Ed Wood Wednesdays, Week 13: "Shotgun Wedding" (1963)

Jenny Maxwell covers herself on the lurid poster for the very tame Shotgun Wedding (1963).

The Comedy of Terrors

Ed Wood's movie career slowed down considerably in the early 1960s. After The Sinister Urge (1960), he would never again direct a mainstream film, and in 1963, he embarked upon what turned out to be a long-lasting career as the author of sex-and-violence-strewn paperbacks. During the JFK years, most of Ed's proposed film projects went nowhere. He envisioned, for instance, a sequel to The Sinister Urge called The Peeper. Since all the villains from The Sinister Urge had been dispatched in one way or another during that film's eventful and violent third act, the dull detective characters played by Duke Moore and Kenne Duncan would have investigated a brand new sex-crazed fiend in the follow-up—a murderous peeping tom. Financing, again, proved elusive.

In 1961, in addition to filming some new sequences for The Sinister Urge (still apparently pinning his showbiz hopes on that one, little-loved film), Ed produced a couple of new screenplays that were fated to remain unproduced during his lifetime. Last Town North has been lost to time, I suppose, but The Silent Night evolved into one of Ed's most famous screenplays, I Awoke Early the Day I Died. That script took on a life of its own and became the basis for two separate adaptations in the late 1990s, long after Ed's death.

Perhaps the most fascinating of Ed's unrealized projects from this era is Invasion of the Gigantic Salami (aka Operation Salami and Attack of the Giant Salami), a sci-fi spoof intended for Joe E. Brown and Boris Karloff, both of whom had discussed the project with Wood. Friend Don Fellman informed biographer Rudolph Grey that Ed was inordinately "tickled" by that title and was especially eager to produce this movie.

Unfortunately for Ed, The Comedy of Terrors (American International Pictures, 1963) stole his thunder with a cast that included Brown and Karloff, plus Basil Rathbone, Peter Lorre, and Vincent Price. How could he compete with that? It is possible that AIP, the studio that owed its existence to Ed's Bride of the Monster, might have gotten the idea to put Boris Karloff and Joe E. Brown in a movie together from Ed Wood. That's just speculation, however, on Don Fellman's part. Either way, it didn't do Ed much good.

Tor Johnson is Lobo in Boris Petroff's The Unearthly.

One thing Ed had going for him, even during the lean years, was that he knew a lot of people in the entertainment field—actors, directors, writers, producers, and craftsmen of various descriptions. And all of those people knew even more people, thereby increasing Ed's professional circle exponentially. A lot of the crucial people in Ed's career were friends and friends of friends. Ed was clearly proud of this fact, since he shamelessly drops "famous" names throughout Hollywood Rat Race (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998), even if some of those names are so obscure today that they make no impact whatsoever when they drop.

Among Ed's professional contacts was a Russian-born filmmaker named Boris Petroff (1894-1972), who as "Brooke L. Peters" had a roughly decade-long run as the producer and director of low-budget independent films in the 1950s and early 1960s. Easily Petroff's best-known film is 1957's The Unearthly, a stultifying horror tale whose intriguing cast features legendary actor John Carradine, whom Ed later tried to wrangle for the lead role in To Kill a Saturday Night, plus one of Wood's best-known regulars, Tor Johnson, playing a somewhat-more-articulate version of his Lobo character from Wood's Bride of the Monster (1957) and Night of the Ghouls (1959).

The Unearthly has no narrative ties whatsoever to Ed's movies other than Lobo and owes most of its relative popularity to an appearance on MST3K in 1991, where it was deservedly savaged. Ed Wood later served as an uncredited "consultant" on Petroff's Anatomy of a Psycho (1961), and some film historians think Eddie either wrote or co-wrote it.

Boris Petroff ended his career two years later with a film that attempted to cash in on a trend then dominating American popular culture. And, as luck would have it, the unbilled (hopefully not unpaid) scenarist for this particular project was one Edward D. Wood, Jr.

SHOTGUN WEDDING (1963)

Alternate titles: Child Brides of the Ozarks; Talk Sexy, Y'all

Availability: I found my original bootleg on an internet auction site. Fleshbot Films planned to release a Shotgun Wedding DVD in the early 2000s, but it never happened. Another edition of the film was released on DVD by Films Around The World (FAT-W). It's available here. I'll discuss the pros and cons of that edition in the "viewing experience" section.

Al Capp's hillbilly sex goddess, Daisy Mae.

The backstory: Producer Paul Henning's The Beverly Hillbillies debuted on CBS in September 1962 and quickly became the #1 show on all of television, a title it would hold for two consecutive seasons. So popular was the series that the network commissioned two more hayseed sitcoms from Henning: Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. But Henning hadn't stumbled over anything new so much as he had reawakened America's interest in a long-gestating pop culture phenomenon. As late comics historian Don Markstein's invaluable Toonopedia puts it:

In the early-to-mid 1930s, hillbillies were becoming popular in American entertainment. In comic strips, Joe Palooka, did an extended sequence about a mountain man named Big Leviticus in 1933; and in '34 the author of that sequence, Al Capp, started his most famous work, Li'l Abner. And [Barney Google creator] Billy DeBeck was heavily researching Appalachian culture.

DeBeck handed the reins of his comic strip over to assistant Fred Lasswell, who shifted the focus of Barney Google to a hillbilly character called Snuffy Smith. The ornery, diminutive mooonshiner remains the star of that comic to this very day. The groundwork for this pop culture fad had been laid in the world of literature. Erskine Caldwell's hot-blooded early 1930s novels such as God's Little Acre and Tobacco Road (both highly recommended), gave readers a bleak yet also sexy and sordid view of the region and its people.

It was during the time of Caldwell's popularity that Al Capp launched his phenomenally successful strip, Li'l Abner, which presented a cheerier, cleaner, more abstract view of "hillbilly" life with a strong element of sex appeal. Specifically, the character of Daisy Mae Scragg—a busty, lusty, scantily-clad blonde with tremendous physical strength and a penchant for wearing cutoffs—became an archetype for hillbilly womanhood. There is little doubt in my mind than Henning created the Ellie Mae Clampett character on The Beverly Hillbillies as a reference to Capp's comic strip. 

As late as 1977, Hanna Barbera's Laff-A-Lympics contained a very Capp-esque character called Daisy Mayhem. (And it's no coincidence that the cutoff-wearing heroine of The Dukes of Hazzard was named Daisy either.) In fact, until the Henning sitcoms came along in the 1960s, Li'l Abner, which spawned a successful stage show and several movies, was the "gold standard" for depicting the poor whites of the South, as evidenced by this clearly Capp-influenced vintage Mountain Dew commercial.

Novak's hicksploitation.

With Jed Clampett and his countrified kinfolk dominating the airwaves, low-budget independent filmmakers were quick (some quicker than others) to jump on the "hillbilly" bandwagon. Such B-movie legends as Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and Harry H. Novak tried their hands at the so-called "hicksploitation" subgenre, sometimes invoking their progenitors directly. Novak, for instance, produced Tobacco Roody (1972), its title a pun on the Erskin Caldwell novel, and a rural female character in Lewis' Two-Thousand Maniacs (1964) is disparagingly referred to as "Daisy Mae."

It is little wonder, then, that a dyed-in-the-wool schlockmeister like Boris Petroff (working under his own name for a change) would want a piece of the action, yet his one attempt at this type of film is mild and wishy-washy when viewed next to those of his contemporaries. Hicksploitation films tend to be heavy on sex, violence, and mountain music. Shotgun Wedding is noticeably light on the first two and lacks the third entirely.

On the other hand, you will find some important mainstays of the subgenre here: a couple of scantily-clad blondes (in the Daisy Mae/Ellie Mae tradition), at least one strapping but oafish lad (in the Li'l Abner Yokum/Jethro Bodine mold,) plus some furtive moonshine-swigging and a long-standing feud between two families. Feuding is an important tradition in hillbilly-based popular culture. As Wikipedia helpfully informs us:

Due to the Celtic heritage of many whites living in Appalachia, a series of prolonged violent engagements in late- nineteenth-century Kentucky and West Virginia were referred to commonly as feuds, a tendency that was partly due to the nineteenth-century popularity of William Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, both of whom wrote semi-historical accounts of blood feuds. These incidents, the most famous of which was the Hatfield-McCoy feud, were regularly featured in the newspapers of the eastern U.S. between the Reconstruction era and the early twentieth century, and are seen by some as linked to a Southern culture of honor with its roots in the Scots-Irish forebears of the residents of the area.

So there you have it, folks! The feuding subplot in Ed Wood's Shotgun Wedding is the result of a tradition going back to William Shakespeare. (Bet you didn't think Eddie and Bill had much in common!)

Interestingly, in the opening title sequence for Shotgun Wedding, the script is credited to "Larry Lee," supposedly working from a story by Jane Mann, Boris Petroff's wife. Jane's only other writing credits are on her husband's films (The Unearthly, Anatomy of a Psycho).

