Book Review: Carnival Piece by Ed Wood

Once again, the inimitable Ed Wood brings us crashing back into the sleazy underworld known as the carnival. In Carnival Piece, much like Wood’s earlier Side-Show Siren, there is a murder at a carnival. A murder and sex. A murder and sex and side-show freaks. From the novel's back cover:

LESBIANISM…

HOMOSEXUALITY…

TRANSVESTISM…

These are the sexplosive ingredients that go into one of the most penetrating studies of abnormal interpersonal

relations to yet appear in fiction. Enter the lives of the sex-driven characters of the CARNY!

A book you can’t put down!

LUST… MURDER… ABORTIONS…

Buy Carnival Piece in Vintage Paperback!

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.

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.

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.

BUY ORGY OF THE DEAD BY ED WOOD!

Cinema Head Cheese: The Podcast! #75 - Running in Circles

Dave and Kevin discuss various collaborative teams in movies from the Cohens to the Happy Madison crew to Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi and many others you may not have thought about.

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Book Review: TV Lust by Ed Wood

by David Hayes

As far as can be determined, to date, this is the last novel that Ed Wood ever published. There are rumors of books called Saving Grace and The Swedish House floating around, but nothing is definite. Published by Eros/Goldstripe in 1977 as part of their Transexual Library, TV Lust (with Wood using the Dick Trent pseudonym) is yet another tale about a transvestite hitman. Chris, the name of this particular killer for hire, was just as revolted about his profession as the protagonist of Wood’s Killer in Drag and Death of a Transvestite, Glen Marker. Chris wonders aloud through most of the novel, while drinking excessively, about his place in the world.

The major difference between Glen Marker and TV Lust’s Chris is that Chris is bisexual. The majority of the novel’s sex scenes involve Chris and another male transvestite, where they affectionately call each other “lesbians.” In addition to this, the novel is illustrated with photos of the world’s ugliest transvestite in some really awful poses.

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.

BUY KILLER IN DRAG BY ED WOOD!

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.

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:

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.

BUY WATTS... THE BIG DEAL BY ED WOOD!

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.

Book Review: Death of a Transvestite by Ed Wood

The long awaited sequel to Killer in Drag is finally here. The immoral tale of Glen/Glenda is back and better than… other stuff. Death of a Transvestite begins in a prison cell where Glen is about to be lead down to the gallows and put death for his crimes. What, you ask? Didn’t Glen get away scot-free in the last novel? Luckily for us, the warden, priest and guards are in the mood for a story… Glen’s story.

BUY DEATH OF A TRANSVESTITE BY ED WOOD!

Taking a page from Bram Stoker and Dracula, this novel is written completely in epistolary style. Instead of the usual narrative, Wood uses newspaper articles, Glen’s confession tapes and other pieces of media to move the story along.

Book Review: Sex, Shrouds & Caskets by Ed Wood

Be good to yourself, and each other.

—Jerry Springer

Gentle readers, we are in for a very special treat. Sex Shrouds and Caskets is Ed Wood’s treatise on sex and religion. Yes, you read that correctly. Set up like a series of essays on, “The shocking, revealing truth of what takes place sexually in our so-called civilized culture,” and how these truths relate to standardized religion, Shrouds is a tour-de-force of depravity.

BUY SEX SHROUDS AND CASKETS BY ED WOOD!

Beginning with Southern snake charmers, Wood introduces us to a young, unnamed swamp girl. She sees the local preacher, Theadore Jackson, and is instantly smitten with lust. Jackson preaches to the masses using snakes (well, Baptist snakes). Of course, the snakes eventually kill Jackson but that cannot lessen the startling point that Wood makes. He states that, “…one must also realize the symbol of the snake is always directed to the WOMAN – by the MAN!” Because the snake is a phallic symbol and men have phalluses and women, during normal, non-Wood sex, are receptive to phalluses… I think. Believe it or not, Wood’s doctrine becomes even more muddled from there. Wood attests that a majority of the religious groups in the country are based on homosexuality. He poses the following question to any moral, upstanding citizen (who paid $1.75 for this book of weird sex):

Book Review: Bye, Bye Broadie & The Olympic FotoReaders by Ed Wood

Bye, Bye Broadie. Raped in the Grass. The Svengali of Sex. These three volumes (possibly joined by The Erotic Spy written under the name Abbott Smith) are a unique testament to the gullibility (or suspension of disbelief) of the average porn connoisseur in the late sixties and early seventies. The concept behind these books was the same as the Olympic Fotoreader. Stills from a movie would be inserted on opposing pages of text, illustrating the pornographic story. From The Svengali of Sex, “This paperback novelization was taken from the original screenplay. And all the photos are taken from the film track.” Only, there doesn’t seem to be any film associated with these “film track” photos. It looks as if a series if stills were taken, and look to be completely posed, to match the story and the books were printed as a “novelization” of the film. Maybe exploiting the popularity of other film books, like the Olympic Fotoreaders, aided the sales.

Buy Bye, Bye Broadie in Vintage Paperback!

Book Review: The Sexecutives & For Love or Money by Ed Wood, Jr.

The Sexecutives, from the front cover of the novel, is, “The incredible SEXploits of a gang of sex spies who used grotesque measures to blackmail their victims.” Not to be confused with The Sexecutives published in 1963 by Mark Archer, Wood’s book is a series of vignettes perpetrated by the insane gang of sex-for-hire spies. The police question the main character, Dan Harding, relating to him all of these happenings, and asking for his assistance in testifying against Irene, the leader of the group, and her employers.

Buy The Sexecutives Vintage Paperback!

