Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "The Violent Urge"

Two of Ed Wood's crime thrillers come together in "The Violent Urge."

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "The Violent Urge" by Brian Carney

One of Ed Wood's crime thrillers.

Synopsis: A young thug named Dirk brutally murders a young woman named Lisa at Lover's Lane. He's been instructed to do this by his boss, Janet, but Dirk views his killings as "art" and doesn't really care about any financial compensation. Janet is the leader of an underground smut ring, and Lisa was about to rat her out to the police and so had to be eliminated. Dirk has done his part, but Janet is furious that he left a pornographic picture at the crime scene. 

Dirk's solution is to commit further murders and mayhem at Lover's Lane, making the cops think there's a sex-crazed psycho on the loose. They'll be so busy trying to catch him that they'll forget all about the smut ring. Dirk's insidious plan almost works, but one of his intended victims turns out to be an undercover cop in drag. Dirk barely escapes arrest, and Janet decides that he should lay low for a while. She has her boyfriend Danny drive Dirk to the home of Paula Parkins (aka Paul), a wealthy young lady who's part of a gang of female juvenile delinquents. Dirk, Paula, and the gang enjoy a wild and violent party, during which they watch some stag films starring the girls.

Later, Janet delivers some of the aforementioned stag films to a hard-boiled lady gangster named Gloria. It turns out Gloria is having some of the same problems that Janet had been having with Lisa earlier. She sure could use a hitman right about now, someone to neutralize any threats. Janet offers Dirk's services. Gloria thinks Dirk has potential.

Excerpt:

His body was black and blue with bruises, there were bite marks on his legs and shoulders. The gash on his chest had needed four stitches but it was barely a scratch. The trunk of the Star Chief was full of 8mm film cannisters, wrapped in flowered sheets stolen from Paula's parents' bed before they could come back and see the damage. 

Dirk does his thing.

Reflections: Some prayers are answered, readers. Not all, but some. At this point in my journey through Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams, for instance, I was praying for a story that had nothing whatsoever to do with ghouls, flying saucers, aliens, haunted houses, or cemeteries. I'd had my fill of all those things. Then Brian Carney, like a true hero, came to my rescue with a story inspired by two of Ed Wood's crime dramas, The Violent Years (1956) and The Sinister Urge (1960). Eddie's sci-fi and horror films tend to hog the spotlight, so it's nice to see his noir efforts get some love for a change.

"The Violent Urge" manages to answer one of the nagging questions from Ed Wood's filmography. Namely, how did gangster Gloria Henderson (Jean Fontaine) ever wind up hiring a loose-cannon thug like Dirk Williams (Dino Fantini) in The Sinister Urge? You have to admit, it's a strange pairing. She's no-nonsense; he's basically all nonsense. She demands order; he offers chaos. She tries to keep a low profile; he's bound to attract attention. And, ultimately, Dirk proves a liability to Gloria's operation.

Author Brian Carney manages to craft a convincing origin story for the unlikely Gloria/Dirk alliance, and he incorporates the juvenile delinquents from The Violent Years. I was glad to spend a little more time with those fun-loving gals. Does Paula Parkins (Jean Moorhead) get to say her famous "so what?" catchphrase from the movie? You'd better believe she does. As a little flourish, Carney includes a sly reference to Hellborn (1956), one of Ed's unfinished films. Janet and Dirk are said to have attended Wellbourne High School, known colloquially as Hellborn High.

Better yet, Carney manages to write all of this in the gleefully nasty style of a trashy pulp novel, complete with loving descriptions of lurid violence. (The story literally starts with a lengthy, drawn-out description of  a stabbing.) The author refers to the shared fictional world depicted in this story as the "Delinquiverse," which I love. It would have been nice to include mixed-up Don Gregor (Clancy Malone) from Jail Bait (1954), too. Don, like Paula Parkins, is a spoiled, bored rich kid who gets into crime for kicks, so they may have had a lot in common. But then, what would Carney have called the story? "The Violent Jail Urge"? 

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Plan 9.1 from Outer Space"

Let's make just a slight adjustment to this famous title.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Plan 9.1 from Outer Space" by Robert Kokai

Synopsis: The narrator reveals he is in possession of the journal of an evil alien named Belug, the ruler of a race of space vampires who wish to conquer as many planets as possible, including Earth. The journal spans millions of years and details Belug's numerous unsuccessful attempts to take over our world with the questionable assistance of the oafish Space Admiral Torbo and the sexy Yeoman Vampita.

The saga begins circa 67,000,000 B.C. (The author has helpfully converted all the space dates in Belug's journal into earth dates.) The aliens' first two plans fail quickly because of foolish mistakes on Torbo's part. Plan Three at least gets Belug and his crew to Mars, where Torbo successfully wrestles a bear. However, Torbo's numerous, disgusting gastrointestinal problems make the mission unpleasant for everyone on board the flying saucer. The aliens visit Earth but find no humans, only dinosaurs. These "thunder lizards" eat Torbo and Vampita, and Belug is forced to "rebirth" them using his own body.

Bela Lugosi as Jesus.

The vampires visit Earth a few million years later (this is Plan Four) and find some primitive homo sapiens there. Belug even meets a "hot little divorcee named Lilith" and begins an affair with her, but he quickly flees when he realizes she is "astonishingly fertile." Plan Five occurs in the year 48 B.C. Belug meets Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, but he accidentally sets fire to the Library at Alexandria. Plan Six happens in 30 A.D. but is abandoned when Belug meets Jesus, the actual son of God. Plans Seven and Eight allow the space vampires to witness the French Revolution and the American Civil War, respectively. Belug is both impressed and distressed by the brutality of the human race.

The project takes a major shift with the ninth and final plan, which goes into action in 1900 A.D. Belug has Torbo and Vampita drop him off on Earth, where he passes himself off as human and becomes a stage actor in Hungary. The alien ruler remains on Earth for decades in this form. He portrays both Jesus Christ and Count Dracula and also serves in the first World War. He then moves to America, where he acts on Broadway and then in motion pictures. By the late 1940s, his career has seen some ups and downs, but Torbo and Vampita have it even worse. They've been captured and detained in a place called Roswell, New Mexico.

By the 1950s, Belug is down on his luck, but he meets and begins working with a young filmmaker named Eddie. The films aren't good, but they give Belug something to do. Circa 1956, something strange happens: Belug becomes invisible. He can still see and hear what's happening, but no one can see or hear him. He wanders the streets of Hollywood for years, touched that people still remember him from his movies.