Ubiquitous William Schallert

To bring Shotgun Wedding to the screen, Boris Petroff recruited a cast teeming with familiar faces. Chief among these is veteran movie and TV stalwart William Schallert, right before he joined the cast of The Patty Duke Show (1963-1966) in what would become his most famous role. To give you some idea of this actor's career, he had 173 credits before this one and 189 after, including films like Singin' in the Rain (1952) and Gremlins (1984) plus recurring roles on TV shows like The Waltons and St. Elsewhere. And that's not to mention his extensive work in TV commercials, shilling for Pop Tarts and life insurance. Trust me, you've seen and heard this guy many times. Shotgun Wedding was likely just another assignment for him, a few days' work in a career that seemed to never stop.

I also immediately recognized veteran English-born character man J. Pat O'Malley, who gets a rare chance to be top-billed in this film. O'Malley's film career is dominated by his work in Walt Disney movies, both animated (The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians) and live-action (Son of Flubber). But that pales in comparison to his television work, guest-starring on... well, pretty much every popular network show you can remember from the 1950s to the early 1980s. In fact, I recognized O'Malley from his role on a very good Taxi two-parter called "The Road Not Taken" from 1982, in what turned out to be his very last screen appearance before his 1985 death.

Elsewhere in the cast, pretty Jenny Maxwell starred with Elvis Presley in 1961's Blue Hawaii. Shotgun Wedding was technically her last film role, but she kept working in television throughout the 1960s, guesting on My Three Sons, Death Valley Days, and The Wild Wild West. (In 1981, she was tragically killed in a botched robbery.) Other Shotgun Wedding cast members Valerie Allen, Jennie Maxwell, and Jackie Searl all did a lot of TV work in the 1960s, too. Allen, in fact, went on to marry and divorce Troy Donahue a few years after this picture.

A misleading ad for the film.

This movie's commercial fate is not terribly well documented, but Shotgun Wedding's almost total disappearance from the pop culture radar is a pretty good indication of its reception. Were it not for Ed Wood's involvement, the film might not even be available on the gray market as it is today. A major problem may have been that the film's sensational ad campaign set up unreasonable expectations that the movie itself could not possibly meet. One poster boldly proclaims that the movie will give us "the whole SHOCKING story of Child Brides of the Ozarks," which uncomfortably evokes a notorious and controversial 1938 exploitation film Child Bride (which billed itself as "a throbbing drama of shackled youth"). Shotgun Wedding offers nothing of the kind.

Unlike the cast of the 1938 film, which actually did feature some underaged performers in a sexualized context, the "gorgeous gals" of Petroff's movie are all easily in their 20s and don't reveal much more of themselves than you'd see at the beach. Yet one of the posters for Petroff's film lewdly asks, "Was she too old at 15?" Drive-in filmgoers lured to Shotgun Wedding with such panting taglines could not have been satisfied with Petroff's gentle film. It's much closer in spirit to The Beverly Hillbillies or Li'l Abner than to Child Bride and could easily play, unedited, on prime time network television. Word of mouth must have been disastrous. Boris Petroff never stepped behind a movie camera again. Ed Wood, as always, soldiered on despite the public's indifference.

Valerie Allen, the film's vixen.

The viewing experience: Light, fun, and charming if a bit preposterous. Compared to Russ Meyer's lusty, violent hicksploitation films (Lorna, Mudhoney, etc.) and Herschell Gordon Lewis's gory contributions to the subgenre (This Stuf'll Kill Ya, Moonshine Mountain, etc.), Shotgun Wedding is supremely goofy and naïve. By the end, it's revealed itself as merely a mild comedy of errors, hardly the daring exposé promised on the posters.

Take, for example, the pivotal character of Melanie (Valerie Allen), a brunette vixen who serves as the catalyst for most of the plot. She's shacked up in a rickety houseboat with doughy, unkempt "river rat" Buford (J. Pat O'Malley), but she's having an affair with Buford's handsome-yet-dim son Shub (Peter Colt). Buford's daughter Lucianne (Nan Peterson) knows all about the extracurricular hanky panky, but she doesn't tell her father. Instead, Lucianne uses her knowledge to blackmail her own brother out of $100.

Speaking of blackmail, the only reason gorgeous Melanie stays with Buford is that the old coot knows that Melanie killed a circus strongman named Steelo (Edward Fitz), and he's hiding Melanie's money somewhere on the property. While she and Shub conspire to find the money and get away from the small town, Melanie tricks Buford into marrying her by falsely claiming to be pregnant. The only clergyman nearby to perform the service, however, is the two-faced hypocrite Preacher Parsons (Schallert), a con man who recognizes Melanie from their days on the carnival circuit (when she was "Tiger Rose") and threatens to expose her unless he gets some of that money.

Now, if this were a Russ Meyer or H.G. Lewis film, several of these characters would probably be murdered... and "fallen woman" Melanie would definitely be among them. Her dark hair and sultry manner would make her a good contrast for the film's resident ingenue, Honey Bee (Jenny Maxwell), a guileless but sexy blonde whose sweet-natured romance with Buford's other son, Rafe (Buzz Martin), is sort of a hillbilly variation on Romeo & Juliet. Honey Bee's small-minded father, Silas (Jack Searl), despises Buford and even forms a lynch mob to kill the river dweller and his whole good-for-nothing clan, women included. Meyer and Lewis would definitely use the third act to dole out some punishment to these characters for their various sins. Perhaps Rafe and Honey Bee would be spared, thus wiping the moral slate clean.

But Ed Wood's script for Shotgun Wedding goes in an entirely different, much more forgiving direction. No one is killed. No one is punished. Old sins are forgiven. (Continuing Ed's "resurrection" motif, strongman Steelo is found to be alive and well, not even holding a grudge against Melanie.) Feuds are set aside. Truths emerge. Most of the characters seem to be headed toward brighter, more optimistic futures at the end of this movie. During Shotgun Wedding's final scene, Buford may be on the verge of repeating his past mistakes with a new woman, just as he did with Melanie, but the movie treats this like one of those "here we go again!" endings from a sitcom.

The ladies of Petticoat Junction, minus their petticoats.

Boris Petroff was a much more conventional, traditional director than Ed Wood, so Shotgun Wedding feels more like a "normal" movie than Ed's own efforts from the 1950s. There are no glaring continuity errors, crazy visual mismatches, or impossible narrative leaps here. Police cars do not zoom across the screen with their sirens blaring, and the gods do not demonstrate their disapproval of the characters through bursts of thunder and lightning. The editing, framing, and composition are all very standard, similar to what you'd see on a network television show of the era.

While Peter Colt and Buzz Martin give the stilted, unconvincing performances you'd expect in an Ed Wood movie, most of the small-ish cast is very professional. J. Pat O'Malley and William Schallert are even good! It's great fun to see Schallert, often cast as a bland, wholesome sitcom dad, play a real sleazeball here—a one-time grifter named "Stacko" Parsons now pretending to be a man of the cloth so he can sponge off this obscure rural community. And as the incorrigible Buford, J. Pat O'Malley is in clover, clearly having fun with the mostly-comedic part.

While hardly the backwoods bacchanal promised by the posters, Shotgun Wedding does feature some lovely young ladies of the type you'd expect to see bathing in the water tower on Petticoat Junction. In fact, Honey Bee has a (quite chaste) shower scene that seems like a precursor to that series.

The deluxe Shotgun Wedding special edition DVD.

If Ed Wood has an onscreen surrogate in this movie, it's probably Melanie, the worldly-wise outsider who finds herself stranded (and bored) in an isolated rural community but still has a taste for the finer things in life. Significantly, Melanie does not dress like the other characters in the movie and enjoys turning the heads of the local menfolk as she wiggles seductively past them. One of the first things we see her do is air out her sexy lingerie on a clothesline. Ed was definitely a connoisseur of women's undergarments, so this is not terribly surprising.

Moreover, Melanie's background in the carnival circuit all but certainly owes its existence to Ed's own (alleged) experiences touring with a freak show as a "half-man, half-woman" before going to Hollywood in 1948. Circuses and carnivals are frequent motifs in Ed's writing, more so in his paperbacks than in his film scripts. Having apparently done no research for this project, Ed the screenwriter makes not the slightest effort to realistically capture the rural dialect of Appalachia, and the movie actually seems to go out of its way to avoid using any "mountain music" on the soundtrack. Petroff obviously did not notice that The Beverly Hillbillies made prominent use of bluegrass music by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

There are two credited composers for Shotgun Wedding, by the way. Alexander Starr, who is so obscure that he does not even merit an IMDb entry, wrote the somewhat jazzy, often comical background score for most of the movie. The film's provocative "dance music," on the other hand, is attributed to Jerry Capehart (1928-1998), a prominent songwriter and producer in the early days of rock & roll. Interestingly, Capehart wrote "Come On, Everybody" and the perennial favorite "Summertime Blues" for Eddie Cochran in the 1950s. His Shotgun Wedding music is awesomely catchy, but it is in no way appropriate for this film. In one big dance scene, we see a bluegrass band playing, including one guy strumming a banjo, but what we hear is electric guitar-driven rock. Does this town even have electrical outlets?

During the title sequence, which also features Capehart's rock music, we get a look at the main street of "Mudcat Landing," the incredibly small community (pop. 47) where these characters all reputedly live, and it's quite obviously a façade from the set of a Western. The place resembles Disney's Frontierland rather than the hill country of the Southeastern United States. In terms of authenticity, Shotgun Wedding makes The Beverly Hillbillies look like Winter's Bone.