Harding insists that nothing like this has ever happened to him and he is a happily married man. Of course, he says this throughout the entire book, even after hearing how these women have stolen secrets from other businessmen. Harding does finally admit to buying one of the “secretaries” and agrees to testify against them. The majority of the book is made up of vignettes of how the group has screwed (both figuratively and literally) businessmen and government agents out of secrets and money. This is done in many different ways. For instance, the simplest way is to track your quarry to a local bar where he is meeting with other executives. Make sure he notices you and takes you back to the motel room he has rented indefinitely for just such an occasion. Seduce him, have turbulent sex so exhausting that he falls immediately asleep, and then steal his papers or photograph them or listen to him as he talks in his sleep. Industrial espionage has never been so much fun.

Book Review: A Study in, well, Perverted Stuff by Ed Wood

Wood was a staff writer for both Edusex and SECS (The Sex Education Correspondence School) Press. While working for them, he churned out volume after volume of porn cleverly (or not) disguised as meaningful scientific and sociological studies. What these tomes amounted to was an excuse to include hardcore pornography pictures (featuring strange, 70s penetration) under the auspices of “education” and neatly bypass the newly-created obscenity laws. In all of these, the picture captions are some of the funniest in history. Under pictures of normal, seventies coitus, captions like “Anal sex is common with black magic rituals,” or, “The black man’s only weapon may be a sexual one,” or even, “Mother love has been attributed to many transvestite’s conditions,” only add to the sexual fervor that these titles instilled in their readers (amid bouts of laughter). The titles were overly wordy (usually beginning with A Study in or Motivations in…) The photographic content of the books many times undermines the entertaining and appropriately Wood-ian quirkiness of the text. The majority of the books were produced for a loosely-tied series called, “The Sexual Encyclopedia for Adults Only.” What follows is an examination of some of Wood’s best.

BUY THE DEVIL & MRS. GRUNDY BY ED WOOD!

Book Review: Side-Show Siren by Ed Wood

Ed Wood and the carnival. Those two seem to go hand in hand. Side-Show Siren features hallmarks of Wood topics. The unsuspecting reader gets trickshooting stuntmen (apparently patterned after Kenne Duncan), a giant creature called “The Abominable Snowman,” half-man, half-woman drag queens, lots of weirdo sex, strippers and oily perverted money grubbers. Who could ask for more?

BUY SIDE-SHOW SIREN BY ED WOOD!

The trouble begins at Duke’s carnival. This rollercoaster of a mystery begins with the death of the area’s circuit court judge. While visiting the carnival with his daughter and her boyfriend, the Judge is found murdered and mangled on the Ferris Wheel. The apparent brutality of the crime implicates Kari (or Karl, depending on where he shows up in the novel), the Abominable Snowman. Only, Kari is nowhere to be found. The police begin a manhunt. Wood describes the carnival in his unique fashion:

Book Review: Security Risk by Ed Wood

by David Hayes

As Security Risk truthfully states on the back cover, “If a man can’t be bought with money… Get him a woman!” and semi-truthfully states on the front cover, “Another Pad Library Best Seller.” This is another classic case of Wood’s real-world experience (minus the freaky sex) shoved smack dab into a smut novel. It seems there is a terrorist group killing employees of a small, low budget production company that produces films for the American Government (much like Wood’s stint with Autonetics Aviation). Detective Tom (or Tim, it keeps changing) Wiere of the Los Angeles Police Department is called in, and so is Colonel Harvey Tate… an expert in such matters.



Tate is “hired” on to the production company staff. His true purpose, though, is to ferret out the spy (there’s always a spy) and keep the production company safe. When Tate’s friend and superior is assassinated, the job becomes personal. It becomes even more personal when Tate starts and affair with silver screen superstar Karen Faber. Faber, as a favor to the producer, has agreed to star in one of their low budget pictures. Tate’s first meeting with Faber is classic Wood:

Book Review: Devil Girls by Ed Wood

Devil Girls is another of Wood’s novels that has been reprinted again and again and is quite easily accessible. It is also noteworthy as the first appearance of Sheriff Buck Rhodes, small town peacekeeper and globe-trotting do-gooder (he is also seen in Parisian Passions).

BUY DEVIL GIRLS BY ED WOOD!

The story involves the running of illegal and illicit drugs (chiefly heroin and LSD, which in Wood-speak turns from Lysergic Acid Diethylamide to Lost Souls Delivered). The drugs are being sent into the small town by Lark, the sadistic pusher, and carried by the drug-addicted girl gang of the title…the Chicks. Amid strife in the Chick’s organization (the leader Lila has escaped prison, through murder, and has come back to claim her territory from Dee) and the bumblings of a do-gooder preacher, Reverend Steele, Sheriff Rhodes, ex-junkie and hamburger joint owner Jockey and his hulking assistant, Chief, Wood manages to get off a well-plotted, if not exactly a well-told, story.

Cinematic Hell: Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

by Hal Astell

Director: Edward D Wood Jr

Stars: Tor Johnson, Vampira, Tom Keene and Gregory Walcott

Buy Plan 9 From Outer Space on DVD

I couldn't resist watching Plan 9 from Outer Space after Manos: The Hands of Fate. It's the film most usually regarded as the worst ever made, but there's really no comparison. Harold P Warren didn't know how to make a movie in the slightest, but Ed Wood did. Sure, he chose to do so in his own very outsider way but he was capable nonetheless, hardly the no talent hack movie history tries to make him out to be. Outsider art is an acquired taste that surely isn't for everyone, and Wood can only be fairly contextualised as an outsider, especially given that his films, which like Tarantino's movies are patchwork quilts of everything he had seen and thought was awesomely cool, are undeniably his. You simply can't mistake an Ed Wood movie for anything else, just as you can't mistake a Russ Meyer movie for anything else.