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| If you needed some Ed Wood movies in the '90s, SWV could hook you up. |
In the 1990s, there was a tremendous resurgence of interest in Edward D. Wood, Jr. and his films, spurred by the release of Rudolph Grey's oral history Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) and Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood (1994). Naturally, people wanted to see Eddie's infamous movies for themselves, but the films weren't always easily accessible for on-demand viewing—certainly not to the extent that they are today. This was still the golden age of physical media, so fans were reliant on VHS tapes and, later, DVDs. If you wanted to watch something, you had to own or rent a copy of it.
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| Wanna watch some weird movies? |
But, through years of researching this column, I've learned that there was another quirky home video company in the '90s that played a significant role in finding and releasing Ed Wood's movies. I'm referring to Seattle's legendary Something Weird Video.
If you're a cult movie fan of any caliber whatsoever, then it's a near-certainty that SWV has been an important part of your movie education. The company specializes in preserving movies that were previously considered worthless, bottom-of-the-barrel junk: low-budget horror, exploitation, and sexploitation films, mainly from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Thanks to SWV, the films of Doris Wishman, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Harry Novak, Barry Mahon, Coffin Joe, and more found a new audience among '90s film freaks. And the company has never given up on that mission, even after the death of founder Mike Vraney in 2014. In 2025, conceding to the times, SWV relaunched as a streaming service on the Cultpix website.
In the company's earliest days, long before its "Special Edition" DVDs were available in stores, Something Weird Video was basically a mail-order company. Recently, in the Ed Wood Jr. Facebook forum, Jordan Rapoza posted an excerpt from SWV's first-ever catalog from 1995. After a little digging, I found that the entire catalog had been uploaded to the Internet Archive. To say the least, it's a pretty incredible document, one that instantly transported me back to the days when I was scouring Usenet forums and fanzines for any information I could get about these bizarre, "forbidden" films. I wish I'd held onto more of the catalogs and advertising flyers from those days. Luckily, others did!
Ed Wood claims an entire page of the 124-page catalog—page 38, to be exact, nestled between "Frank Henenlotter's Sexy Shockers" and "The Amazing Movie World of Herschell Gordon Lewis." A headline in the upper-right corner proudly proclaims: "ED WOOD DOWN AND DIRTY!" It's significant that this catalog doesn't even mention Glen or Glenda (1953), Night of the Ghouls (1959), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and Bride of the Monster (1955). Instead, Something Weird chose to showcase the seamier, more adult films in the Wood canon, five titles in all.
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| SWV's Necromania. |
NECROMANIA #50681971, color, 43 minutes, Written and Directed by Ed Woodwith Ric Lutze, Rene Bond, Maria ArnoldThose who know Ed Wood from such eccentric epics as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda are in for a shock 'cause NECROMANIA isn't quite like any other Ed Wood film. Perhaps the rarest and most sought after of Wood's "lost" features, NECROMANIA is a crazy mix of sex and spookiness as a dimwitted couple, in need of sexual therapy, enter Madam Heles' presumably haunted house and find cheap sets, wacky dialogue, and a naked gal in Criswell's coffin!Hosted by yours truly, who also discusses the film with Ed Wood biographer Rudolph Grey. Plus, as an added bonus, a special abbreviated version of LOVE FEAST featuring one of Wood's rare starring roles, in which Ed plays a horny photographer trapped in a perpetual orgy who is also made to wear a dog collar and nightie while licking the boots of his female captor.Nobody made 'em like Ed Wood made 'emFrank Henenlotter
Who could have known, three decades ago, that we would eventually have multiple home releases of Necromania, including both softcore and hardcore editions of the film, on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray? Personally, I'd love to see the SWV edition because it seems to contain some exclusive material. And, frankly, Love Feast (1969) might be more palatable if it were edited down a bit. I'm also impressed that Henenlotter's description of Necromania is so accurate, given the limited information available at the time.
The second-biggest ad on the page is for Take it Out in Trade: The Outtakes (1970/1995), the hourlong, silent outtake reel from Ed Wood's long-missing adult feature. Rudolph Grey had written very enticingly about Take it Out in Trade in Nightmare of Ecstasy, calling the film "exciting," "surreal," and "a major discovery." Unfortunately, the full-length film was not available to the public in any form in the '90s, so SWV marketed what footage they had and padded out the running time to two hours with various other trailers and clips. Here's how Frank Henenlotter described it:
TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE - THE OUTAKES #50981970, colorFrom the film directed by Ed Wood, Jr.
Of all the crackpot, brain-boiling gems SWV has released, this one is a real shocker: outtakes - slates, flubs, unused sex scenes, and Ed Wood himself - from Take It Out In Trade, a screwball sexploitation comedy that marked Wood's return to the director's chair for the first time since Sinister Urge in 1960. And though the film itself is as yet unavailable on video, three cans of silent Take It Out In Trade outtakes, swept from the cutting room floor, were recently found in the projection booth of a Santa Monica movie theater containing: Wood veteran Duke (Night of the Ghouls) Moore, looking as sourpuss as ever; naked gals having sex on a pool table; Michael Donovan O'Donnell sporting an unscripted "woody"; an androgynous couple making out in a kitchen; posters of foreign countries (which, in the finished film, are those foreign countries); and, most fascinating of all, the one-of-a-kind Ed Wood in a lovely lime green dress, blonde wig, and white go-go boots playing a drag queen named "Alecia."