But that's part of what makes this film so much fun. If you like stories about bumpkins, rubes, and hayseeds, but you've never actually been south of the Mason-Dixon line, this is the movie for you!

ADDENDUM: Viewers who choose to purchase Shotgun Wedding on DVD have two options: the bootleg version and the Films Around The World (FAT-W) version. Ed Wood fans should know what they're getting into either way. Neither edition is perfect. Far from it. The bootleg version is very badly faded, for instance, to the point that it's almost in black-and-white, while the FAT-W version is considerably more colorful and vibrant, if not sharp. But the bootleg version is only slightly cropped, while the FAT-W version is more severely cropped. The bootleg version is also more stable, too, while the FAT-W version is more wobbly, with the picture bobbing up and down. In addition, the FAT-W version has a major skip during the opening credits sequence, as Valerie Allen exits a store and walks by the menfolk in town.

Here's a side-by-side comparison:

(left to right) The bootleg version and the the FAT-W version.

Now at first glance, you'll probably think that the FAT-W version is superior. And, in many ways, it is. But take a look at that milk jug in the lower right hand corner by Valerie Allen's leg. You can see the whole thing in the bootleg version, but only a corner of it in the FAT-W version. And how do I know both versions are cropped? From these credits:

(left to right) Same comparison as above. 

Both are bad, but the FAT-W version is worse. At least in the bootleg version, the actors names are intact, if not their character names. In the end, you pick your poison.

Next week: He was Criswell. For years he told the almost unbelievable, related the unreal, and showed it to be more... than a fact! Then, almost 50 years ago, he told a tale of the threshold people so astounding that some of you may have fainted if you had been there. This was a story of those in the twilight time... once human, then monsters... who were caught in a void between the living and the dead. Monsters to have been pitied! Monsters to have been despised! A night with the ghouls.. the ghouls who had been reborn... from the innermost depths of the world! And now, my friends, we will dare to revisit that infamous tale. Let us reconvene in seven days for an appraisal of Orgy of the Dead (1965)!

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 33: "Anatomy of a Psycho" (1961)

Anatomy of a Psycho has an extremely opportunistic title, wouldn't you say?

"I walked down the alley and through the door of this little studio, and there behind a desk in this very dingy, small office sat Boris Petroff, who wanted me to write an ad. I said, 'It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Petroff,' and did all the bullshit that you usually do when you're trying to get as many ads out of somebody as you possibly can so that you can make a little more commission."

-writer and director John D.F. Black

Tor Johnson as Lobo in The Unearthly.

Producer/Director Boris Petroff was a significant player in the Ed Wood story, though his name doesn't show up until page 207 (out of 231) in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. and even then makes only a fleeting appearance.  Ed and Boris were both low-budget independent filmmakers struggling to make it in Hollywood, and they crossed paths several times in the late 1950s and early 1960s, perhaps more often than has been documented.

On his resume, for example, Eddie proudly credited himself with writing the screenplay for the Petroff-directed hillbilly comedy Shotgun Wedding (1963), along with another supposed Petroff production called Talk Sexy, Y'all, which Grey speculates is merely an alternate title for Shotgun Wedding. Since Talk Sexy has never surfaced in any form, it seems Grey was correct in his assumption. 

Moreover, Boris' supernatural thriller, The Unearthly (1957), features Wood regular Tor Johnson as a lumbering henchman named Lobo, the very same character name Johnson used in Ed's films Bride of the Monster (1955) and Night of the Ghouls (1959). The only difference between the Lobo in Petroff's movie and the Lobo in Ed's movies is that the former can (sort of) talk. No true fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 will ever forget Johnson's immortal line, "Time for go to bed!" Otherwise, the characters are nearly identical, and Johnson never played Lobo in any other films.

According to its credits, The Unearthly was co-written by someone called "Geoffrey Dennis" -- a pseudonym for erstwhile Star Trek scribe John D.F. Black -- and Boris Petroff's wife, Jane Mann. Jane was the one who, along with the elusive and likely nonexistent "Larry Lee," a man with no other titles in his filmography, got onscreen credit for writing Shotgun Wedding. Since Ed Wood was eager to claim authorship of that film, it is possible that Jane Mann was given a vanity credit by virtue of being the director's wife. As for her supposed contributions to The Unearthly, here's what John D.F. Black had to say on the subject in an interview with author Tom Weaver in a book called Science Fiction Confidential: Interviews with 23 Monster Stars and Filmmakers (McFarland, 2002):

I was working on the script [for The Unearthly], delivering pages, and then I realized it would become a nightmare if I kept doing it that way. So I just didn't show up for ten days, and finished it. I delivered it to Mr. Petroff, who gave it to Jane, his wife, who typed it. I can't type. [...] And then it was time for the picture to be edited and for credits to be discussed, and it turns out that Jane Mann, who was the one who typed the script last, put her name on it. And Mr. Petroff was not gonna pay me.

Writer-actor Don Devlin

Very interesting, wouldn't you say?

John D.F. Black has an extensive, thirty-year career as a writer in film (Shaft) and television (everything from Charlie's Angels to Murder She Wrote), while Jane Mann has only three movies to her name... all of them directed by her husband. If Black is to be believed, Mann was nothing more than a typist on The Unearthly. And if Ed Wood is to be believed, Shotgun Wedding's script was all his doing. So if Jane Mann didn't really write The Unearthly or Shotgun Wedding, it is reasonable to assume that she didn't write Anatomy of a Psycho either. Then who did? Well, one obvious answer is the film's credited co-writer, Don Devlin (1930-2000), who has an interesting and varied filmography as an actor, including a pivotal role in Anatomy of a Psycho, along with credits as a producer (The Witches of Eastwick) and a screenwriter (Thunder Island, which he co-wrote with Jack Nicholson). But a dark horse candidate for the film's authorship is Edward D. Wood, Jr.

The IMDb doesn't list Anatomy of a Psycho among Eddie's writing credits, and neither Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy nor Rob Craig's Ed Wood, Mad Genius include it in their coverage of Wood's career. But Philip R. Frey's invaluable website Ed Wood Online does include Anatomy in its filmography section, and the film isn't even shunted off to the "Apocrypha" there but instead is nestled between Shotgun Wedding and Married Too Young (1962), the film I'll be covering next week.

Incidentally, if you are at all curious about the career of the Russian-born director Boris Petroff, who almost always worked under the pseudonym "Brooke L. Peters," I'd highly recommend that you locate a copy of Tom Weaver's Science Fiction Confidential. In its chapter about The Unearthly, John D.F. Black comments in more detail about Petroff's appearance and personality than I was able to find anywhere else.

After poking a little fun at Petroff's heavy Russian accent, Black recalls, "He was a charming man, I would guess somewhere between five-ten and six feet; on the heavy side but not fat." Black also supplies an intriguing little anecdote about actor Tor Johnson:

He was playing Lobo... and he was sick of playing characters named Lobo. [...] He asked, "Why did you name me Lobo?" and I said, "I didn't. Boris did!" He had his "Lobo suit," which was slightly adapted, and that's what you see in the picture [The Unearthly]. That was his own wardrobe. He was a sweetheart. 

Again, let me say that I can find no record of Tor Johnson playing Lobo in anything other than the two Ed Wood movies and the one Boris Petroff movie. Apparently for Tor, those were more than enough.

ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO (1961)

A misleadingly racy lobby card for Anatomy of a Psycho.

The best DVD of the film.

Alternate titles: This film's title is its best selling point. Why give it any other name? In South America, though, the title translated as Young People Without Conscience.

Availability: As a public domain movie, Anatomy of a Psycho is widely and freely available. You can stream or download it from Archive.org if you so desire, for instance. It's also been included in any number of boxed sets, including Psycho-Rama (St. Clair Entertainment, 2009), Pure Terror (Mill Creek, 2010) and Psychos (BCI/Eclipse, 2003). It's available alongside Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970) on a DVD called Killer Creature Double Feature (Madacy Records, 2001), which also contains some extra cartoons. In addition, Anatomy of a Psycho has been released as a standalone disc (Alpha Video, 2006). By all accounts, however, the DVD that offers the clearest, sharpest print of the film is a double-feature Drive-In Collection disc (Vinegar Syndrome, 2013) which pairs it with Richard Hilliard's The Lonely Sex (1959). Although the disc is light on special features, its picture quality far surpasses that of the public domain versions floating around out there.

The backstory: Why am I including this movie in my survey of Ed Wood's career when both Rudolph Grey and Rob Craig skipped right past it in theirs? The culprit is probably writer David C. Hayes, who included this speculative passage about Anatomy of a Psycho in his book, Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. in a chapter temptingly titled "The 'Lost' Films." Here's what Hayes has to say about the subject:

This film has been on the tail end of drive in double bills for years. It contains juvenile delinquency (what else) and has the patented crazy Wood characters, senseless violence, and an ambiguous moral. For novelty effect, Ronnie Burns stars as the delinquent (he is the real-life son of George Burns and Gracie Allen). Directed by Boris Petroff (for whom Ed had worked previously), the writing is credited to Larry Lee. Poor Larry must have been shunned in Hollywood after Anatomy because he has written nothing since. Unless... yes! Larry Lee is another Ed Wood pseudonym! Here is the evidence: there is a character named Duke (after Wood's friend, Duke Moore), there is a character named Marco (after Wood's friend Paul Marco), there is a character named Shirlee (because Wood loves that name), the film uses the same music as Plan 9 from Outer Space and the characters and dialogue is [sic] really awful and strange. Besides, Rudolph Gray [sic] (a noted Wood expert) also believes that Ed Wood wrote Anatomy of a Psycho. 

