Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 251: The last footage of Bela Lugosi

A scowling Bela Lugosi made his last onscreen appearance in Plan 9.

It's one of the most famous anecdotes in the life of Edward D. Wood, Jr. It could even be the linchpin of the entire Wood saga, the source of much of Eddie's mystique. According to legend, the director took a few minutes of footage of a dead actor and built a whole movie around it—not just any movie, either, but an infamous movie! If you've seen the Tim Burton-directed biopic from 1994, it's a story you already know well. But how much of it is the truth? Let's talk about it.

"This is the acorn."

When legendary Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi died in August 1956 at the age of 73, director Ed Wood was devastated. Not only had he lost a good friend, he'd lost his leading man. Bela had starred in Glen or Glenda (1953) and Bride of the Monster (1955) for Eddie and was supposed to star in numerous upcoming Wood productions, like The Ghoul Goes West and The Vampire's Tomb. Now those plans were permanently canceled.

But Eddie had an ace up his sleeve: a reel of silent test footage he'd shot of Bela Lugosi shortly before the great man's death. Sure, it was only a few minutes of film and it didn't really tell much of a story, but Ed Wood still felt it could be the starting point for a feature-length motion picture. As Johnny Depp puts it in the Tim Burton film: "This is the acorn that will grow a great oak." Eddie's plan was to film a bunch of new scenes and extend Bela's role through the use of a carefully-disguised body double. 

The amazing thing is that Ed Wood actually carried out this seemingly insane plan. The result was a completely bonkers sci-fi/horror hybrid called Graverobbers from Outer Space, which premiered in Hollywood on March 15, 1957. It was later retitled Plan 9 from Outer Space and eventually gained a reputation as the worst movie ever made, thanks to coverage in various sci-fi/horror fan magazines and the book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980). It is, hands down, the most famous project Ed Wood was ever involved in.

Running about an hour and 19 minutes in total, Plan 9 contains a little over three minutes of exclusive Lugosi footage. The other 76 minutes consists of: stock footage, newly-made scenes, and shots of Bela's body double, chiropodist Dr. Tom Mason (1920-1980), creeping around with a cape in front of his face. As far as I can tell, Ed Wood—who edited the film himself—did not recycle any of the precious Lugosi shots, though a few are very similar to each other.

What, precisely, did Ed Wood have to work with? To answer that question, I prepared an alternate cut of the film that only contains the footage of Bela Lugosi. I call it Plan 9: The All Lugosi Cut. I have also taken the liberty of removing any music or narration.

I hope that Plan 9: The All Lugosi Cut puts the original movie in a new context. Let's take inventory of what we have here. 

• (00:00) The reel begins at a very primitive-looking (or perhaps neglected) cemetery at the edge of a wooded area. A despondent, weeping Lugosi attends a graveside service alongside a reverend and four mourners. He dries his tears with a white handkerchief. The reverend holds—but does not read aloud from—a bible or prayerbook as Lugosi turns his eyes heavenward. After a few moments of quiet contemplation, the reverend puts his arm around Lugosi and gently leads him and the other mourners away from the grave. Lugosi seems reluctant to depart.

• (00:59) We now see a quaint, ranch-style house in a suburban neighborhood. It is a bright, sunny day. A still-depressed Lugosi exits the house in formal attire: a black suit, a waist-length black cape, and a dramatic black homburg hat. He walks slowly, supporting himself with a cane. After trudging across his driveway, he surveys the horizon for a moment. He then spots some flowers growing next to the garage. He bends down, picks a single flower, then looks around him. After a few seconds, he simply lets the flower fall from his hand. He walks across his lawn and out of frame.

• (02:13) Now clad in a Dracula costume, complete with a full-length cape, Lugosi emerges from the woods into a graveyard overrun with weeds. Some of the graves are merely crude wooden crosses. This all seems to be happening near the spot where the previous funeral scene was shot. It is broad daylight, and Lugosi is possessed of new energy. He walks toward the foreground and stands stiffly there for a few seconds, looking at someone off-camera. Then he takes a few tentative steps backward and holds his cape out like bat wings at his sides. After this, he dramatically wraps the cape around him and walks back toward the woods.

• (02:39) After a crossfade (the only fanciful edit in the entire reel), we now return to the ranch-style house from the previous scene. It is nighttime. Lugosi, still in his Dracula costume, approaches the back door of the home.

• (02:41) Lugosi enters the home with some urgency.

• (02:43) Lugosi emerges from the home and strikes a dramatic pose. He then exits the scene.

• (02:48) We return to the crude graveyard from four scenes ago, but it is now nighttime. Lugosi walks out of the woods and staggers toward the foreground.

• (02:54) Still nighttime. Lugosi stands in the graveyard, staring off into the distance. He then wraps his cape around him and walks back toward the woods. This might appear to be a repeat of the shot from five scenes ago, but they are different. In the first, Lugosi does not wrap the cape around him until he is facing away from us. In the second, he wraps the cape around him while still facing the camera.

• (03:04) Nighttime. Graveyard. Lugosi emerges from the woods and again walks toward the foreground.

• (03:11) Nighttime. Graveyard. Lugosi stands in the foreground, staring at something or someone.

And that's it. Those are all the genuine Bela Lugosi moments I can find in Plan 9 from Outer Space. Honestly, if I'd been given the same footage, I don't know what I would have done with it. The first two sequences, the funeral scene and the flower scene, have no obvious connection to the later material with Lugosi in his Dracula costume. Certainly, there is no hint of the science-fiction story that Wood eventually crafted around this footage. No aliens or UFOs here.

Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) provides some interesting but contradictory information about the Lugosi footage that eventually ended up in Plan 9. The timeline at the back of the book states that this material was shot in two different sessions: April 1955 and June 1956. So it's possible that these were two different projects entirely. Paul Marco opines that these scenes were test footage for The Vampire's Tomb.

Paul Marco's version of the story.

Nightmare of Ecstasy also contains a long quote from Ed Wood himself about the making of Plan 9 from Outer Space and the origin of the Bela Lugosi footage.

Ed Wood's version of the story.

The Wood quote is interesting because it gives us some insight into the forlorn cemetery that was used as a filming location and why it seems to be in such poor shape. But Eddie also seems to believe the footage was shot for a very definite project, specifically a script he'd already written. It was my understanding that Plan 9/Graverobbers was only written after Bela Lugosi's death. The extant screenplay is dated November 1956. Bela died in August. It's possible, then, that the script Eddie is referring to is The Vampire's Tomb or some other unrealized project.

Toward the end of his life, Ed Wood gave an interview to author Richard Bojarski for The Films of Bela Lugosi (1980) in which he talked about the making of Plan 9, among other subjects. According to that book, Eddie had "nothing but a rough idea for a horror film" but was still able to raise enough money for a "few days" of shooting with Bela Lugosi, who "died unexpectedly after four days of shooting." It is Bojarksi's stance that Wood based the Plan 9 script around that abandoned footage, just as I have always heard. Intriguingly, Nightmare of Ecstasy contains a letter from Ed Wood to actor/producer Anthony Cardoza dated September 22, 1959 in which he states his intention to add "some Lugosi footage" to Revenge of the Dead (1959). This suggests to me that Wood was in possession of more unused Lugosi material he had not gotten to use in Plan 9.

And so, after nearly 70 years, the exact origin of this reel of film remains unknown. Mysterious. Inexplicable. But ask yourself: if you had been in Eddie's place in 1956 and were in possession of this exact footage, what would you have done with it? What kind of story could you have told with these fleeting moments?