Excerpt:

I went to the movies today. Son of a bitch! The movie I saw was The Day the Earth Stood Still. It was like watching my life story. Seriously, 67,000,000 years all crammed into an hour and a half. It's the story of this guy from outer space named Klaatu who comes to Earth and lives with the Earth people to study them. That's what I've been doing!

Foremost authority Prof. Irwin Corey

Reflections: "Plan 9.1 from Outer Space" is one of the longer pieces in Warm Angora Wishes, and it's also one of the more difficult stories to review because of its sizable shifts in tone and style. It starts as one kind of story, morphs into another, and ends up as a third. I began to wonder if the author, Robert Kokai, had a game plan in advance when he sat down to write this or if he simply allowed his imagination to wander freely as he improvised this story.

In its early stages, "Plan 9.1" reminded me of the monologues of a comedian called Professor Irwin Corey (1914-2017). You might remember the disheveled, raspy-voiced Corey from his many TV and film appearances, especially on late-night talk shows. He looked like a combination of a country preacher and a mad scientist, and he was billed as "the world's foremost authority." Authority on what, exactly? Well, everything and nothing. He would proceed to give lectures about various topics as if he were some great expert on them, but his speeches/sermons would consist of a lot of silly puns and non sequiturs and wouldn't really convey any useful information.

Robert Kokai starts out in the Irwin Corey mode, pontificating at some length about the big bang and other topics without really communicating anything. Then, once the diary entries commence, the author uses the misadventures of the space vampires as the springboard for some middle-school-level sex jokes about Vampita and some elementary-school-level bodily function jokes about Torbo. But Kokai also uses the journal entries to comment on the follies of the human race, namely our penchant for killing each other with greater and greater efficiency over the centuries.

In its final stages, the story becomes a commentary on the life and career of Bela Lugosi, and it even gives us an origin story for how Bela met Ed Wood and came to be in several of Eddie's movies. Think of it as Ed Wood (1994) on a crash diet. These reflective, bittersweet passages—also reminiscent of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)—largely abandon the Corwin-esque silliness of the early part of the story and the schoolboy humor of the middle part of the story. That's why I said that "Plan 9.1 from Outer Space" is like three stories in one. 

Though I've never met Mr. Kokai, a horror host in his own right, I can only imagine that a conversation with him would be entertaining, exhausting, and largely one-sided. An innocent question like "How are you?" might well provoke a half-hour answer.

Before we leave this story, I would like to point out that "Plan 9.1 from Outer Space" covers some of the same comedic ground as a song called "Plans One Thru Nine" by The Rifftones. I had a vague memory of hearing this song several years ago, but it was the redoubtable Philip R. Frey who helped me identify the title and artist. Thank you!

P.S. We are just ten stories into this anthology, and this is already the third named after Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). We've previously had "Ridin' the Sunset Trail with the Plan 9 Kid" and "Plan One from Poughkeepsie." I get that Plan 9 is Ed Wood's defining work, but I'd kill for some Bride and the Beast (1955) fanfiction right about now.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "The Black Madonna of Pioneer Cemetery"

There's a very familiar-seeming ghoul at this cemetery.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "The Black Madonna of Pioneer Cemetery" by Lina Martine

The spooktacular cast of Plan 9.

Synopsis: After attending a horror movie, two young couples on a double date decide to visit a creepy and mostly-abandoned cemetery. One of the girls, Tina, is reluctant to explore the grounds, even though it was her idea to go there in the first place! Ultimately, she and the others—Jimmy, Betty (aka Betts), and Eddie—climb over the fence that surrounds the graveyard. The rather eccentric but nice Eddie is especially excited to visit the grave of an outlaw named Freno Frost and make a rubbing of his tombstone. Tina is dating Eddie only because he's friends with Jimmy. She plans to become Jimmy's girlfriend once he and the fickle Betty inevitably break up.

The four young people are shocked when a tomb opens and a female ghoul emerges. They all immediately recognize her as the Witch, a sinister woman who'd been married to a much-older man. Jimmy, Tina, Betty, and Eddie are terrified when they hear more figures approaching them in the dark. The Witch attacks Jimmy and begins clawing and chewing him. Betty tries to fight her, but to no avail. Then, the Old Man attacks her by biting her neck.

The two survivors, Eddie and Tina, have no choice but to abandon their doomed friends and make a run for it. While trying to leave the cemetery, they barely escape a third ghoul: a large, clumsy, heavyset man. Betty and Jimmy are never heard from again, while Tina and Eddie break up due to the latter's transvestism.

Excerpt:

Tina's eyes were glued to the tomb door, which continued to swing outward. Spindly white arms reached out of the darkness inside. A lean, white, wolf-like face loomed out of the inky blackness, lips curled in a savage snarl. Shaking and quivering spasmodically, a woman in a torn black dress staggered out into the moonlight. She lurched to a halt, face turned up toward the moon, and let out a piercing shriek.

Reflections: As I've made my way through Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams, I've been reminded that Ed Wood is still largely defined by the handful of films he made in the 1950s. You say Ed's name, and people think of ghouls, cemeteries, and angora sweaters. All of those things are on prominent display in "The Black Madonna of Pioneer Cemetery," a story that takes the three iconic zombies from Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)—the ones played by Vampira, Bela Lugosi, and Tor Johnson—and gives them a new set of victims to chow down on.

But author Lina Martine obviously knows more about Ed Wood than just the few core movies that have been played to death. For example, she includes a prominent reference to Kenne Duncan's character Freno Frost from The Lawless Rider (1954), an extremely obscure Western co-written by Ed. Who else but a superfan would even know that? And the story's framing device, i.e. horny young people visiting a spooky old cemetery, feels like a nod to Orgy of the Dead (1965). Come to think of it, cemeteries remained prominent in Ed's writing all the way through his career, even during his porn days of the '60s and '70s. If he could steer a story toward a cemetery, he would.