That's a densely-layered paragraph, so let me address some of the salient points individually:

• Since Anatomy was a cheaply-available exploitation film, the assertion that it played for years on the drive-in circuit seems quite plausible.

• Like many of the writers and directors of his era, Wood did tackle the issue of juvenile delinquency in such films as Jail Bait, The Violent Years, The Sinister Urge, Night of the Ghouls, and the unfinished Hellborn, as well as such pulp novels as Devil Girls and Hell Chicks.

• It's a matter of personal taste whether the "crazy characters" and "senseless violence" in Anatomy of a Psycho are particularly Wood-ian in nature. We'll discuss that in the "viewing experience" section. As for the issue of morals, Ed Wood was in many ways a very conservative man, and he had no tolerance whatsoever for juvenile delinquency. His films and novels, therefore, often employ a no-nonsense brand of justice with severe penalties for wrongdoers.

George & Ronnie Burns

• Ronald Jon "Ronnie" Burns (1935-2007), the adopted son of George Burns and Gracie Allen, is the top-billed actor in the film, but his character is the wholesome hero, not a delinquent. Although a rather uninspiring presence onscreen, Burns is nevertheless an intriguing pop culture footnote. He may have been one of the first high-profile examples of a child being adopted by celebrities, thus making him a role model or icon to other adopted children. Ronnie, who according to his wife "lived a pretty charmed life growing up," is probably best known for appearing as a fictionalized version of himself on his parents' 1950s TV show. Anatomy was one of his few film roles, but he worked in television into the 1960s, including his own short-lived vehicle called Happy, then ditched acting to pursue boat racing and real estate.

• Anatomy of a Psycho was released two years before the first documented Wood/Petroff collaboration, i.e. Shotgun Wedding. The Unearthly predates them both, but there is no evidence that Wood had any direct involvement in that film. So the assertion that Eddie had worked for Boris Petroff previously is dubious.

• One-and-done screenwriter Larry Lee is the credited co-author of Shotgun Wedding, not Anatomy of a Psycho. Jane Mann and Don Devlin are the writers whose names appear at the end of the film.

• The movie does have a character named Duke Marco (played by William Salzwedel) as well as Duke's two siblings: Pat (Pamela Lincoln) and Chet (Darrell Howe). There's no Shirlee or Shirley in the film, however. The closest is a duplicitous girl named Sandra, whom the IMDb calls "Sandy." However, the fact that the character Patricia shortens her girly-sounding first name to the androgynous nickname "Pat" is reminiscent of the female characters in The Violent Years.

• Though the film has a credited composer, Manuel Francisco (aka Michael Terr), there is some unmistakable stock/library music on the soundtrack, including "Grip of the Law" by Trevor Duncan, which also served as the title music in Plan 9. Furthermore, a party scene in Anatomy of a Psycho uses some of the same gushy romantic music heard at the home of Jeff and Paula Trent in Plan 9. Elsewhere in the film, it's possible to hear some of the same music Ed Wood used in Final Curtain (1957). So Petroff and Wood were definitely drawing from the same music library, but I think these directors generally delegated such responsibilities to their respective music supervisors.

• Again, it's up to the individual viewer to decide whether the plot and characters of Anatomy of a Psycho are "awful and strange" in the Ed Wood tradition. I'm more comfortable with the second adjective than the first.

• If Rudolph Grey (whose last name is spelled with an e) is convinced of Ed Wood's authorship of Anatomy of a Psycho, he doesn't bring it up in Nightmare of Ecstasy. Like I said, Boris Petroff himself barely merits a mention there. Perhaps Hayes is referring to a printed interview or even a personal conversation with Mr. Grey.

Pamela Lincoln

Make of all that what you will. In any case, while Ronnie Burns is the most notable member of the cast of Anatomy of a Psycho, there are others in the film worth mentioning as well. I've already alerted you to the fact that the film's co-screenwriter, Don Devlin, gave himself a good-sized role as an ex-Marine turned thug named Moe. Resident "good girl" Pamela Lincoln  (b. 1937) was once the sister-in-law of TV's Dobie Gillis, Dwayne Hickman, and made sporadic film and television appearances from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. Readers of this blog will probably be most interested to know that she was in William Castle's The Tingler.

Resident "bad girl" Judy Howard had a less-impressive film and TV career, the highlight of which is probably a one-off role on The Monkees. She dropped off the Hollywood radar sometime during Richard Nixon's first term. Ruddy-faced, barrel-chested Michael Granger (1923-1981), who portrays a streetwise but good-hearted police lieutenant here, spent most of his 25-year career on the small screen and seems to have played an awful lot of cops during that time.

The titular psycho is played by Darrell Howe, for whom this movie is most certainly the highlight of his largely-undistinguished career. Anatomy is the first and last of his theatrically-released feature films. His only other big shot at stardom came in the form of an unsold pilot (directed by Ida Lupino, no less!) called Teenage Idol in 1958, a year when the pop charts were dominated by the likes of Fabian and Frankie Avalon, i.e pretty boys with pompadours. This failed, forgotten attempt at a rock 'n' roll sitcom would have featured Howe as the awesomely-named Swivelhips Jackson, but it never got past one episode. Apart from that and a few scattered TV guest shots in the 1960s, Howe's cupboard is bare, daddy-o.

A tale of two anatomies. 

The viewing experience: Though its title obviously evokes both Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), Anatomy of a Psycho has very little in common with either of those films, which at the time were recent and controversial hits. About the closest this rather quaint movie comes to those groundbreaking classics is the "jazzy" lettering of the main title, which is vaguely similar to the Saul Bass title sequence from Anatomy of a Murder. 

Okay, while we're being extremely generous, let's point out that Boris Petroff's film does have a sensational murder trial, like the Preminger film, and features a thin, dark-haired young man who holds a knife at least once, just as in the Hitchcock film. But, really, drawing any other connections between them would be stretching it.

At heart, Anatomy of a Psycho is not a courtroom drama, nor is it a psycho-sexual horror film. Instead, this is a pretty straightforward, revenge-themed juvenile delinquent film, and until the last reel, its central character is more of a brooding, sullen young antihero in the Brando/Dean/Mineo mold than he is a psychotic maniac. Anatomy of a Psycho is technically a youth-oriented film, but neither Petroff nor his screenwriters have much of a feel for American teenage culture. The actors, as you might guess, are largely too old for their parts, and there is only the barest hint that rock 'n' roll music exists. We hear one rock tune -- a catchy number called "Round Round Round" -- in the background at an otherwise quite square party. But more importantly, the film is old-fashioned, even reactionary, at the genetic level.

Hitchcock's Psycho gave audiences a glimpse of the future and might thus be termed the first "modern" horror film. Petroff's Psycho, on the other hand, is firmly rooted in the past, its stodgy storytelling style lifted from the chintzy, second-tier noir films of the 1940s and 1950s. This is one of those pictures in which much of the narrative heavy lifting is done by screaming newspaper headlines and blaring radio announcers. Want to show that time is passing? Easy. Just have one of those montages with the flipping calendar pages. Want to establish that a character is in prison? No sweat. Just rig up one of those lighting effects that casts a big striped shadow across the actors' faces.

After a few viewings, I can't really agree with David C. Hayes' assessment that the film is "really awful and strange." Apart from a couple of wonky process shots and some stilted line readings by secondary characters (particularly two little kids who run away from danger), Anatomy of a Psycho is a perfunctory, almost anonymous, by-the-numbers JD flick. Its one big concession to the youth audience is its lingering focus on violence, which as usual is nominally "justified" through a lot of preaching from adult authority figures and the unsubtle message that breaking the law has serious consequences.

Our main character gets his face cut up pretty badly a few minutes into the proceedings and goes through the rest of the movie with a nasty scar on his face as he commits a few brutish if commonplace acts -- one deliberate beating, a few messy scuffles, one debatable act of arson, and a single, semi-intentional stabbing. Hardly the kind of numbers that get you into the Hall of Fame, so to speak. If this is the "pornography of violence," it's strictly softcore. And if you're thinking of that other kind of pornography, forget it. Anatomy of a Psycho is studiously sexless.

I won't waste much of your time or mine with a rehashing of the frankly not-that-interesting plot. The basic setup is not a million miles away from the more serious entries in the East Side Kids franchise. We have a lot of the common ingredients of those films here, including (but not limited to):

• An at-risk youth who has a bunch of loyal friends and hangs out with them in a sort of clubhouse atmosphere, in this case a dilapidated residence called "the Shack."

• A brother in the death house for a crime he says he didn't commit.

• A morally-upright older sister who frets over the at-risk youth and is romantically involved with a very moral and very dull man.

• A cop who is unusually involved in the lives of the youngsters on his beat and is able to banter back and forth with them.

The obvious difference is that Petroff's film takes these elements and tells a pessimistic, consequence-heavy story with them (it's no coincidence that one character name checks Crime & Punishment), while the ESK films preached redemption and rehabilitation.  In Anatomy of a Psycho, a career hoodlum named Duke Marco (William Salzwedel), who stole to support his siblings after the death of their parents, is now on death row awaiting execution for murder.