Perhaps the only thing odder than an Ed Wood film is watching the outtakes from one. And wait'll you see the freeze frame at the end... FH
Keep in mind that I penned my review of TIOIT: The Outtakes way back in 2013. That's 18 years after this SWV catalog was published, and yet the full-length film was still unavailable to the public. The outtake reel is also reviewed by Rob Craig in the book Ed Wood, Mad Genius (2009) and by Andrew J. Rausch and Charles E. Pratt, Jr. in The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood (2015). Today, happily, Take it Out in Trade is easily accessible to any interested fan who wishes to view it.
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| SWV's Love Feast. |
I mentioned earlier that the Necromania tape included excerpts from Love Feast. Well, Something Weird marketed its own VHS tape of the complete Love Feast, and it's also included in this catalog. Like many Wood fans, I first saw this film through Rhino Home Video, which doctored the opening credits a little and marketed it as Pretty Models All in a Row. But Rhino's version didn't come out until 2000, so SWV got to the film a full five years earlier! And what did the catalog have to say about it? This:
THE LOVE FEAST aka The Photographer #4241
1969, color, 63 minutes, Directed by Joseph P. Robertson.
Starring Ed Wood!
Sexual abandon reaches epidemic proportions at the house of photographer Mr. Murphy when some groovy chicks drop by for a private audition. The swinging shutterbug invites the anxious babes in one by one, and before long has more than he can handle! The girls take it upon themselves to indulge Wood's personal fetishes in an unbelievable finale!
While Rhino maintained that Wood had directed the film, SWV credited it (correctly, in my opinion) to Joe Robertson. The plot summary is also quite accurate, though it soft-pedals some of the most unappetizing aspects of this difficult-to-watch film. What's especially interesting to me are the promotional photographs that appear in the bottom-left corner of the page.
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| Two views of Ed Wood late in his career. |
The image on the right should be familiar to anyone who has read Nightmare of Ecstasy, since it's used in that book. And, as promised, it does depict Ed Wood in his role as Alecia in Take It Out in Trade. But the image on the left, supposedly from Love Feast, is totally unknown to me. I've never seen it anywhere except this catalog, and it does not align with any scene in Love Feast that I know of. Eddie even looks a little trimmer and less jowly here than he does in that movie. If you have more info about that picture, drop me a line.
The final two Wood items in the catalog were released under the Johnny Legend Sleazemania Gold banner. We've talked about the multitalented Mr. Legend in a previous article. In 1985 and 1986, Legend produced a trilogy of Sleazemania trailer compilations that were released through Rhino Home Video. A decade later, he was working with Something Weird Video to repackage some classic exploitation films on VHS. At least two of the films in the Sleazemania Gold series had Ed Wood connections: the crime thrillers Jail Bait (1954) and The Violent Years (1956). Here's how the catalog describes them:
JAILBAIT #42251954, black and white, Directed by Ed WoodA JOHNNY LEGEND SLEAZEMANIA GOLD SERIES EDITION!"The story of gun-crazy girls and girl-crazy guys..." JAILBAIT is probably the most overlooked of Wood's early works and was filmed between GLEN OR GLENDA and PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. This picture reunites 3 of the stars of GLEN OR GLENDA: Lyle Talbot, Dolores Fuller and marks the first major screen appearance of Hercules-to-be, Steve Reeves. The infamous musical score is lifted intact from Ron Ormond's MESA OF LOST WOMEN. Here then is the restored version, transferred for the first time from the ORIGINAL 35mm FINE GRAIN MASTER, followed by a brief discussion with Rudolph Grey and a Steve Reeves TV surprise from the early 50s!VIOLENT YEARS #44671956, black & white, Directed by Ed WoodA JOHNNY LEGEND SLEAZEMANIA GOLD SERIES EDITION!"I shot a cop...so...what!" That's the original promo headline from THE VIOLENT YEARS, dripping with irony even today. Amazing that after nearly 4 decades a movie like this can still manage to be shocking, entertaining and ridiculous all at the same time. Written by the master Ed Wood and riddled with striking bizarre story ingredients: girl gang terrorists robbing gas stations, raping men, ravaging high schools - all tied to an absurd "red scare" conspiracy plot. Following the film, some interesting reflections by Rudolph Grey author of "Nightmare of Ecstasy." Pristine, restored edition DIRECT FROM THE ORIGINAL 35mm NEGATIVE!
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| A promo still from The Violent Years, as seen in the SWV catalog. |
Naturally, I'd like to see both of these tapes as well. That might be tricky, since these particular editions of Jail Bait and The Violent Years seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. I can't even find pictures of the front covers. There are a few oddities in the catalog descriptions above. For one thing, the ad copy promises that Jail Bait includes three of the stars of Glen or Glenda, then lists only two of them. I'm pretty sure they meant to include the name of Timothy Farrell, who plays a gangster in Jail Bait and a doctor in Glenda. Sorry, Tim. I also noticed that Ed Wood is falsely credited with directing The Violent Years. He didn't.
So what would all these Ed Wood movies have cost you in 1995? Well, according to the order form at the back of the catalog: "ALL VIDEOS ARE $20 EACH!" I guess that includes the sales tax as well, but you'd have to add $3 shipping and handling for the first video and $1.50 for each video after that. If you wanted to get all five of the Wood films, then, you'd be looking at a bill for $109. As someone who collected VHS tapes back in the day, I can attest that's a very reasonable price. But why stop at just the Ed Wood movies? If you were ordering out of the SWV catalog, you had hundreds of choices—all of it just three or four weeks away by UPS!