In her biography at the end of the story, Martine declares herself "addicted to James Dean/Maila Nurmi gossip." It's no surprise that Maila's Plan 9 character is at the very center of this story and that one of the doomed youngsters is named Jimmy. The story even mentions Jimmy's movie-star good looks, and I'm sure it's symbolic that Maila's character literally tries to eat him alive. Eddie is obviously a stand-in for Ed Wood, right down to his angora sweater fetish. But are the characters Betty and Tina meant to represent anyone in particular, or are they just typical horror movie victims? Only the author knows for sure.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Plan One from Poughkeepsie"

Bela Lugosi and the Hindenburg both had an impact on Ed Wood's childhood.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Plan One from Poughkeepsie" by Frank Dello Stritto

Synopsis: December 1936, Poughkeepsie, New York. Edward D. Wood, Jr., 12 years of age, skips school to attend a showing of The Invisible Ray starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The truant officer catches him and reports him to his parents. Apparently, Eddie does this kind of thing frequently, much to his father's chagrin. Nevertheless, on Christmas Day, Eddie's parents give him his own 8mm movie camera, a Kodak Cine Special. Junior stores this treasured gift in the same closet where he keeps the dress that his mother gave him. 

A Bela Lugosi serial.

During that same Christmas break, Eddie sees the final chapter of a Bela Lugosi serial called Shadow of Chinatown (1936). The ending is a dud, but this is how the budding filmmaker learns about stock footage. He dreams of making a combination horror film and Western starring his idol, Buck Jones. Has anyone done that before, he wonders?

May 1937. Junior has been struggling to learn how to use his new camera, and some of his precious, expensive footage has been overexposed. But he does manage to film the Hindenburg as it flies overhead. Later, over the radio, he hears that the famed German airship has burst into flames. He makes sure to take good care of the film he shot.

December 1937. Eddie, now 13, watches another Lugosi serial called SOS Coast Guard at the local movie theater with his friends. The only part he likes is how Lugosi's villainous character is killed alongside his giant sidekick, Thorg. He also sees a newsreel about the Hindenburg and remembers the footage he has stashed away in his closet. He shows the film at school, where it makes a big hit with his classmates. This is the moment when he decides he wants to be a filmmaker when he grows up. Again, he carefully stashes the film in the closet at home alongside his favorite dress.

December 1939. Two years have passed, and Eddie is still watching Bela Lugosi serials. This time, it's The Phantom Creeps, with Bela as a mad scientist with a killer robot. Eddie is shocked and thrilled when the film uses a clip of the Hindenburg flying over what might be Poughkeepsie. Eddie is again impressed by the clever use of stock footage and vows to make his own movies someday.

Excerpt:

Junior and his friends sat in the theatre. He told them about an Amazing Story that he had just read. A mad doctor was trying to create a race of supermen. Then the boys ran through the plot of the serial whose first 11 chapters they had seen. The last chapter would start in a few moments. The houselights dimmed.

Reflections: It had never occurred to me to compare Ed Wood to Jean Shepherd, but "Plan One from Poughkeepsie" reads like an alternate universe version of A Christmas Story (1983). Imagine Ed Wood as Ralphie, pining for a Kodak Cine Special instead of a Red Ryder BB gun, with cantankerous but lovable Ed Wood, Sr. as the Old Man, Lillian Wood as Mrs. Parker, and Eddie's little brother Bill as Randy Parker. 

In this short story, much of which takes place at Christmas, young Eddie is inspired by the same things that inspire Ralphie: comic books, radio shows, and cowboy films. Since Ed Wood and Jean Shepherd were born just a few years apart (1924 and 1921, respectively), it stands to reason they had similar experiences growing up in America. I'd imagine, however, that if young Eddie got a fuzzy pink bunny suit for Christmas, he would secretly love it.

"Plan One from Poughkeepsie" is Frank Dello Stritto's imagining of what Ed Wood's childhood in 1930s Poughkeepsie was like. As the author admits in the story's prologue, he's really piecing this narrative together from the few scraps of information we have about Ed's adolescence. And since Eddie had such a tenuous relationship with reality, who knows how much of this actually happened? All we can do is guess. It's to Dello Stritto's credit that "Plan One" is plausible. It may or may not be accurate, but it seems like it could be. It has the ring of truth to it.

Podcast Tuesday: "Grecian Kid Stuff"

Fonzie (Henry Winkler) meets a sorceress on The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.

One of the most anxious nights of my childhood happened circa 1985 when a local TV station—probably WKBD in Detroit—announced that it would air the film Clash of the Titans (1981) as part of its Friday night lineup. Ads for the movie ran frequently during the station's weekday cartoons, which I watched routinely after school, and I was hyped for the upcoming broadcast. You know how impressionable kids can be. Clash of the Titans became all I could think about.

I'd been a little too young (just five years old) when the film was originally released, but I was now ready for the action and thrills of this Greek myth-inspired blockbuster and its wonderfully hideous stop-motion creatures. I'd been going through a Greek myth phase at the time, and my parents had even rented a VCR so we could screen Jason and the Argonauts (1963) for my birthday. Based on the ads, Clash of the Titans looked like Jason on steroids. I couldn't miss it.

But there was a problem! You see, Friday nights were when my family and I would go out to dinner and spend quality time with each other. That's a lovely tradition, but I couldn't bother with family togetherness when Perseus, Medusa, and a robot owl were waiting for me at home. Today, I could just DVR Clash of the Titans or stream the movie whenever I wanted, but such options were not available to me in 1985. So I just tried to eat as quickly as I could and hurry my family through dinner as much as possible. No one was happy with me. As I remember it, we got home just as the film was starting. I may have missed the opening credits, but I saw the rest of the film, and it blew my mind.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we're reviewing an episode called "Greece is the Word." It, too, is based on Greek myth, and it is even less faithful to those stories than Clash of the Titans. But does it make for a good episode? Let's find out together!

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Mr. and Mrs. Ghoul"

A writer becomes suspicious of his strange neighbors in "Mr. and Mrs. Ghoul."

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Mr. and Mrs. Ghoul" by Bobby "Lugosi" Zier

Synopsis: It is 1956, and aspiring screenwriter Glen Kelton lives in Hollywood with his girlfriend, Barbara. Glen is also a closeted transvestite and an alcoholic, so he's under a lot of stress. He is highly suspicious of his neighbors, a couple named the Ghouls, and suspects that Mr. Ghoul is actually the notorious mad scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff. One night, while spying on the Ghouls, Glen learns that they are conspiring with the Martians to create a race of octopus-men and take over the universe. Glen desperately wants to convey this information to the authorities, but he fears that the Ghouls will expose Glen's own personal secrets in retaliation. He doesn't know what to do.

Suburban paranoia: The 'Burbs.