Back on the homefront, straight-laced sister Pat Marco (Pamela Lincoln) -- who is convinced Duke is guilty and deserves to die -- tries in vain to keep her wild-card younger brother, Chet Marco (Darrell Howe), in line. Against Pat's wishes, Chet visits his older brother right before he's sent to the gas chamber, and Duke swears that he's innocent. (The movie never really does come right out and say whether or not Duke was lying, but all of the movie's most "respectable" characters say that he is.) After the execution, Chet vows revenge on everyone who sent poor Duke to a premature grave, including the judge, the District Attorney, and the trial's star witness.

But here's the catch: Pat is first dating and then engaged to Mickey (Ronnie Burns), the star witness's son! And here's the other catch: Chet's social-climbing, materialistic girlfriend Sandra (Judy Howard) has just ditched him in favor of sleazy rich kid Arthur (Pat McMahon), the son of the judge! You sometimes get the sense that maybe there are only about twelve people in this town. Considering how intermingled their lives are, the characters are remarkably clueless about the true nature of their own relationships. The situation is exacerbated by a script that requires them to withhold information for no good reason, then reveal shocking truths at very inconvenient moments. Mickey, for instance, tells fiancée Pat about his father's involvement at Duke's trial while the couple is attending a fancy party at the home of a judge!

Anyway, vengeance-hungry Chet beats the living snot out of the DA's son, puts Arthur's head through a mirror, and starts a fire at the home of the judge. Mickey, Pat, and local beat cop Mac (Michael Granger) all suspect that Chet is committing these antisocial acts, but nobody can prove nothin', see? Things get too hot to handle when Chet's best friend, Moe (Don Devlin), winds up on the wrong end of a knife, and pure-as-the-driven-snow Mickey goes on trial for his murder.

The film's third act is of particular interest because this is the point in the film at which Chet finally strips his gears and goes into histrionic, pseudo-Brando ("Steeeellllaaaaaaa!") mode. You have to slog through a lot of workaday exposition to get there, though. After 73 or so minutes, all of these story threads are either resolved or abandoned, and the audience is allowed to leave.

Chet, Sandra, and a soon-to-be-broken mirror.

But you don't care about any of that, do you? What you want to know is whether or not Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s influence can be felt in Anatomy of a Psycho. Though the dialogue and plot aren't nearly as baroque or ornate as prime Wood, there is a hint of the master's touch here. Most obviously, the film is a good companion or twin to Ed Wood's Jail Bait (1954). Just like Clancy Malone's Don Gregor in the earlier film, Darrell Howe's character, Chet Marco, leads a restless, haunted existence and spends a lot of time wandering the dark, shadowy streets of an unnamed city, unsure of what to do next.

The relationship between the Marco siblings in Anatomy is very similar to that of brother and sister Clancy Malone and Dolores Fuller in Jail Bait. The older sister worries, but the younger brother just won't toe the line. Like Fuller, who falls for cop Steve Reeves, Pamela Lincoln's "responsible older sister" character is also romantically linked to the squarest, dullest character in her movie, in this case Ronnie Burns' colorless dullard. Anatomy concerns a young man who avenges the death of his criminal brother who became a substitute father to him. In so doing, he takes out his anger on the sons of the men responsible for his older sibling's death. This is another iteration of the "sins of the father" theme which popped up in both Jail Bait and Son of the Renegade (1953).

The film's most deliriously Wood-ian creation is the money-crazed, status-seeking blonde Sandra, who throws Chet over for wealthy cad Arthur because he has "class -- something you wouldn't know anything about!" Sandra, easily the film's most fun (and underused) character is an obvious cognate of the gold-seeking women in both Revenge of the Virgins (1959) and Orgy of the Dead (1965). If Eddie has an onscreen surrogate in Anatomy of a Psycho, it's Sandra.

Other Wood-ian touches pop up here and there. Like Eddie himself, Don Devlin's character is described as an ex-Marine, for instance, and it's noteworthy that psycho-boy Chet takes solace in alcohol in his lowest moments. The District Attorney in Mickey's trial makes a textbook Wood-ian demand for "the facts!"

And I'd like to think that it was Ed Wood who crafted the film's single most memorable line of dialogue. When Pat Marco is trying to convince Chet that he should return to school, her reasoning is airtight: "I'm a girl. I don't need to go."

Next week: Another week, another disputed Ed Wood movie starring the son of a famous screen comedian! What can I tell you, folks? It's an awfully small world. And to make things even more confusing, the movie I'm about to review has a title nearly identical to that of a completely different Ed Wood movie which was made a full decade later! Are you still following me? No? Don't worry. In seven short days, this will all make sense. I promise. That's when you and I will travel back in time to the magical year of 1962, when in order to have sex with your girlfriend, you had to marry her. No, really. That's how it worked back then. Bras literally would not open unless you had a marriage certificate. Those were tough times for horny guys, and you can read all about them when I cover Married Too Young (1962).

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 206: Greg Javer (1968-2024)

"The bell has rung on his great career."

"Where's Greg?"

That is the question I've gotten most frequently over the last year and a half from readers of this blog. The remarkable Greg Javer, a soft-spoken Pennsylvanian who often wrote under the name Greg Dziawer, contributed a great deal of material to this series from 2015 to 2023. He started out with numerous Ed Wood Wednesdays articles before eventually launching his own series of YouTube videos called The Ed Wood Summit Podcast. His interests were wide-ranging, even within the seemingly limited field of Woodology. He was just as likely to cover Eddie's childhood in Poughkeepsie as he was to discuss Ed's pornographic loops of the 1970s.

He was, in short, a major player in the world of Wood research and a significant presence on this blog for eight years. He was also my friend, someone I just loved talking to and working with on various projects. Then, about midway through last year, he vanished. The articles stopped. The videos stopped. Even the emails (for the most part) stopped. Where had he gone, people wondered? I am not one to pry, so I didn't. I'd occasionally hear rumors that he had other matters—perhaps personal, perhaps professional—to attend to. I trusted that he'd eventually find his way back into this strange, little world and would contact me when he was ready to start anew. It just never happened.

On Sunday, December 1, 2024, we finally received a definitive answer about what had happened to Greg, and the news could not have been worse. Not long after receiving a devastating cancer diagnosis, he died at the far-too-young age of 56, leaving behind a daughter, Elyse Rosario, and his partner of 18 years, Jennifer "Kitten" Rosario. I can't help but think how he only outlived Ed Wood by two years (Eddie died at 54 in 1978) and that both men were claimed in the month of December. I wonder if those same thoughts occurred to Greg in his final days.

I asked Jennifer to say a few words in remembrance of Greg, and here is how she responded:

A passionate admirer of Ed Wood Jr., he combined his love of film with his dedication to research and writing, leaving his mark as a contributing author. He found joy in life’s simple pleasures—reading, spending time with family, and delving into thought-provoking documentaries. One thing I want to note is that he considered all of you real friends. I could log into his Gmail right now and find numerous emails of people checking in on him, along with text messages. I can't make every name, but everyone he has worked with since the start of this Ed Wood Jr. journey would fall under this umbrella, at least 10 years or more.  He would tell me a story or something that was found, and it always started with "my buddy ____" or "my friend ___." And I know he cherished each and every friendship made along the way.

Rob Huffman has started a GoFundMe to cover some of Greg's final expenses. The proceeds will go directly to Jennifer and Elyse. Please consider donating. Every little bit helps, as they say. And, if you can't afford it, please forward the link to others on social media so that they can donate. It's the least we can do, considering all Greg did for us.

Podcast Tuesday: "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun"

Vicki Frederick, F. William Parker, and April Clough on Happy Days.

Hubris. That's the only word for it. During the 1978-79 television season, ABC's Happy Days and its spinoffs dominated the prime time ratings. Laverne & Shirley was #1, while Happy Days itself was tied for third with Mork & Mindy. (Another ABC sitcom, Three's Company, was in second place.) Promisingly, the new show Angie, a romantic comedy from Happy Days producer Garry Marshall, was #5. All told, ABC had seven of the top 10 shows on television. Things were going great.

So what did ABC do for the 1979-80 season? Change it all up, naturally! The first order of business was breaking up the powerhouse one-two combo of Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley that had been such a ratings smash for years. Happy would retain its usual berth, Tuesday nights at 8:00, but Laverne would be moved to Thursdays, displacing Mork & Mindy to Sundays! And Angie, which had been retaining much of its lead-in from Mork on Thursdays, would be moved to Tuesdays, following Happy Days.

Confused yet? So were viewers. As a result of these schedule changes, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, and Angie all plummeted from the Top 10, never to return. (Three's Company, which retained its usual Tuesdays at 9:00 slot, survived nicely.) ABC later came to its senses and reteamed Happy and Laverne, trying to undo some of the damage it had done. It kind of worked, and their ratings perked up a little without ever reaching their former highs. Angie couldn't be saved, however, and was canceled at the end of the season.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we're covering "Shotgun Wedding," the first new episode of that tumultuous 1979-80 season. It's an epic crossover between Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, the last time these two sibling shows would ever overlap. In fact, when it originally aired, "Shotgun Wedding" was in two parts. The story started on Happy Days on Tuesday, September 11, 1979 and then concluded on Laverne & Shirley on Thursday, September 13. However, for syndication purposes, Happy Days filmed an alternate ending so that its half of the story could be viewed as a standalone episode.

