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.