After listening to a special Halloween night radio broadcast by the psychic Criswell, Glen decides to take matters into his own hands. He grabs a gun and breaks into the Ghouls' house. He finds a mad science lab in the basement and even has to grapple with an octo-man, whom he shoots in the eye. Mr. Ghoul (a.k.a. Eric Vornoff) confronts him and declares Glen's bullets will have no effect on him. Then, Mrs. Ghoul flies into the room, having taken the form of a bat. She bites Glen on the neck and drains his blood.

Glen awakes the next morning, having no memory of his encounter with the Ghouls. In fact, he is now under the control of the seemingly unstoppable Vornoff.

Excerpt:

Glen knew there was more to the Ghouls than meets the eye, but he never imagined this, he began sweating profusely and his hands were shaking, in fact, they were shaking so much that he dropped his cocktail glass, and it shattered on the concrete.

Reflections: I assume most of you are familiar with Joe Dante's black comedy The 'Burbs (1989), in which a harried husband and father named Ray (Tom Hanks) becomes convinced that his eccentric new neighbors, the Klopeks, are secretly murderers. Ray and some other nosy local homeowners start spying on the Klopeks, even breaking into their house to snoop around for clues. Ultimately, they manage to blow the place to smithereens. All this would be reprehensible, except... Ray and his pals were right all along. The Klopeks really were murderers. They're arrested, and Ray is shaken but redeemed.

I'm with The 'Burbs up until the ending. Ray is basically a decent guy at heart, albeit confused and misguided. His friends, however, are portrayed as hateful and small-minded jerks, and the script ends up validating them. The ultimate message of the film is that you should be suspicious of eccentrics and outsiders because they're probably up to no good. So go ahead and spy on your neighbors, folks! Destroy their house if you have to! Perhaps author Bobby Zier was thinking of The 'Burbs when he wrote "Mr. and Mrs. Ghoul." Perhaps he wasn't. I only know that I thought about Joe Dante's movie frequently while reading this short story. 

I also thought of two more films: Parents (1989), in which a young boy (Bryan Madorsky) suspects his mother and father (Sandy Dennis and Randy Quaid) are cannibals, and Society (1989), in which a teenage boy (Billy Warlock) comes to realize that many of the people around him are members of an unspeakably horrible cult. Isn't it an odd coincidence that all these paranoia-driven horror-comedies came out in the same year? And that, in all three films, the characters' worst fears turn out to be justified?

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "The Plan 9 from Outer Space Universe"

It's all connected, says author Tom Shubilla.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "The Plan 9 from Outer Space Universe" by Thom "Beefstew" Shubilla

Synopsis: This article purports to tell the true-life events that inspired many of Ed Wood's most famous movies. Most of it centers around a strange, supposedly haunted house called the Old Willows Place in San Fernando, CA. The house, a "vector for the supernatural,"  dates back to the 1800s, but it gained everlasting infamy after it was purchased by exiled Russian scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff in 1948. Vornoff had been expelled from his native country and separated from his family after the Soviet government took a dim view of his attempts to create a new master race by exposing human beings to high levels of atomic power. 

Vornoff: Lynchpin of the entire saga.

After his banishment, Vornoff traveled the world, acquired a henchman named Lobo in Tibet, and developed a keen interest in cryptozoology. He bought the Old Willows Place to be near a giant octopus who lived in a swamp near the home. Vornoff continued his experiments in America and killed several innocent people in the process. Eventually, the police tracked him down, and the scientist died in a massive lab explosion in 1955. Vornoff's research influenced NASA scientist Dr. Carl Bragan, who created a plant monster while on sabbatical in Japan in 1970. But there is no truth to the rumor that a mad scientist named Dr. Charles Conway, who attempted to prolong human life through the invention of a new gland, had any connection to Vornoff. It's coincidental that both scientists had sidekicks named Lobo.

Two years after Vornoff's death, a cemetery not far from the Old Willows Place became the site of a truly bizarre series of events involving flying saucers and the resurrection of dead bodies. It seems an alien civilization attempted to frighten the human race into pacifism by unleashing a plague of zombies on the small community of San Fernando. Unfortunately for the aliens, they only managed to create three zombies, including a woman known as the Black Ghoul, before their plans were thwarted by a small band of humans.

In 1959, an itinerant conman named Dr. Karl Acula and his wife Sheila set up shop on the site of what had been the Old Willows Place. An ex-vaudevillian from Ed Wood's hometown of Poughkeepsie, Acula drifted from city to city as an adult. He altered his appearance frequently and even paid a highly-skilled plastic surgeon named Dr. Boris Gregor to change his entire face. In San Fernando, Acula passed himself off as a medium and started holding phony seances in order to trick gullible older people out of their money. Eventually, though, Acula somehow managed to provoke the wrath of the dead, and they dragged him down to hell.

Ironically, Acula had taken inspiration from the famed TV psychic Criswell. What Acula didn't know was that Cris was actually the Emperor of the Dead. In 1965, a writer named Bob and his girlfriend Shirley reported seeing the Emperor of the Dead presiding over a strange erotic ritual in an abandoned cemetery with the Black Ghoul of San Fernando at his side. 

Excerpt:

The Old Willows Place was not the only case of the supernatural for the San Fernando Police Department. In 1957 a spaceship reportedly landed in the backyard of Jeff and Paula Trent who lived next to a cemetery adjacent to the Old Willow's House. According to secret testimonies of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal, aliens planned on resurrecting the recently deceased on Earth by using long-distance electrodes shot into the pinion pituitary glands of recent dead, march the dead on the world's capitals with the goal of nations recognizing the alien's existence and stop the Earth from developing the deadly Solaronite bomb.

Reflections: We're lousy with universes these days. Somewhere along the line, we decided that we enjoy fictional stories more when they're connected to other fictional stories. Now, we're inundated with endless talk of franchises, dimensions, multiverses, alternate realities, and timelines. It's not enough that Marvel and DC have their own, incredibly complex universes; especially popular characters like Spider-Man and Batman have their own universes within those universes! Meanwhile, multimedia franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek have become so elaborate that their lore can (and does) fill up entire encyclopedias.

Patton Oswalt rants about Star Wars.

"The Plan 9 from Outer Space Universe" is Thom Shubilla's attempt to create an interconnected franchise out of Ed Wood's best-known films. Eddie already laid some groundwork for this in advance, since three of his films—Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), and Night of the Ghouls (1959)—form an extremely loose trilogy and share some characters. Ghouls has even been called a direct sequel to Bride. But Shubilla has fun with the premise by throwing seemingly unrelated films like Jail Bait (1954), Orgy of the Dead (1965), The Venus Flytrap (1970), and even Boris Petroff's The Unearthly (1957) into the mix. 