I know how complicated this all sounds. Believe me, we're just as befuddled as you are. But just listen to our podcast, and maybe together we can figure it out.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 283: 'Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films' (1981) [PART 2]

Ed Wood (center, cowering) in the nightmare sequence from Glen or Glenda.

This time last week, we were talking about Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films, a surprisingly thorough 1981 chapbook about Eddie's strange life and career created by two very dedicated California fans, Randy Simon and Harold Benjamin. These young men conducted their research at a time when there were no books about Ed Wood on the market and Eddie's movies weren't even readily available on home video. The acknowledgements page suggests that Randy and Harold may have contacted some of Eddie's family, friends, and professional associates in assembling their booklet.

We'd only gotten as far as the book's capsule biography of Ed Wood, namely because I'd gotten bogged down in discussing how much of it was true and how much of it wasn't. But now, we get into the heart of A Man and His Films: a discussion of Eddie's filmography. The authors have divided this material into several sections: The Major Films (four movies), The Lesser Known Films (five movies), and The Lost Films (two movies, one unreleased and one unproduced). This gives you an idea of how well-documented Eddie's career was in 1981 and how much was still unknown to the public.

So what are Eddie's "major films"? The authors list just four: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Bride of the Monster (1955), Glen or Glenda (1953), and Jail Bait (1954). (And, yeah, they're in that order for some reason.) Remember, at this time, Night of the Ghouls (1959) aka Revenge of the Dead had not been rediscovered and released on home video. So if you wanted some classic 1950s Ed, you really only had those first four features to go by.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 58: 'Cult Movies,' No. 11 (1994) [part 1 of 2]

Some of the back issues of Cult Movies, including one about Ed Wood.

"Google is my best friend and my worst enemy. It's fabulous for research, but then it becomes addictive. I'll have a character eating an orange, and next thing I'm Googling types of oranges, I'm visiting chat rooms about oranges, I'm learning the history of the orange."

-Liane Moriarty

There was, believe it or not, a time when the answers to most of life's pressing questions were not a click away. That's an especially sobering thought for me, because I could not possibly write a research-heavy series of articles like Ed Wood Wednesdays without the invaluable aid of the internet.

This blog only exists online; there is no paper equivalent of Dead 2 Rights, apart from the yellow legal pads I've filled up with my notes. (And these get recycled as soon as they're no longer needed.) In fact, this blog started as a spin-off of a podcast, another distinctly 21st-century form of entertainment. 

In short, the internet has allowed me to connect with other Ed Wood fans and pop culture experts and has given me access to all kinds of reviews and news articles I never could have found on my own. And when it comes to acquiring books and DVDs to review for this blog, the vast majority of these have come to me through online vendors, both legit and gray market. 

This is what research used to look like.

But what about the movie fans of previous generations, the ones who had to had to do their research in the days before Google? Well, I've been there, too.

I can recall the Dark Ages -- you may remember them as the 1980s -- when even the most obvious Ed Wood movies, such as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda?, were not available at a second's notice the way they are now. You had to hope a TV station, revival house, or campus cinema would show one of them. Or maybe the local video store would have an actual, physical copy of them on hand.

If the movies themselves were hard to come by, then information about them and the people who made them was even more scarce. You had to rely on the books your local library carried. There were newspaper and magazine articles, too, but these required mastery of such arcane technologies as microfilm and microfiche, not to mention a certain amount of familiarity with the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. That's why video guides like the one put out by Leonard Maltin were such a godsend, even if you didn't agree with the reviews. There, in one convenient place, you could at least find titles, cast lists, names of directors, and other basic release data. It was the nearest thing I had to the Internet Movie Database back when I was in junior high and high school.

Famous Monsters

One aspect of pre-internet movie fandom I've largely been ignoring up to now is the importance of fan magazines. The cult of Ed Wood actually began in the pages of such publications, which served as a precursor to the online message boards of today. Such evergreen titles as Famous Monsters of Filmland, Cinefantastique, Fangoria, and many others have played a vital role in the lives of countless horror, sci-fi, and fantasy film buffs. Along with these major titles, which were widely available at drug stores and bookshops, there were many smaller, more-niche publications, as well as a whole array of homemade, xeroxed 'zines. It just depended on how specialized the publication wanted to be and who its perceived audience was.

Unfortunately, the very existence of actual printed magazines is threatened these days. Sales are down. Printing costs are up. Shelf space is disappearing as book retailers go out of business. And nobody in the "free download" era wants to actually pay for reviews and articles about their favorite movies. That's a shame, because now writers have less incentive to actually produce this kind of material. 

As I've been doing research on the life and career of Edward D. Wood, Jr., I've come across many references to fan magazines. In particular, there were many mentions of one specific issue of one specific magazine. So I did what anyone in 2015 would do: I found it on Amazon. In the interest of science, I wanted to see if there were things about Ed Wood I could find in print that even the internet could not offer.

Which leads me to...

Cult Movies magazine, No. 11 (1994):

A thorough examination

Eddie makes the cover!

Front Cover

The cover, though not glossy, is at least printed on a slightly sturdier type of paper than the magazine's contents. Against a hot pink background, a sepia-tinted portrait of Edward Davis Wood, Jr. is surrounded by stylish black-and-white headshots of (clockwise from upper left) Vampira, Tor Johnson, Bela Lugosi, and Ed Wood in drag. The main headline reads: "So, Just Who the Heck is ED WOOD, Anyway??" Other headlines read: "Vampira Speaks!" "Criswell Predicts!" and "50 Lost Films Found!!" 

The first two are accurate. The issue indeed contains articles about Vampira and Criswell. I'm not sure where the "50 Lost Films" claim originates. It has no counterpart within the body of the magazine. Additionally, a small picture of actor Rondo Hatton, apparently an Alfred E. Neuman-esque mascot figure of sorts to Cult Movies magazine, can be glimpsed in the upper left hand corner.

Inside Front Cover

Two stills from Tim Burton's Ed Wood, similar to the ones in the official script book. The first shows Ed attending the rowdy Bride of the Monster premiere with Bela, Criswell, Vampira, Kathy and Tor in tow. The second shows Ed directing Plan 9, flanked by cast and crew, including Paul Marco and Conrad Brooks in their police uniforms. I've been able to find pretty close approximations of both pictures online.

"Deep Inside Cult Movies" (pg. 4)

Michael Copner

Now we have made our way into the magazine itself. True to fan-mag tradition, Cult Movies is printed on the same kind of cheap, pulpy-feeling paper you'd find in the phone book or old issues of Mad. The typeface tends to be very small, as if the editors are trying to cram in as many words as possible onto each page. The entire magazine is lavishly illustrated with photographs, ads, and posters, but these are all in very grainy black-and-white. In short, the magazine is an eyesore and made me grateful for my Kindle.

But what Cult Movies lacks in style, it more than makes up for in substance. In this friendly little article, for instance, editor-in-chief Michael Copner welcomes readers to the eleventh issue of the magazine and describes what we're about to read and what's been going on in the world of Cult Movies. "I hate to brag," he brags, "but I truly feel blessed that we have the greatest family of writers, artists, and film critics in fandom." 

As examples, he declares Fred Olen Ray's article about Edward D. Wood, Jr. to be "sensational" and also remarks with considerable pride that cult filmmaker Frank Henenlotter has generously penned two articles for Cult Movies, No. 11, including an interview with Ed Wood biographer Rudolph Grey. (The other is about exploitation filmmaker Barry Mahon and has no direct connection to Wood.) "To my knowledge," writes Copner, "Frank Henenlotter simply does not write material for film magazines." Guess Frank broke his own rule twice in one month. The editor further mentions that "Conrad Brooks returns to our pages" with an article about Criswell.

"A Ghoul Out West: What If Lugosi Were Teamed Up With Today's Imbeciles?" (pg. 22)

A very bizarre little article by Jan Alan Henderson, who says that Cult Movies "originated with the idea that Bela Lugosi lives eternal." Henderson starts out by reviewing two then-recent laserdisc (remember those?) releases of '40s Lugosi films: The Devil Bat (1940) and Scared to Death (1947). Henderson discusses Lugosi's work with such comedy teams as the Ritz Brothers and the East Side Kids and then imagines a scenario teaming up the Hungarian horror legend with '90s cartoon hooligans, Beavis and Butt-head. Hey, I'd be down for that. For Ed Wood fans, the real point of interest is the final paragraph:

PS: New Ed Wood Sighting: After all these exhausting profundities on behalf of Bela, I ran into an old friend of mine from Budget Films and Video, Larry Fine (not of the Three Stooges), who used to deliver films to the late great legend Ed Wood. Larry recently recalled his few encounters with Wood, most of which were with Ed over the phone, when Ed was visiting the twilight vodka zone. Larry also described to me a party, to which he delivered some rental 16mm films to Chez Wood, where Ed was in full drag and asked him to hang out for the show. Larry gracefully declined. Will the Ed Wood wonders never cease? Not likely.

