presses some syphilis-moistened swabs into their wounds as they sleep. Sakyo is lashing out at men after being gang raped on a beach as a teenager. She hates all men, and hates herself just a little bit more, as she mutilates her own genitalia sans anesthetic. A fellow male doctor (Akihiko Kaminara) catches her in the act and promptly falls head over heels in love with her! – YEEEEEEEEEEEcccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhh.

Buy Madame O on DVD

Cinematic Hell: Monstrosity aka The Atomic Brain (1964)

by Hal Astell

Director: Joseph Mascelli

Stars: Marjorie Eaton and Frank Gerstle

Buy The Atomic Brain (Monstrosity) on DVD

I just couldn't resist following up The Brain That Wouldn't Die with The Atomic Brain to make a double helping of brains, even though this film was originally titled Monstrosity only to perhaps be renamed because the original title described the picture too well. Both films ponder the same theme, the old chestnut about mad transplant surgeons, and both come down firmly on the side that it's immoral, unethical and unforgivable. How quaint we were back in the sixties when it came to such things, but then this film was co-written by no less than four writers and directed by Ray Dennis Steckler's cinematographer. Having four writers generally makes the best script turn to mush and it isn't surprising that Joseph Mascelli never directed again. He kept busy for a while on Steckler's films, with 1964 also seeing him lens Strange Compulsion, The Thrill Killers and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

Cinematic Hell: Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966)

Director: Ray Dennis Steckler
Stars: Carolyn Brandt, Vin Saxon, Titus Moede, George Caldwell, Mike Kannon and James Bowie

When you kick off your directorial career at 24 shooting an Arch Hall Jr musical, Wild Guitar, you're definitely on the road to cult stardom. When you name your first solo film The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, you've arrived, but while that's still Ray Dennis Steckler's most famous picture, it's not his most memorable work. For me, it has to take a back seat to Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, a film so amazing that it's going to be impossible to do it justice here. Put simply, you have to see this film to understand it, because it occupies a space comfortably outside the realm of expectation. It's one of those rare movies that remain unique in the history of cinema, however long it's been since they were made, because nobody would dare to attempt to copy them and wouldn't know how anyway. It takes a special mind to make something like this. The only thing comparable is The Monster of Camp Sunshine.

Buy The Adventures of Rat Phink and Boo Boo on DVD!

Book Review: Killer in Drag by Ed Wood

Killer in Drag (first printed as Black Lace Drag) and Death of a Transvestite (also printed as Let Me Die in Drag) are the seminal Wood novels. Written as a complete story, Killer in Drag is the first appearance of Glen, a transvestite hit man in his alter ego of Glenda (Death of a Transvestite is covered in a later review). Written in 1963, the tolls of porn and alcoholism were less evident and resulted in Killer being a highly successful and entertaining work (of course, Wood sold it outright and saw nothing in the way of a financial return). It is the most reprinted of Wood’s novels and deservedly so.

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Glen is a transvestite and, as Glenda, kills people for the sake of the Syndicate. Glen is very good at what he does. Glen takes an order to make a hit and Glenda shows up. After the job, Glenda meets with one Mr. Dalten Van Carter. He is her way out of the Syndicate… no more killing. That is, until Van Carter is assassinated. This sends Glen/Glenda on the run.

Movie Review: Monster A-Go Go (1965)

By Hal Astell

This one screams a glorious low budget and if Mystery Science Theater 3000 hadn't done a version of it I'd have been seriously surprised. Of course they did, and considered it the worst film they'd seen up until that time. Manos: The Hands of Fate came later. Made in 1965 in black and white, it has bad acting, bad dialogue and bad music. It also has bad sound and bad lighting so it's often hard to tell exactly what's going on, even with a clear narration. Then again that may be a blessing. There's literally nothing good about this film: not only is it bad but it's boring. Bad is understandable in a film like this for many reasons, boring isn't.