I'll admit I had thoughts along these lines when I was reviewing Blood Splatters Quickly (2014), an anthology of Eddie's short stories. "Wouldn't it be fun," I mused, "if all of these strange, violent, and perverse stories were happening in one really messed-up town?" In retrospect, many of them do. The town just happens to be Los Angeles.

What Shubilla's story really reminds me of, however, is comedian Patton Oswalt's notorious filibuster from the sitcom Parks & Recreation (2009-2015). In an episode from 2013, Oswalt plays a man who desperately wants to prevent the city council from voting on a measure, so he deliberately wastes the council's time by pitching a Star Wars sequel. His proposed story not only includes characters from Marvel but also the entire pantheon of Greek gods. When I read "The Plan 9 from Outer Space Universe," I imagined it being delivered aloud with the same level of misguided passion Oswalt brings to his speech.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Ripped and Torn"

Some bachelorette party attendees get more than they bargained for in "Ripped and Torn."

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Ripped and Torn" by Sean Collins

Synopsis: A hideous, decaying monster shambles toward a home in suburban America. Inside, three young women—Helen, Judi, and Beth—are throwing a bachelorette party for their friend Liz, who is engaged to a man named Ray. There seems to be some mild friction between Liz and and the snarky, sarcastic Helen, whose nickname is "Hellraiser." When the monster shows up at their doorstep, the women assume he is the male stripper they hired.

The monster is totally disoriented and can only communicate in grunts and growls, but the women are insistent that he start dancing and stripping. Somehow, the creature becomes entranced by the music and actually starts putting on a show for them. Things quickly get out of control, however, as he not only removes his clothing but also his skin, flesh, and eyeballs. The women realize this is not the stripper they'd been expecting.

Fortunately, Liz has a plan! She distracts the monster with Helen's angora sweater, then disorients him by throwing a shower curtain over him. Helen finishes the creature by stabbing him with a fireplace poker. Ray arrives at the party and informs the women that the dead have been rising from the grave due to a science experiment gone awry. A radio announcer informs them that the crisis has passed. Only then does the actual stripper arrive.

Excerpt:

Thunder roared in the distance outside. Liz looked over at the window and wished she was outside. Miles away, she had to get them out of here. She looked over at Helen who still watched the bizarre spectacle. Liz couldn't tell if it was now from fear or amazement. There was another horrible tearing sound. Liz looked at the monster and saw that now the flesh of his torso had been ripped away.

Reflections: "Ripped and Torn" is a departure from the previous stories in Warm Angora Wishes in that it is not based on any particular work by Ed Wood, such as Bride of the Monster (1955) or Plan 9 (1957), nor does it use Eddie and his eccentric cohorts as characters. Instead, it is a comedic horror fantasy that tries to evoke the tone of something Eddie might have written. Author Sean Collins talks about Ed's influence in the story's lengthy prologue, but the story itself is a wholly original work.

Having read many of Ed Wood's short stories from the 1960s and '70s, I can attest that Eddie would have been intrigued and amused by the idea of a stripper who peels all the way down to the skeleton. It's the kind of ghoulish, gory twist that could easily have been in one of his own stories. But I'm pretty sure Ed would have made the stripper character female, and he would have set the whole thing in a bar or a club rather than some lady's living room. The only way he would have written about a male stripper is if the audience had also been men.

For the last couple of days, as I've been preparing to review this story, I've been wracking my brain to remember exactly where I saw a scene in which a stripper removes her skin and flesh until she's just a skeleton. My first instinct was that it was an episode of Tales from the Crypt (1989-1996). But then, I thought it must have been one of those horror anthology movies, like Creepshow (1982). After some digging, I think I've narrowed it down to The Monster Club (1981), featuring Vincent Price and John Carradine. But if you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "The Night the Devil Met Igor"

Captain DeZita (center) runs into a young Charles Bronson in "The Night the Devil Met Igor."

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "The Night the Devil Met Igor" by Brad A. Braddock

Synopsis: It is 1953, and Ed Wood has just finished principal photography on Glen or Glenda. He's on his way to the wrap party, but his leading lady and girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, wants to check on her girlfriend, Pattie. She promises to meet Eddie at the party later in the evening. Also on the Glen or Glenda set that day is the mysterious Captain DeZita, who plays the Devil in the film. DeZita is a conman and pimp with a terrible reputation, so producer George Weiss is wary of him.

Still wearing his costume from the movie, the lecherous DeZita follows Dolores down a dark alley. She is terrified of the strange man and begins running away from him. He pursues her and makes suggestive remarks. He even tears a piece of her angora sweater! Luckily, Dolores makes it to a nearby building. It turns out to be the Paramount Theatre, which is hosting the premiere of the 3D horror movie House of Wax. Among the celebrities on hand are Ronald Reagan and Bela Lugosi. DeZita, mad with lust, continues to pursue Dolores through the crowded theater.

Just as DeZita corners Dolores, he is put in a headlock by actor Charles Buchinsky, who plays the mute Igor in House of Wax. Buchinsky is well aware of DeZita's reputation and forces the creepy old man to apologize. DeZita then scurries away like a rat. Ed Wood finally shows up, having been summoned to the Paramount by the police. Charles gives Ed and Dolores two tickets to House of Wax, and they happily stay to watch the premiere. Charles steps outside and meets Bela Lugosi. The actors exchange notes, and Bela wishes Charles good luck in his career.

In an epilogue, Criswell makes predictions for Ed Wood, Captain DeZita, and the others, These predictions, however, are much more accurate than usual, including the fact that Charles Buchinsky will change his name to Charles Bronson and become a major movie star in the 1970s.

Excerpt:

DeZita was sweating and nervous as he replied, "Charles... Charles Buchinsky. Congratulations on your big break tonight."

Charles slapped DeZita again, this time harder, drawing blood lines across his face. Charles replied, "I play a goddamn mute. You call that a big break? I'm of Eastern European descent, in a day where the government thinks anyone with that background is a communist."

DeZita answered, "You could always change your name from Buchinsky to something like... say, Bronson."

A "major fib" in Ed Wood.

Reflections: In writing the screenplay for Ed Wood (1994), Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski largely tried to stick to the truth, at least as much of it as they could glean from Rudolph Grey's oral history Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992). But even that book, with its wealth of quotes from Ed Wood's friends, relatives, and professional associates, was vague about how people met or how certain events in Eddie's career came about. So Scott and Larry cheerfully concocted a few "meet cutes" for the major characters and filled in various missing details in the timeline with their imaginations. 

