Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "The Return of Martin Crandle"

Finally, your favorite Ed Wood character has returned!

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

The story: "The Return of Martin Crandle" by Everett Dudgeon

Synopsis: Juvenile delinquent Paula Parkins and her young partners in crime, Phyllis and Geraldine, are on the run from the law and looking for a place to hide as a nasty storm approaches. They've been committing robberies and murders and have lost some members of their gang in the process. They now approach a foreboding swamp called Lake Marsh. Phyllis expresses concerns about going anywhere near "that place," but Paula willfully ignores her.

Meanwhile, at police headquarters, Captain Robbins and Sgt. Martin Crandle discuss the recent crime wave. Martin is shocked to hear that Robbins suspects local girl Paula Parkins is to blame, since Martin knows that Paula comes from a respectable family. Martin is also disturbed to hear that Paula and her girls are headed to Lake Marsh. That location holds some painful memories: Martin's ex-partner, Dick, and Dick's fiancée, Janet, were so traumatized at Lake Marsh that they may as well be dead. Martin reluctantly agrees to go to Lake Marsh to save Paula and the girls from a similar fate.

Back at the swamp, Paula decides to park her car before it gets hopelessly stuck in the mud. She and the girls will continue on foot, and Paula doesn't want to hear any nonsense about "monsters." They trudge through the swamp, hoping to make it to a cemetery on the other side. Paula is more scared than she lets on. Finally, she and the girls are stunned to see the Old Willows Place, a house that was supposedly destroyed several years ago.

Martin travels to Lake Marsh, driven by Sgt. Dan Bradford, with whom he does not get along particularly well. They almost hit someone or something but narrowly avoid an accident. Not far away, Paula and the girls explore the outside of the house and are shocked when the front door opens by itself. Geraldine and Phyllis are reluctant to enter, but Paula insists that the house will at least offer them shelter. Martin and Bradford bumble their way through the swamp and finally find the Old Willows Place. Phyllis is trembling outside, her hair white with fear. Despite Bradford's warning, Martin enters the house himself.

Excerpt:

Marty pulled the chesterfield from his mouth and held his face in his hands as Robbins continued about how Marty wouldn’t be alone and how someone else was going to be at the cemetery nearby in case the girls wanted to sneak in there. Marty wasn’t really listening though-everything was muffled. All he could think of was if he was going to end up like Dick. 

Reflections: To be honest, I had never paid much attention to Martin, a plainclothesman played earnestly by Don Nagel in Bride of the Monster (1955). Keep in mind, I once wrote a whole article about the sassy file clerk from that same film, but somehow I'd never given Nagel's character a second thought. I mean, what does this guy even do in the movie? Well, he shows up about half an hour into it to serve as a sidekick to the hero, Lt. Dick Craig (Tony McCoy). I suspect Martin exists mainly to give Dick someone to talk to during the middle passages of the movie, sort of like how Disney princesses are often given animal sidekicks to act as sounding boards. But Martin sticks around for the rest of the movie, even after he's separated from Dick Craig, and is present if not prominent during the story's chaotic, action-packed conclusion.

A Brigadoon from hell.

Honestly, Martin gets a decent chunk of screen time in Bride of the Monster, more than I'd remembered. He smokes, drinks coffee, grumbles about his dislike of the swamp, stands around, and banters good-naturedly if wearily with his partner. Later, when Dick is taken prisoner by the deranged Dr. Eric Vornoff (Bela Lugosi), Martin joins forces with some other cops, including Capt. Robbins (Harvey B. Dunn) and Officer Kelton (Paul Marco), to search the Old Willows Place and the surrounding area. Don Nagel plays a similar cop character in Night of the Ghouls (1959), the direct sequel to Bride, though he's referred to as Crandle in that film. It's reasonable to assume that Martin and Crandle are the same guy: a competent if unremarkable police officer who helps round out the cast.

And now, thanks to author Everett Dudgeon, we have Martin as the central character in his own story. Or half of his own story, anyway. He shares the stage with Paula and the gals from The Violent Years (1956), and the author makes references to numerous other films along the way. Paula, for instance, is a big fan of gangster Vic Brady from Jail Bait (1954), and she and her gals contemplate the pros and cons of working for smut peddler Johnny Ride from The Sinister Urge (1960). In many ways, this story feels like a companion piece to "The Violent Urge" by Brian Carney, which tied some of Ed Wood's crime thrillers together into a "Delinquiverse."

What sets "The Return of Martin Crandle" apart from Carney's story is its supernatural Gothic elements, specifically the use of the Old Willows Place, the weather-beaten mansion where Dr. Eric Vornoff carried out his unspeakable experiments before an atomic explosion brought it all to an end. The large, decaying house magically reappears out of the ether in this story, much like the quaint Scottish village did in Brigadoon (1954). But it took that village a century to reconstitute itself, and the Willows Place manages the same feat in just a few years. So it's more like Microwave Brigadoon or Brigadoon-2-Go.

In all seriousness, Everett Dudgeon is to be congratulated for creating some genuinely spooky atmosphere in this story. The Old Willows Place is a central location in two of Ed Wood's movies, and it's a source of great fascination for all Wood fans. But it's rarely been as imposing or as threatening as it is in this story. Here, it seems like a portal into hell itself.