Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 284: 'Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films' (1981) [PART 3]

A lifetime's worth of memories in just 32 crudely-Xeroxed pages.

A magazine from 1993.

Information is like tap water these days. Any time of the day or night, whenever we want it, it's there for our use. Just turn on the faucet and enjoy. True, there are places in this world where information is decidedly not accessible to all. By the same token, there are places where tap water isn't available either. There are probably places where neither is available. Be glad you don't live in any of those places.

Here, in the land of the free, we have become accustomed to information on demand as well as media on demand. If an album, movie, or TV show isn't available instantly, we declare it "lost." That's how impatient we've become. If you have to go to a library to get it, it doesn't exist. But we should remember that it wasn't always so. There was a time not so long ago when we were much more reliant on printed material and physical media for the information we now take for granted.

Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films, a 1981 chapbook by superfans Randy Simon and Harold Benjamin, is a product of that time before the information revolution. In those days, if you wanted details about an offbeat director like Eddie, you had to comb through the archives and maybe contact people who knew him personally. And so they did. Only a handful of Ed Wood's movies were accessible at that time, and much of Ed's career was entirely undocumented. But Randy and Harold cobbled together whatever they could and assembled a 32-page booklet from their findings, which they then distributed via mail order from an office in Hollywood. They called this operation The Edward D. Wood, Jr. Film Appreciation Society or EDWJFAS.

Podcast Tuesday: "JD, Use the Forks!"

The Making of the Vice President: Owen Asztalos in Hillbilly Elegy.

Each nation, including our own, must cultivate a version of its history that it can live with. That means emphasizing certain facts, eliminating others, and just generally stretching and augmenting reality whenever necessary. The reconstituted origin story becomes a shared and beloved legend, a comforting fable we tell ourselves over and over again until it becomes truer than the truth.

Not only do we do this myth-making for our country, we do this for certain individuals who are important in our history: prominent politicians, inventors, businessmen, war heroes, etc. These folks are just as messy and flawed and contradictory as anyone else, but we somehow need them to be better than the rest of us, to be more, to rise above the foibles and follies that keep most of us down. So we essentially turn them into superheroes. And we all know every good superhero has a compelling origin story.

But what if you can't wait for others to turn your story into an inspiring myth? Well, then, you do it yourself. That's how we get books like 2016's Hillbilly Elegy, in which Ohio-born venture capitalist and Magic: The Gathering aficionado JD Vance tells us about how he overcame adversity to become the great man he is today. The bestselling book became Vance's springboard to a fast-rising political career, one that has taken him in short order from the Senate to the Vice Presidency and may one day make him Executive in Chief and Leader of the Free World.

Along the way, there was also a less-celebrated Hillbilly Elegy movie in 2020. Since that movie was directed by Happy Days alumnus Ron Howard, that makes it fair game for our podcast. This week, my co-host and I spend some quality time discussing Hillbilly Elegy and the politician who inspired it. If you'd like, you may join us by clicking the play button below.

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 282: 'Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films' (1981) [PART 1]

A remarkable fan creation from the early 1980s.

We may think we want to travel back in time, but we probably wouldn't like the past very much once we got there. For one thing, we're so reliant on modern-day technology that it would be incredibly frustrating to be without it for any extended length of time. I can remember how cumbersome research used to be when I was in school. To write just one term paper on the Old English poet Cynewulf, for example, I had to check out a whole stack of books from the college library. Today, all that precious Cynewulf knowledge would be at my fingertips whenever I wanted it.

This entire series of articles about Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (1924-1978) would not be remotely possible without the internet and the ability to access decades of video, audio, and text instantly. I marvel at the work of writers who did their research during the low-tech, pre-internet days. How did they do it? More than a decade before Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992), a couple of dedicated Wood fans in California named Randy Simon and Harold Benjamin assembled and self-published a chapbook about their favorite director called Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films (1981). Though crude by today's standards—the pictures are xeroxed, the text is typewritten—it remains a priceless souvenir of early '80s fan culture and a remarkable example of Wood scholarship.

This 32-page guidebook to Ed Wood's film career declares itself "a publication of The Edward D. Wood Jr. Film Appreciation Society." So what the hell is that? Did the EDWJFAS do anything else besides this? Well, maybe. In an article from the September 8, 1981 issue of The Soho News, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum mentions the EDWJFAS in his dual review of Ferdinando Baldi's 3D Western Comin' at Ya! (1981) and Gus Trikonis' rowdy comedy Take This Job and Shove It (1981). He says that the organization has formed "recently" and "produced a marathon screening and monograph." The writer suggests that audiences are sick of middlebrow mainstream fare such as Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and are taking solace in pure trash. Rosenbaum is in favor of this.