"Then," as the writers admit in the published version of their script, "to tie everything together, we invented one major fib." 

They're referring to the totally fictional meeting in the film's third act between Ed (Johnny Depp) and his hero Orson Welles (Vincent D'Onofrio) at Musso & Frank's. Orson gives the dejected, down-on-his-luck Ed a pep talk about staying true to his artistic vision, and Ed is inspired to finish Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). To be clear, this incident never happened, and no one ever claimed that it did.

"The Night the Devil Met Igor" does something similar. It takes some real people—Ed Wood, Dolores Fuller, Captain DeZita, Bela Lugosi, and Charles Bronson—and puts them in an almost entirely fictional scenario. A mysterious man who called himself Captain DeZita was in Glen or Glenda (1953), and he was a known conman and pimp, just as this story suggests. But the part about DeZita chasing Dolores Fuller into the premiere of House of Wax and getting beaten up by Charles Bronson is purely fantasy on the part of the author.

Incidentally, although House of Wax actually premiered in New York, it was given a gala showing in Los Angeles at the Paramount, again just as this story attests. Bela Lugosi and Ronald Reagan were among the attendees that night, as were Shelley Winters and Danny Thomas. As luck would have it, there is even some vintage newsreel footage of the premiere. Watch this and imagine that the events of "The Night the Devil Met Igor" are happening somewhere in the background.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Final Curtain Revisited"

An actor battles a vampire in "Final Curtain Revisited."

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Final Curtain Revisited" by Douglas Gibson

Synopsis: A brief prologue explains that Final Curtain (1957) was an unsold TV pilot written and directed by Ed Wood. In this short film, a character identified only as the Actor wanders around the dark, spooky Dome Theatre at night after having played a vampire onstage there earlier in the evening. He becomes increasingly paranoid and is mysteriously drawn to something on the second floor. The object beckoning him turns out to be a coffin. Resigned to his fate, the actor climbs inside.

Valda Hansen as the Banshee.

The sequel picks up several years later. The Actor still dwells in the Dome Theatre, long after the events of the first story. He lies in his coffin in a storage room on the second floor, invisible to the (living) actors and crew members who work in the building each day. Every few years, the Actor is resurrected so that he can steer someone toward a peaceful afterlife and spare them great agony. No one can see or hear him, but he can directly influence people's behavior nevertheless.

The Actor's eternal nemesis is the Vampire, an alluring female who dwells in a room down the hall. She, too, is unable to leave the Dome. One night, the Actor rises from his coffin and finds that the Vampire is tearing apart the body of a recently-deceased theater critic. Unfortunately, he cannot do anything to prevent this. The Actor strolls around the theater, even visiting his old dressing room. He also sees the Banshee, a young blonde woman who had pretended to be a ghost when she was alive. In death, she is a restless soul who is cursed to wander the earth forever.

Eventually, the Actor realizes why he has been awakened from his years-long sleep. He needs to save the soul of a stagehand who is on the threshold of death. This young man, though not evil, had yearned for fame and glory but had been denied these things during his life. Now, this doomed man seems inextricably drawn to the Vampire. Knowing he is breaking the rules, the Actor enters the room of the Vampire and protects the stagehand from her. The Vampire slashes the Actor’s throat. The stagehand dies peacefully, and the badly-injured Actor collapses on a mattress, unable to reach his own coffin.

Excerpt: 

The hall produced chaotic sounds that presumed Grand Guignol-like horrors. Snarling, choking sounds, like a wolf man descending on a young lovely. More howls of agony, followed by poundings on the wall. Perhaps a maniac driving nails into his torture victim? The Actor strained to repress these feelings, thoughts. Were they repressed memories of past awakenings, or just his still-lively imagination? How many souls existed there?

Reflections: M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense (1999) turns 25 this year, so I’ll assume that anyone who wants to see this film has already done so by now. Besides, its twist ending must be one of the worst-kept "secrets" in movie history. I've long felt that this extremely successful film (which Ed Wood would have loved, incidentally) could have been the pilot for a fascinating weekly television series. 

Willis and Osment in The Sixth Sense.

To recap, The Sixth Sense concerns Malcolm (Bruce Willis), a psychologist who slowly comes to realize that he is deceased, and Cole, a troubled young boy with a rare ability to see and talk to ghosts. Together, they are able to bring solace to tormented souls who have unfinished business on earth. They only do a little of this in the movie, coming to the aid of a female child ghost named Kyra (Mischa Barton) who has been poisoned by her mother, but I figured they could keep doing it week after week. After all, there must be plenty of unhappy ghosts out there who need Malcolm and Cole's help.

"Final Curtain Revisited" has some of the flavor of the Sixth Sense TV show I was envisioning. It takes Duke Moore's character from Final Curtain and turns him into a kind of Mr. Fix-It of the afterlife. By the rules of this fictional universe, though, the Actor has to remain at the Dome Theatre, so his services aren't needed very often. In the story, even he doesn't know why it's the stagehand's turn to die. It just is.

Maybe if the Actor branched out beyond the walls of the Dome Theatre, he could assist other souls in want. The Banshee in this short story seems to have free reign, at least to some extent, but she does not take advantage of this opportunity. She exists only to suffer. The author compares her to Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol (1843), but at least Marley does one productive thing with his afterlife.

Frankly, it never would have occurred to me to expand on the story of Final Curtain, nor to tie it into the story of Night of the Ghouls (1959) and the unreleased The Night the Banshee Cried (1957). But author Douglas Gibson has done a nice job of recreating the spooky atmosphere of the original film. He does not replicate Ed Wood's writing style because I believe doing so would be impossible. Wood takes great leaps into the absurd and implausible, and he is not cautious in his use of language. In comparison, Gibson's writing is more restrained and even tasteful. If there's such a thing as a polite take on Ed Wood, this is it.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Ed Wood and the Mystery Tower Sitter"

"Ed Wood and the Mystery Tower Sitter" mixes fact with fiction.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Ed Wood and the Mystery Tower Sitter" by Gregory William Mank

Synopsis: It is October 1957, and Los Angeles television station KTLA is staging a unique publicity stunt to advertise its Nightmare Theatre program and the premiere broadcast of James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) starring Boris Karloff. Each night, a mysterious masked man hired by the station climbs up the famous KTLA broadcast tower and sits from dusk until midnight, while fans below gather and speculate about his identity. This has been going on for 21 days. Some think that the sitter may be Karloff himself, but this is unlikely, as Karloff is quite aged and too distinguished for such a stunt.