Buy Monster A-Go Go on DVD


To be fair the main reason that it's so bad is that it's really two films. Director Bill Rebane ran out of funding on his film Terror at Halfday in 1961 and couldn't finish it. It would have disappeared without a trace had Herschell Gordon Lewis not needed a second film to play alongside his Moonshine Mountain three years later. He bought the footage, shot some additional scenes to finish it off (with new actors given that the originals weren't available) and added a narration and a new title. He was so proud of the results that he didn't even put his name on them: he's uncredited as a director and listed under the pseudonym of Sheldon S Seymour for his additional dialogue.

Cinematic Hell: The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)

by Hal Astell

Director: Jerry Warren

Stars: Katherine Victor, George Mitchell and Steve Brodie

Buy The Wild World of Bat Woman on VHS (Really!)

Apparently to become a batgirl you have to be initiated under Article 21 Paragraph 6. You know, the one about wrist radios with direct lines to Batwoman herself and cups of honey, mint, cherry and strawberry yogurt masquerading as blood. These batgirls are fake vampires but they're hip, you dig? At least, that's what I think the point of this opening scene is. Who knows? Jerry Warren doesn't and he wrote and directed the thing. This completed a decade of insane movies for him that included The Incredible Petrified World, Teenage Zombies and Attack of the Mayan Mummy. He returned to the directors chair only one more time after this, for Frankenstein Island in 1981 which reunited the three stars of this film and added John Carradine. All his movies are bad, but they're more misguided than inept. As the title suggests, this is his most wildly misguided movie of all. A rip off of the successful new hit TV series, Batman, it has no idea what it wants to be.

Cinematic Hell: They Saved Hitler's Brain (1963/1976)

by Hal Astell

Director: David Bradley

Stars: Audrey Caire, Walter Stocker and Carlos Rivas

Buy They Saved Hitler's Brain on DVD

They Saved Hitler's Brain is one of the greatest movie titles in existence, one that just exudes badness in the most awesome way. I've wanted to see it for years but hadn't realised that it would highlight to me a whole new subset of bad movies that I didn't even know existed, the precise opposite of something that plagued me in England growing up. It's not difficult to see why some movies being shown on television would be cut for content, especially exploitation films. However I saw films on TV like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home that were cut too, films that contained absolutely nothing that might warrant censorship.

Book Review: Hollywood Rat Race by Ed Wood

by David Hayes

Hollywood Rat Race is the latest published work of Ed Wood, Jr. Before it’s publication in 1998 by 4 Walls 8 Windows, the only reference to it was in Wood’s 1967 masterpiece, Watts… the Difference from Pad Publishing. It must have been written, or in the process of being written, before the publication of Watts. Until Rat Race was found by Wood’s widow, Kathy it has remained a faint memory… until now.

Rat Race is part memoir and part how-to manual on navigating the backstabbing world of Hollywood . Ed Wood relates horror stories of would-be actors and actresses and divulges how to avoid the mistakes that others have made (presumably, himself included). Chapters include “ Hollywood and You,” “I’m Ready to be Discovered,” “Sex – Hollywood and You,” and “The Nudie Cutie.” The chapter that provides the most insight on Wood himself is “How to Make a Cheap Picture and Fail” (which was excerpted in Outré Magazine in 1998). From this chapter, Wood comments on his own productions:

Movie Review: Kitten with a Whip (1964)

Director: Douglas Heyes
Stars: Ann-Margret and John Forsythe

There simply isn't anything a movie can do to live up to a title like Kitten with a Whip, unless it actually starred Kitten Natividad and was directed by Russ Meyer. This one came from Universal in 1964 so no, it's not particularly exotic, being shot in black and white to boot. However it does star Ann-Margret as hell raising Jody Dvorak, who begins the film in a nightgown being chased by armed men with dogs. We don't know she's hell raising to begin with, as we're not given context to work from, but we're happy when she finds an apparently empty house and cuddles up in bed with a teddy bear. We still have sympathy when up and coming politician David Stratton comes home and discovers her. Jody has wild hair and in the light we see that the nightgown is torn. She even shows Stratton the long scratches on her back and runs through a wild yarn to explain it all. Only her wild attitude gives us pause to think there's something else behind her story.

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.