Podcast Tuesday: "Sixty-Three Years Cool"

You're never too old to be cool. Or are you?

             

On Happy Days, Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler) stubbornly clung to the music and fashions of the 1950s, well into the 1960s. The sitcom takes place over about a decade, but Fonzie is often hesitant to update his style to match the times. There are a couple of episodes of the show that deal with this, namely "Who Gives a Hootenanny?" from Season 10 and "The Spirit is Willing" from Season 11. In the former, Fonzie learns to cope with the fact that folk music is replacing good old-fashioned rock & roll; in the latter, he has a terrifying vision of what could happen to him if he doesn't stop living in the past.

Presumably, Fonzie had to deal with the social and cultural upheaval of the 1960s, '70s, and beyond. Even during the 11 seasons of Happy Days, he undergoes massive personal changes. At the beginning of the sitcom, his life revolves around motorcycles and "chicks," and he's only a few years (months?) removed from being a gang member and getting into rumbles in the back alleys of Milwaukee. By the end of the show, he is a professional educator, a local business owner, and an adoptive father. And he doesn't get into fights anymore. At least not as much.

But suppose our favorite mechanic had refused to change. Ever. Suppose he kept being the same juvenile delinquent punk he'd been in the 1950s because those were the greatest years of his life. In 2001, radio host Tom Scharpling and musician Jon Wurster gave us a worst-case scenario of how this might play out when they performed their legendary sketch "The Gorch" on The Best Show on WFMU. In this segment, Scharpling warily interviews a 63-year-old man from York, PA named Roland "The Gorch" Gorchnick (played by Wurster), who claims to be the real-life inspiration for Fonzie. Over the course of a half hour, this combative gentleman reveals himself to be a pathologically violent, antisocial human being.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we finally get around to talking about "The Gorch." This is an episode I've wanted to do for years. I really hope you enjoy it.

P.S. While editing this episode, I realized that The Gorch's memories are strikingly similar to those of American Splendor comics writer Harvey Pekar (1939-2010), who grew up on the mean streets of Cleveland in the 1950s. In one story, Pekar even names a thug who, like The Gorch, fought with chains! 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 281: Johnny Legend remembers Tor Johnson (1982)

In 1982, Fangoria ran a heartfelt tribute to the departed Swedish wrestler.

Now that we have books about Bela Lugosi, Vampira, and Criswell, Tor Johnson (1903-1971) is arguably the most famous person in Ed Wood's acting stable not to have a biography on the market. Perhaps someday that will change. The Swedish-born wrestler, born Karl Erik Tore Johansson in Stockholm at the beginning of the previous century, is best-known to cult movie fans for his roles in three of Ed's most-seen movies: Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), and Night of the Ghouls (1959). But this was neither the beginning nor quite the end of the Swede's lengthy career.

Bob Hope (left) with Tor.

For the sake of the story, Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994) pretends that Eddie himself discovered Tor at a wrestling match in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s and cast the large, baldheaded man in his first-ever movie role. But, in truth, Johnson started getting film work in the 1930s shortly after he moved to America. His movie and (eventually) television career continued to the 1960s. We may associate Tor with low-budget sci-fi and horror movies—and he did several of those—but his filmography is surprisingly diverse, ranging from comedies to crime thrillers. He worked alongside such legends as Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Tony Curtis, Eddie Cantor, William Powell, Abbott & Costello and more!

With his shaved head, imposing physique, and heavy Swedish accent, Tor was an unmistakable presence onscreen. But his outsized, boisterous personality made him just as memorable offscreen. Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) includes numerous, colorful anecdotes about the wrestler-turned-actor—the massive meals he ate, the toilet seats he broke, etc. He seems like a jovial, fun-loving guy. But there are some potentially upsetting details about Tor in the book as well, including a quote from actor Tony Cardoza who says that the wrestler hired the services of an underaged prostitute while touring India. In some interviews that Grey left on the cutting room floor, Plan 9 actress Mona McKinnon remembers Tor becoming intoxicated at a party and carrying her away against her will.

So who was this man? Until someone pens Super Swedish Angel: The Tor Johnson Story, what we have are various newspaper and magazine articles about Tor that have appeared over the years. A very intriguing example is "I Remember Tor," originally published in issue #22 of Fangoria from October 1982. In it, the late wrestling manager, musician, and film producer Johnny Legend (1948-2026) shares his memories of Tor, who had been deceased for over a decade but whose films were just then coming back into vogue thanks to The Golden Turkey Awards (1980).

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 173: The weird, wild works of Spenser & West (updated in 2026!)