Actor Glenn Strange.

Young director Edward D. Wood, Jr. is among the gawkers at KTLA. One night, he brings a woman with him: a college student named Madeline whom Eddie has paid $35 to dress as Vampira. Madeline is quite snobbish and holds Eddie in utter contempt; she also sees phallic and sexual imagery in nearly everything, especially horror movies. The KTLA security guards shoo the onlookers away after midnight, but Eddie lingers a while to strike up a conversation with the sitter. He has correctly guessed that the masked man is actually actor Glenn Strange. Eddie wants Strange to double for the late Bela Lugosi in a film to be called Graverobbers from Outer Space. Strange is cordial but turns Eddie down, deeming himself unworthy.

Undefeated, Eddie goes to a Hollywood bar where showbiz types—many of them washed-up—habitually gather. There, he spots horror star Lon Chaney, Jr. Eddie boldly approaches Chaney and starts his pitch all over again.

Excerpt:

A rowdy crowd gathered this Saturday night on the grounds of KTLA, consumed with Frankenstein fever. Nature itself seemingly smiled on the revels—a huge moon, three nights from being full, had ascended above the tower, glowing approvingly over this Hollywood Gothic sideshow.

Reflections: At the beginning of Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy (1982), wannabe comedian Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) waits impatiently outside the Manhattan TV studio where a nightly talk show called The Jerry Langford Show is being taped. He is apparently hoping to catch a glimpse of Langford (Jerry Lewis) himself or one of Langford's celebrity guests. Numerous diehard fans gather at Langford's stage door each night, and they all know Rupert by name. He is obviously a regular at such gatherings. This is our first clue that something is seriously amiss with Rupert. What kind of man waits outside a talk show studio every night, clutching an autograph book? Later, when the delusional Pupkin concocts an audacious scheme to kidnap and replace Langford, we find our suspicions were more than justified.

There is something distinctly Pupkinesque about Ed Wood as he is depicted in "Ed Wood and the Mystery Tower Sitter." Perhaps he has no ill intentions for Glenn Strange or Lon Chaney, Jr., but his actions in this story seem uncomfortably desperate and pushy. He invites himself into other people's lives with little regard for such concepts as privacy or personal space. Eddie's argumentative relationship with Madeline even mirrors the uneasy, quarrelsome relationship between Rupert Pupkin and his accomplice Sasha (Sandra Bernhard) in The King of Comedy. Perhaps, if no classic horror star will agree to be in Graverobbers from Outer Space, Eddie will have to kidnap one.

Incidentally, the author points out that the KTLA "mystery tower sitter" publicity stunt was quite real, though Eddie was not involved and did not meet Lon Chaney, Jr. either. It is still interesting how the author of this story managed to take a colorful but obscure anecdote from showbiz history and weave it into the legend of Ed Wood.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Ridin' the Sunset Trail with the Plan 9 Kid"

Last man standing: Conrad Brooks was one of the last-surviving members of Ed Wood's inner circle.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Ridin' the Sunset Trail with the Plan 9 Kid" by George "E-Gor" Chastain

Synopsis: Artist and film fanatic George "E-Gor" Chastain shares his memories of actor Conrad Brooks (1931-2017), whom he first met at a Famous Monsters of Filmland convention in 1989. By that time, Conrad was a regular on the convention circuit, signing autographs, selling memorabilia, and meeting fans whenever he could. Chastain and Brooks found they had a great deal in common, including a love of classic Westerns, and the two remained friends until Brooks' death in 2017.

Though most famous for appearing in the 1950s films of Ed Wood, including Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Conrad Brooks had dozens of screen credits as an actor and became a low-budget director in his own right during the 1990s and 2000s. According to Chastain, Brooks loved to reminisce about the actors he'd worked with, and he had colorful anecdotes about Jack Warden, Timothy Carey, Lawrence Tierney, and Joseph Wiseman. Chastain was happy to create promotional posters and buttons free of charge for Brooks.

In 2004, Brooks moved to a trailer in West Virginia, but he and Chastain stayed in touch through frequent phone calls. In his final years, Brooks became somewhat isolated and had neither cable nor internet access, but Chastain kept him in the loop regarding which celebrities had died and which classic movies were airing on TCM. He frequently mailed DVDs to Conrad's trailer so that the actor would never be without the old movies he loved.

Excerpt: 

All my life I've been searching for evidence of a more vibrant, stimulating world than the one I was born into, and I've found it on rare occasions, in the memories of older people (or deceased writers) talking about the long-gone world of their youth. It's strange that I could be so nostalgic for the world THEY lived in—but it's been a great comfort to me to imagine it existed, and still exists, if only in their memories. I'll always be grateful to Conrad Brooks and my many other inner-childhood heroes, mentors and good friends for sharing so much with me for so long.

Reflections: George Chastain's "Ridin' the Sunset Trail with the Plan 9 Kid" is the kind of fond, uncritical reminiscence you'd expect to hear at a testimonial dinner or a memorial service. Indeed, it reads like an extended eulogy for Conrad Brooks. If you were expecting a complicated, warts-and-all portrayal of the late actor-director, you won't find it here. This is strictly a wholesome, affectionate tribute from a fan. It was difficult to synopsize this piece, since it's not really even structured like a story. There's no "plot" here, per se, just a lot of random memories strung together in the order that they occurred to the author.

Monster kid George "E-Gor" Chastain

Conrad Brooks is the nominal subject of this article, but "Ridin' the Sunset Trail" functions as a mini-autobiography of George Chastain as well. We learn about George's childhood as a Navy brat, his early love of movies and other media, and the long-lasting friendships he forged with other movie fanatics. Over the decades, when he wasn't attending to his own aging parents, Chastain attended a lot of conventions and expos, met many of his heroes, co-edited a fanzine, posted to online forums regularly (especially The Classic Horror Film Board), and started a website devoted to TV horror hosts. 

While reading "Ridin' the Sunset Trail," I was reminded of Lem Dobbs' unproduced screenplay Edward Ford (1978), based on the life of actor (and Ed Wood associate) David Ward. That script is also about the strange, insular world of cinephiles who obsess over ancient Hollywood trivia and idolize Z-list actors the rest of the world has forgotten. One wonders what would have happened if David Ward and George Chastain ever met and started exchanging fun facts about the old, cheap Westerns and horror movies they loved. Their conversation might never have ended. I mean, here are just some of the many topics that Chastain discusses with great enthusiasm in this article:

• the ultimate fate of Peter Lorre, Jr., an actor who falsely claimed to be Peter Lorre's son

• Tor Johnson's numerous appearances on Western television shows

• the legacy of Florida horror host Charlie "M.T. Graves" Baxter

• the attendees of Bela Lugosi's funeral and whether or not they made tasteless jokes about Bela at the time

• Bela's stunt double(s) in Bride of the Monster (1955)

• Conrad Brooks' appearances in two Bowery Boys movies and a Vincent Price movie

• the plot of Roy Rogers' The Trail of Robin Hood (1950), which brought together numerous cowboy stars

• cowboy actor Ken Maynard's thwarted singing career

Although Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams is ostensibly an Ed Wood book, Eddie is merely a supporting player in "Ridin' the Sunset Trail." We get some description of Range Revenge (1948), the primitive, never-finished film that Ed and Conrad made when both were just starting out in Hollywood. Chastain also discusses Wood's working relationship with writer-producer Alex Gordon, through whom he met Bela Lugosi. 

Mostly, though, this article discusses Eddie through his connection to the world of B-grade Westerns. Both Eddie and Conrad, for instance, visited cowboy star Ken Maynard during his waning years. In his various films and unsold TV pilots, Eddie employed such Western actors as Bud Osborne, Johnny Carpenter, Kenne Duncan, Lyle Talbot, and Tom Keene. This was Ed's way of staying in touch with the cowboy films he had so loved as a child in Poughkeepsie. You'd really never guess any of this from Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), in which we only hear of Eddie's love of horror and sci-fi. Westerns were extremely important to Conrad Brooks, too, and Chastain laments the fact that neither Eddie nor Connie made their living from this genre.

"Ridin' the Sunset Trail" is a strange way to begin Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams, since it's not really representative of the rest of the book. Nevertheless, it was instructive for me to read this article because it's a deep (deep) dive into the world of fan magazines and sci-fi conventions. Those things haven't really been a part of my life at all, but they played an important role in building and nurturing the cult of Ed Wood. 

Harry and Michael Medved often get the credit for making a posthumous star out of Wood with The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), but Chastain points out that Eddie and his movies were being publicized in the pages of Famous Monsters many years before the Medveds came along. In a way, then, "Ridin' the Sunset Trail" brings us back to the true origins of Woodology. Call it Roots.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 199: Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (2024)

Warm Angora Wishes is an anthology inspired by the works of Ed Wood.

Boy, the Ed Wood books just keep coming, huh? 

There was a time when Rudolph Grey pretty much had the market cornered with Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992). Apart from the crude but heartfelt 33-page chapbook Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films (1981) by Randy Simon and Harold Benjamin, Grey's quirky oral history was the first major volume dedicated to the director of Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). There had been numerous magazine and newspaper articles about Eddie, plus coverage of Eddie's movies in books like The Golden Turkey Awards (1980) and Cult Movies (1981), but nothing like this!

The latest Wood book.

In addition to including quotes from many of Wood's professional and personal associates, Nightmare covered Eddie's life from beginning to end—from his childhood in Poughkeepsie in the 1920s and '30s to his ultimate descent into alcoholism and pornography in the 1960s and '70s. Previous to this book, articles about Ed Wood tended to focus on his 1950s heyday and the creation of his most famous films. Rudolph Grey showed there was a lot more to the story... and it wasn't all angora sweaters and plywood tombstones. 

Nightmare of Ecstasy hit the market just before the internet gained mainstream popularity. I'd say that, more than any other factor, the 'net has accounted for the deluge of Wood books that we've seen in recent years. For one thing, information is a lot easier to find and share, giving fans access to films, books, and vintage articles that they wouldn't have had previously. Ed Wood fanatics, like so many people with extremely niche interests, also have instant access to each other nowadays, allowing them to compare notes, share information, and collaborate in ways that would have been impossible in decades past. Think back to the pre-internet days when fans really only had things like conventions and newsletters to keep in touch.

In 2024, we have another brand-new Wood-inspired book to dissect: Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams, edited by prolific monster author Kurt McCoy and published by Arcane Shadows Press. I think the clunky name is a reference to Robin Leach's catchphrase from the 1980s syndicated series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: "Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!" In any event, that title is a mouthful, so I think I'll just refer to the book as Warm Angora Wishes from now on. The book's editor responds:

For the record, that title was not my choice. The original title was Ed Wood’s Haunted Worlds, which was a clear homage to the [1996] documentary The Haunted World of Edward D Wood Jr. Others thought that the title similarity might prove problematic, and I had to defer to their judgment. The title selection was overseen by our publisher, Brad Braddock, who is really responsible for pulling this thing together. The book wouldn’t exist without the vast amounts of labor he invested in assembling it. 

I can’t say that I like that title or am happy about being sidelined for the selection process—but truthfully, I was too close to the project and too heavily invested in it to be objective. Health issues have kept me from being as active in the production side as I may have wanted anyway. An awful lot got dumped in Brad’s lap more or less at the last minute, but he handled it all effectively and professionally. I’m truly indebted to him for picking up my slack—on top of the usual work of being the publisher.

Thanks for the clarification Kurt.

But what is this thing, exactly? Warm Angora Wishes is chiefly an anthology of short fiction inspired by the work of Edward D. Wood, Jr. I say "chiefly" because the first—and longest—piece in the book is nonfiction and only tangentially about Ed. Mostly, though, the book contains stories that draw directly from Eddie's film work, largely Plan 9 and Glenda, plus Night of the Ghouls (1959), Bride of the Monster (1955), and a few others. In a way, Warm Angora Wishes feels like an attempt to create an Extended Ed Wood Cinematic Universe, connecting the films from Eddie's Golden Age so that they form a larger narrative.

In examining the contents of this book, I have concluded that there is no way to summarize or review Warm Angora Wishes in one blog post. Therefore, I have made the cataclysmic decision to cover this book the same way I have covered the Ed Wood anthologies in the past: one story at a time. Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll be making my way through this volume chapter by chapter and posting my reflections here. If you so choose, you may join me on this journey.

P.S. Here is how the book describes itself on its own back cover. This may convince you to read my upcoming reviews or to keep your distance from them. Either way, I thought it was only sporting to include it.

Bringing to life new webs of fiction.