Forrest J. Ackerman

"Uncle Forry: First and Last Fan" (pgs. 26-28)

This is an interview with Famous Monsters of Filmland editor and sci-fi memorabilia collector Forrest J. "Uncle Forry" Ackerman. The article is wide-ranging and career-spanning, but it does briefly touch upon Ackerman's relationship with both Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi. If Rudolph Grey is to be believed, the Wood cult truly began in the pages of Famous Monsters, where Ackerman routinely ran stills from Wood's 1950s films (Bride of the Monster, Plan 9) with mocking captions such as: "One of the unbest movies ever made."

For a period in the 1960s, Ackerman considered himself to be Ed Wood's literary agent. He even penned the introduction to Greenleaf Classic's Orgy of the Dead paperback in 1966. But as this article shows, Ackerman held Wood in contempt and found it beneath his dignity to work with him. This issue of Cult Movies was released in anticipation of Tim Burton's Ed Wood, and Ackerman makes a few whiny comments about the film's script, specifically its portrayal of a foul-mouthed Bela Lugosi and other purported inaccuracies:

Forry: I don't know as I ever... one thing I object to about the movie made about [Bela] is that I don't think I even heard him use "hell" or "damn." 

CM: Do you plan to see the Burton film? 

Forry: Oh, I'll have to see it, yes, but if it's anything like the original script, I know I'm going to be very disappointed, because they've taken all kinds of liberties. For instance, I was at the premiere showing of Plan 9 from Outer Space, out at 48th and Vermont at a little theater that doesn't exist anymore. But I think they have it taking place at the Pantages or the Orpheum or some far more grandiose opening than ever happened. And I was surprised that I was not contacted in the earliest stages of it, because after all I was Ed Wood's literary -- or perhaps we should say illiterary -- agent. 

CM: How did you first meet Wood? 

Forry: How did I first meet Ed Wood, you know, I think you'd have to give me hypnotic regression. I really pull a blank on that. 

With statements like those quoted above, Mr. Ackerman inadvertently revealed precisely why he was not asked to be a consultant on Ed Wood. His total lack of affection for Ed is plain to see. Left undiscussed here is Ackerman's problematic relationship with Maila "Vampira" Nurmi. According to W. Scott Poole's recent biography Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror, Ackerman first promoted then distanced himself from Nurmi. He later based the character of Vampirella on her without giving her a cut of the profits. Frankly, Forrest J. Ackerman has never been a figure who has greatly interested me, despite the role he played in the Ed Wood saga.

"Edward D. Wood, Jr. Interview by Fred Olen Ray 1978" (pgs. 30-32)

Fred Olen Ray

This is one of the most exciting finds in the entire issue, even though its author seems slightly unenthusiastic or even apologetic about the material he's presenting. Back in 1978, low-budget independent filmmaker Fred Olen Ray, then a mere 23-year-old novice, gave Ed Wood a much-needed $500 payment to write the screenplay for a proposed feature horror-comedy film called Beach Blanket Bloodbath. Unfortunately, Wood died in December of that year before completing the script.

During the course of their brief, thwarted professional relationship, Fred Olen Ray had the presence of mind to interview the ailing director, whom he remembers as "easygoing and gregarious." Ray states that "nothing new is presented here" and that "some of his answers appear to be fanciful to say the least." I disagree with the former, at least. Anyway, here are some of Eddie's most interesting quotes from the interview:

• "I sold my first story called The Sunset Murders when I was twelve years old to Street & Smith... It went on from there... I've had 131 novels published and more than 1000 short stories and articles published in the last 15 years."

• "Alex Gordon and I had an apartment together. He knew Lugosi. I didn't. Lugosi turned me down at first [for Glen or Glenda?], but Lillian, his wife at the time, turned him on to it. I paid him $1000 a day... He needed the money."

• "You've seen [Bride of the Monster]... Lugosi was right for it! Yes, he was one of my dearest friends. I practically lived with him! I paid him more for Bride of the Monster than he got for Dracula. Sure, he needed the money, but don't we all?"

• "Bride cost $89,000, Plan 9 was $82,000, Revenge of the Dead [aka Night of the Ghouls]... $52,000. Other than that I can't seem to remember."

• "Lugosi was ill and needed some cash. I gave him $1000 and we shot in a cemetery that was being evacuated. I wrote [Plan 9] around the scene. Too bad my camera man used bad film... which he did!"

• [when asked whether any of Lugosi's footage in Plan 9 is repeated] "I have never duplicated a scene!"

• "The Ghoul Goes West I wrote and still own. It's a great one."

Wake of the Red Witch

Much of the interview does rehash stories that have been told over and over again in other books and articles. Eddie talks about using the octopus from John Wayne's Wake of the Red Witch and having to manually work the creature's legs. He never says, though, that he stole this prop. He also retells the anecdote about being baptized, along with Tor Johnson and Vampira, to get the money to make Plan 9, and he mentions using chiropractor Thomas R. Mason as Lugosi's stand-in in that film. These are the "greatest hits" of the Wood legend, so that's probably why Fred Olen Ray felt the interview had nothing new to say.

The article concludes with what Ray calls "a bibliographic listing of Edward Wood's feature film credits," including both titles and distributors. Eddie apparently presented this list to Fred when he hired on to write Beach Blanket Bloodbath for Firebird International. Ray makes sure to point out that the titles on the list were "compiled in this order by EDW himself." He also says, "You'll notice RKO listed as the releasing company for Bride of the Monster and Plan 9! If this is true, it's certainly news to me." Without further ado, here's the list as it appears in Cult Movies:

Orgy of the Dead (S.C.A. Distributors)

Shotgun Wedding (Allied Artists)

Escape from Time (Martha C. Brown)

Gun Runners (Don Davis)

Bride and the Beast (Allied Artists)

Portraits in Terror (MacLachlen Bros. Inc.)

The Violent Years (Headliner Prods.)

The Lawless Rider (United Artists)

Flame of Islam (Screen Classics)

White Flash (J.C. Prods.)

The Atomic Monster (Real-Art)

Glen or Glenda (Screen Classics)

Hell Born (Screen Classics)

Jail Bait (Howco Int.)

Bride of the Monster (RKO)

Plan 9 from Outer Space (RKO)

The Sinister Urge (Headline Prods.)

Revenge of the Dead (Atomic Prods.)

The Photographer (Joe Robertson Prods.)

Misty (Joe Robertson Prods.)

Operation Redlight (Joe Robertson Prods.)

One Million AC/DC (Ed DePriest Prods.)

Talk Sexy Y'All (Petroff Prods.)

Bed Time Talk (Pete Perry Prods.)

Love Feast (Capricorn Industries)

Take It Out in Trade (Ashdown-Gonzales, Inc.)

Necromania (Cinema Classics)

The Only House (Cinema Classics)

The Snow Bunnies (SCA Prods.)

Class Reunion (SCA Prods.)

The Hostesses (SCA Prods.)

Dropout Wife (SCA Prods.)

Fugitive Girls (SCA Prods.)

The Beach Bunnies (SCA Prods.)

Hot Ice (SCA Prods.)

The Wicked West (Capricorn Industries)

The Venus Fly Trap (Japan)

The Lure (Japan)

Las Vegas Cheat (ghost writer) (Betty Woods)

The Frank Leahy Legend (Scotty Williams Ent.)

The Naked Bowl (ghost writer) (Jeff MacRay Prods.)

Okay, okay. Setting the production and distribution companies aside for a moment, let's break this list of titles down into some basic categories. The first, I'm glad to say, is by far the largest.

Films I've reviewed under the titles listed here: Orgy of the Dead; Shotgun Wedding; Bride and the Beast; The Violent Years; Glen or Glenda?; Jail Bait; Bride of the Monster; Plan 9 from Outer Space; The Sinister Urge; One Million AC/DC; Love Feast; Take It Out in Trade; Necromania; The Snow Bunnies; Class Reunion; Drop Out Wife; Fugitive Girls; The Beach Bunnies; Hot Ice*; and The Venus Flytrap.

* Interesting that Ed Wood includes Hot Ice on his resume. Stephen C. Apostolof claimed that Ed had nothing to do with the writing of this movie, even though he's listed as an assistant director.

Films I've reviewed under alternate titles: Portraits in Terror (as Final Curtain); The Atomic Monster* (as Bride of the Monster), Revenge of the Dead (as Night of the Ghouls); The Photographer (as Love Feast); Misty (as Nympho Cycler); Talk Sexy Y'All (as Shotgun Wedding); and The Hostesses (as The Cocktail Hostesses).

* Universal's Man-Made Monster (1941) was re-released in 1953 as The Atomic Monster by Realart Pictures, the distributor listed above. But Eddie had no involvement with this production whatsoever, as it was made six years before he came to Hollywood.

The Frank Leahy Legend

Films I might have reviewed under alternate titles: Since Pete Perry's name is attached to it, Bed Time Talk might be Revenge of the Virgins. And The Lure might well be Venus Flytrap under another name. Who can say?

Films I've identified but not yet reviewed: I'm in the process of securing prints for The Only House and The Lawless Rider. Both will (eventually) be reviewed here.

Films that were not completed or that have been lost: Hellborn was abandoned and its footage edited into The Sinister Urge. And in a previous article in this series, Douglas North schooled us all on The Flame of Islam. Sadly, though I've reviewed other films by Don Davis and Joe Robertson respectively, Gun Runners and Operation Redlight have yet to surface.