Ed Wood wrote several books (for different publishers!) under the name "Spenser & West" in the late 1960s.

NOTE: I promised last week that I would complete my review of The Oralists (1969) today, but I unexpectedly received bonus information about some other, related Ed Wood books and decided that they deserved an article of their own. The second half of my Oralists review will appear on this blog next week instead. - J.B.

Last Wednesday, I published the first half of my review of The Oralists (1969), Ed Wood's truly depraved guide to oral sex and those who love it. Eddie wrote this book—and possibly a few others—under the pen name Spenser & West. Jean Spenser and Roger West are supposedly a married couple of sex researchers who write books together. It's all bunk, of course, but it theoretically makes the books seem somewhat more credible. (This isn't just smut. It's science.)

I'd always assumed these fictional sexologists, Jean and Roger, were inspired by William H. Masters (1915-2001) and Virginia E. Johnson (1925-2013), two famous real-life sex researchers who actually were married to each other for over 20 years. While M&J's pioneering book Human Sexual Response (1966) was already out on the market and very well-known to the public, including Ed Wood, William and Virginia didn't actually tie the knot until 1971. They divorced in 1993.

In The Oralists, Eddie refers to a previous Spenser & West book called Sexual Fantasia. I was initially unable to find any information about this book whatsoever and assumed Ed Wood just made it up to bolster the fictional resume of Spenser & West, but reader James Pontolillo corrected me on this issue. Like The Oralists, Sexual Fantasia was published by Tiger in 1969. James kindly provided pictures of the front and back covers.

The front and back covers of Sexual Fantasia.

According to James, Sexual Fantasia is quite rare. In fact, his copy might be one of the few left in the world. Naturally, since this book is a companion volume to The Oralists, I wanted to know if Ed Wood had also written it. Here's how James answered:

I've read through it once very breezily and I will say a provisional "Yes". But I really need to take it back out and go through it much more carefully before rendering a final verdict. It definitely has that "Late Wood" porn novel characteristic mixture of corny writing ("my forest is on fire, baby.... get that big hose out and go to work already") with disturbing content (example: very young-age pedophilia). I need to come up with a reasonable solution to scan the rare paperbacks I have in order to get them circulating to interested parties. Perhaps I'll drop some serious $$$ on this in a few years when I retire and will have the time to scan books.

That certainly sounds promising! 

James also helpfully sent me a copy of the table of contents page from Sexual Fantasia as well as the front cover of yet another Spenser & West book, The Prostitutes (1968). The page from Sexual Fantasia is especially interesting because it contains summaries of the book's seven chapters. It's obvious from the summary of Chapter Two that Sexual Fantasia revisits some of the same disturbing themes from The Oralists. The book doesn't appear to be limited to the topic of oral sex, however.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast vs. 'The Curse of Ed Wood' (2003)

The council of elders has reconvened to cover a most unusual movie from 2003.

Making a movie is hard, you guys. I mean, just so ridiculously goddamned hard. Merely getting the actors to show up when and where you told them is a chore in and of itself. And then you actually have to film them saying and doing stuff. It's a nightmare. Something can (and probably will) go wrong at any point in the moviemaking process—from preproduction to production to postproduction. Even after all that turmoil and strife, the fate of your film is in the hands of skeptical viewers, jeering critics, and a vast network of middlemen and sleazeballs.

No one knew these struggles better than writer-director Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1924-1978). From the late 1940s to the late 1970s, he struggled to get his ideas and his stories onto the big screen. Along the way, he faced any number of obstacles: a scarcity of money and resources, hostile and humiliating reviews, shaky or nonexistent distribution, his own out-of-control alcoholism, and (according to some) a total lack of aptitude. But despite all this, he managed to make some movies that have resonated with viewers for generations, including the immortal Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). It's no wonder he's become a hero to low-budget, independent filmmakers everywhere.

Sometimes, those indie filmmakers pay tribute to Ed Wood through their own weird little movies. And that's how we get films like Tim Swartz's surreal softcore effort Barely Lethal Lebanese Vampires: The Curse of Ed Wood (2003). (I'm disguising the title somewhat in an effort to flummox the censors.) I was recently made aware of this totally-forgotten film thanks to an unexpected Google Alert. After watching five minutes of it, I decided I needed to get some other Woodologists involved. 

In short, it was time for a new episode of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast. The redoubtable James Pontolillo did some in-depth research into the history of this misbegotten film, including contacting its director. W. Paul Apel and Rob Huffman brought their own insights and ideas to the table. And I was there to add some moments of levity. Naturally, none of this would have been possible without the late, great Greg Javer, who created the podcast in the first place. You can watch the latest episode right here: