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| Today's Ed Wood story deals with a man who spends years in a dungeon. |
Fans who know Ed Wood mainly through his 1950s film work or through his more accessible adult films, such as Orgy of the Dead (1965), may be in for a shock when they investigate his literary career. In his novels and short stories, Ed tackled some shocking and upsetting subject matter, occasionally wallowing in the very worst of humanity. The truly obscure short story I'm covering today is a prime example. We're a long way from Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) here. Though it's far from Ed's most graphic writing, it is still quite disturbing in its implications.
The story: "Rapee's Revenge." Originally published in Illustrated Case Histories (Calga Press), vol. 1, no. 3, November/December 1970. Credited to "Jack Ripar." (Ed used a very similar pseudonym, "Jacques Rippee," in that very same issue.)
Summary: Marvin has been languishing in the dungeon of an unknown woman for nearly five years. Haggard and dressed in rags, he subsists on "slop" while enduring the elements because his cell has no roof, only 25-foot walls and a stone floor. Today, however, he plans to escape. He has been slowly chipping away at one of the stones in the wall with a sixpenny nail, and now he can reach an unlit tunnel on the other side.
While Marvin cautiously traverses this dark passageway, he thinks about his former life as a prolific rapist and occasional murderer. In fact, he had raped the woman who is now his jailer. She'd knocked him unconscious while he was committing the act and has kept him prisoner ever since. He thinks now of killing her. Finally, he sees a light at the end of tunnel and is overcome with joy at the thought of freedom. His jubilation, however, is short-lived.
Excerpt: "The Woman, he thought, brushing a cobweb away from his face—he wondered what she would do when she found him gone, when she found no one left to vent her insane hatred on. In all the years Marvin had been in her prison which was not really a prison, but rather a part of a huge mansion in which she lived, Marvin had never learned The Woman's name, had not even spoken a single word to her, in fact. But he had raped her."
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| A typical "Hudd & Dini" adventure. |
Reflections: It's one of the enduring images of popular culture—the bearded, almost-skeletal wretch who has been left to rot in a dungeon for years on end. How many New Yorker one-panel cartoons have featured just such unfortunates? Monty Python put these miserable characters into nearly all their films, perhaps best typified by Michael Palin's luckless Ben in Life of Brian (1979). Dungeon dwellers have also played a role in classic horror films. Boris Karloff’s character in House of Frankenstein (1944) starts out languishing in a dungeon before escaping and wreaking havoc. Then, there's Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) in which a beggar (Richard Wordsworth) is thrown into a dungeon by a cruel nobleman and stays there so long he essentially becomes a beast.
"Rapee’s Revenge" is Ed Wood’s twisted take on the "dungeon escape" plot. This is one of those moral tales in which a truly loathsome and sinful character receives his justly deserved comeuppance. It’s driven by the same logic as many Tales from the Crypt episodes: if you do something evil enough, the universe will get you back in some way. Certainly, after we learn of what Marvin has done, we cannot root for his escape. Had the law apprehended him, he would have faced life in prison or even execution. It's possible that Ed felt at least some degree of sympathy for his protagonist, however, since he lets us know that Marvin regretted some of his past crimes. It's a little late for that, though, especially in the case of the murder victims.
What’s truly odd about this story is the Wood-ian dream logic that guides the plot. How has Marvin survived this long? What has kept him going through the rain, sleet, and snow? And what is this place where he has found himself? Ed tells us the dungeon is part of a large estate owned by a wealthy woman. I guess, since the cell has no roof, it's basically a big pit in the backyard—sort of like a swimming pool that got out of hand.
Since any passerby could peek into the pit and see Marvin down there, this estate must be in a remote location. No servants are depicted or even mentioned, so our dungeon mistress apparently lives alone. How is she maintaining this property by herself? If torturing Marvin has become the sole focus of her life, hasn’t she become another sort of prisoner?
Then there is the tunnel itself, the most mysterious part of this entire story. Why would such a tempting but useless passage exist? The nearest I can figure is that the woman built it herself in the hopes that Marvin would one day find it and try to escape, only to have his hopes dashed. She may have even planted that sixpenny nail in his cell. Take away the rape angle, and this story closely resembles Vic Martin's "Hudd & Dini" comics that used to run in Cracked magazine in which two bumbling crooks continually break out of prison, only to find themselves in custody yet again. Perhaps Ed Wood, himself a prisoner of poverty and alcoholism, could relate to their plight.