Films that remain total mysteries: (only five titles) Escape from Time; The Wicked West; Las Vegas Cheat; The Frank Leahy Legend; and The Naked Bowl. The only print references to Martha C. Brown's Escape from Time are in books about Ed Wood. Same goes for Capricorn's The Wicked West. Las Vegas Cheat and The Naked Bowl don't even make it that far. As for Frank Leahy (1908-1973), he was an American football player and Hall of Fame coach at Notre Dame. The year after he died, an unauthorized biography called The Frank Leahy Legend by Bernard J. Williams and Leslie O. Read appeared on the market. Ed might have turned this paperback into a feature film script.

Something Weird Video ad (pg. 33)

SWV's edition of Necromania

Something Weird Video seems to have been the principal sponsor of Cult Movies, and in the early 1990s, they were also one of the main distributors of Ed Wood's work on VHS. This is a full-page ad for SWV's Wood tapes, including Jailbait, The Violent Years, Bride of the Monster, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Night of the Ghouls, and  The Love Feast (aka The Photographer). "They continue to entertain and baffle anyone who actually takes the time to watch them!" says Something Weird's tuxedo-clad cartoon mascot. The main feature, however, is a "special edition" of Necromania, which had only recently been rediscovered in a semi-complete 16mm print. Frank Henenlotter himself offers his breathless description of the film:

Those 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 'em.

A complete print of Necromania would not emerge for ten more years, so SWV's piecemeal version was definitive for a whole decade.

"The Vampira Chronicles" (pgs. 34-36)

The Divine Miss N

In the mid-1990s, the reclusive and eccentric Maila Nurmi started to reemerge from several decades in the shadows, largely spurred by the production of Ed Wood, in which she was portrayed by Lisa Marie, and an attendant renewal of interest in her strange career. In Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror, W. Scott Poole describes how a series of fans temporarily befriended the always-reticent Nurmi in her later years, largely so they could ask her questions about Ed Wood and James Dean. (She and Dean were briefly an item until, by most accounts, he rejected her.)

Writer Robert R. Rees was one such fan. "The Vampira Chronicles" is culled from Rees' "volumes of correspondence" with the one-time horror host. Among many other topics, Nurmi shares her thoughts about Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Ed Wood, and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Those who have seen Maila Nurmi in such films as Flying Saucers Over Hollywood or The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. will know what to expect from an article like this. In her autumn years, Vampira affected an air of nobility and spoke with a quasi-British accent. When she spoke of Ed Wood, it was with an attitude of what I'll call "benign contempt," as if her former employer were merely a pesky little insect she couldn't be bothered to crush. In any event, the lady wasn't afraid to speak her mind, so we have some choice quotes here:

• "Mr. Lugosi was a victim of a hospital induced drug addiction for the last three years of his life only. He was too dignified a person to sink to 'milking' sympathy. And he got no sympathy -- only smears and jeers."

• "I'd say Bela was a victim of Ed Wood, society, and himself."

• "I don't know about early responses to Glen or Glenda, but I guess it was just passed off as a very bad second feature. as were all Ed Wood movies in the '50s. It was autobiographical and poignant. Lugosi had no sense of humor and was overplaying because Wood was milking the early essences of stage acting out of him. Wood doubtless thought he had extracted a fine dramatic performance out of his actor. Bela was too sick to care much one way or the other -- so long as he pleased his boss. All of this is only my considered opinion."

• "Bela was very sick and would craw out of his deathbed, at the last, to tub thump Ed Wood movies, only to be insulted by a public who had been poisoned by a smear campaign."

• "Tor Johnson was a member of Ed Wood's professional entourage, so he worked all pics. Tor was a gentle, kindly man. Some juvenile delinquents tried to overturn our car during a monster personal appearance tour. Tor said (phonetically) 'Pee knudt poys. Khoo hooome.' (He had a Swedish accent.) The boys disbanded under his influence."

• "[Ed Wood] was in fact a transvestite but did not practice it at work except during the filming of Glen or Glenda. [...] See, during Plan 9 (and I worked only one day), he wore men's clothes (like riding britches) and shoes but did use a megaphone. Ed Wood, it seemed to me, was an animal lover and a kind man."

• "[Ed] had no sense of humor and was totally literal and matter-of-fact."

• "The atom bomb had just newly been invented and Oppenheimer was much in the news shortly before Plan 9 was being written (1956) -- so Ed Wood's theories about nukes were logical deductions of a probable future."

• "Other than that 15 minutes before his camera (for which I insisted on playing mute and was paid $200) I did not work for Ed."

Artwork from Bizarre.

Interestingly, Maila Nurmi describes both Lugosi and Wood as being humorless, a claim I would dispute. Bela did comedy many times on stage and in movies, as covered in Jay Alan Henderson's article earlier in this very magazine. Meanwhile, Eddie's sense of fun was fairly legendary, according to those who socialized with him. There are too many stories about Ed being the life of the party or going out of his way to be outrageous for him ever to be considered humorless. He might have taken both Plan 9 and Glenda seriously, but there are examples of intentionally-comedic work in his repertoire as well, both as a writer and as a filmmaker.

"The Vampira Chronicles" also includes another iteration of the oft-repeated incident in which Maila Nurmi flatly turned down an offer to play Madam Heles in Necromania. Laid up in a hospital bed and unable to walk at the time (circa 1971), she had no interest in appearing nude in Ed Wood's Gothic porno film. In this version of the story, it is Wood's associate John Andrews ("one of those beer-boozed alcoholic morons") -- not Eddie himself -- who drunkenly called Ms. Nurmi to make the indecent proposal. "Fer a hunnert apples, baby, an usin' yer name," Andrews is purported to have said. Obviously, Maria Arnold was willing and able to take the small but pivotal role of Madam Heles.

Before we leave this feature, I'd like to present Maila Nurmi's own personal "recipe" for Vampira. It's tempting to say that she's derived solely from Charles Addams' Morticia, but that's an oversimplification. The character of Vampira had a number of "mothers," so to speak, as shown below:

2 oz. Theda Bara (vamp, vamp)

2 oz. Morticia (morbid Victoriana)

3 oz. Norma Desmond (Sunset Boulevard)

4 oz. Tallulah Bankhead (the voice dahling)

2 oz. Marilyn M. (Demons are a ghoul's best friend)

3 oz. Katie Hepburn (Victorian English)

2 oz. Bette Davis (mama, baby)

3 oz. Billie Burke (dilettante insouciance)

3 oz. Marlene D. (singing voice)

8 oz. Bizarre magazine pin-up (an S&M magazine of the day)

(big boobs, waist cincher, mesh hose, high shoes, long nails)

"Criswell Predicts" by Conrad Brooks (pg. 37)

(l to r) Conrad Brooks; Criswell.

The man who turned out to be the last-surviving cast member of Plan 9 from Outer Space pays tribute to one of his fallen comrades in this short-but-sweet retrospective. Conrad "Connie" Brooks, who appeared in every major Ed Wood feature from Glen or Glenda? (1953) to The Sinister Urge (1960), was clearly a key member of the director's inner circle during Wood's golden age. Here, Brooks gives the readers of Cult Movies an overview of the career of prophet, profiteer, and inveterate entertainer Criswell.

The article seems aimed at those who only know Cris from his appearances in Plan 9, Night of the Ghouls, and Orgy of the Dead. Brooks explains: "Criswell's work on the films of Ed Wood was certainly a sideline for the man. I'm sure that Criswell worked with Eddie mostly because they were friends, two unusual Hollywood types." Trying to present a more balanced picture of the prognosticator's great career, the article helpfully describes Cris' work outside of the Wood films, including his books, his newspaper columns, and his numerous appearances on NBC's venerable The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Conrad Brooks devotes the majority of the article (75%, I'd say) to Criswell's infamously inaccurate predictions, culled from his first two books. I already covered a lot of the same territory in a previous Ed Wood Wednesdays article, but it never hurts to revisit this material. Some choice excerpts:

• "I had a vaulting imagination, and my searching wet noodle of a mind was hard to control. I was not interested in the present events, but more interested in how they would turn out."

• "I predict that the present teen age drug problem will end in dire tragedy! The climate changes will make many drug mixtures fatal, and rather than becoming vegetables upon use, the person will be the victim of death!"

• "I predict it will be a very common and inexpensive operation to change a woman into a man with the simple transplant of the sex organ."

• "For we have only a short time left on this world as we know it! On August 18, 1999 -- all will cease. And we will cease with it!!"

Okay, so the world didn't end on August 18, 1999, but Criswell must have been one of the very first celebrities who routinely talked about "climate change." He was not only sure that the climate was changing, he expressed the opinion that mankind was to blame! How's that for seeing into the future?

And that will just about do it for part one of this ludicrous, two-part series about Cult Movies, No. 11 from 1994. As they say in television, "To be continued..." Why two parts? There was simply too much interesting material in this one issue to possibly cover in a single article, so I've decided to break this piece down into two more manageable halves. It was either that, or cover the articles one at a time the way I did with the stories in Blood Splatters Quickly. I figured this was a reasonable compromise. Patience, my pet.

NEXT: Part 2 of this mini-series, featuring "White Ghost" Valda Hansen, Bela Lugosi in Las Vegas, Wood biographer Rudolph Grey, a look at Ed's very first novel, The Casual Company, and so much more! You won't wanna miss it!