Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 248: Tor Love Betty (1991)

A semi-obscure 1991 comic book combines two great celebrities of the 1950s.

I feel sorry for the comedians of tomorrow, especially the ones who do celebrity impressions. That job is getting more and more difficult all the time. Eventually, it'll be damned near impossible.

Thanks to advances in technology and an overall shift in the way we consume media, pop culture is becoming homogeneous. And so, too, do our celebrities become homogeneous. And I think that makes them more difficult to caricature. When actors and pop singers become more or less interchangeable, all basically looking and sounding alike, how do you effectively parody them? "Weirdness" is now one of the great sins an artist can commit. Audiences demand predictability, familiarity, and consistency. That's good for algorithms but bad for comedy.

Peter Lorre in Hollywood Steps Out.

It was not always thus. Have you ever seen one of those old Looney Tunes cartoons with cameos by Hollywood celebrities of the 1930s and '40s? MGM, Disney, and even the smaller, independent animation studios did cartoons like these, too, but I remember the Warner Bros. ones best. Examples include Hollywood Steps Out (1941), Malibu Beach Party (1940), and The CooCoo Nut Grove (1936). They show you how distinctive entertainers used to be in the old days. There was no mistaking Mae West, Peter Lorre, Groucho Marx, Edward G. Robinson, or Humphrey Bogart for anyone else.

How did we lose this? I think the rise of television in the 1950s was the beginning of it. Now that entertainers were performing every night in a little box in people's living rooms, rather than on a stage or on the silver screen, they had to tone down their personalities somewhat so as not to be too overwhelming. And so, little by little, pop culture became more even-keeled. Sure, there were reactions against this—think of Tiny Tim on Laugh-In in the late 1960s or the colorful pop stars like Cyndi Lauper and Billy Idol who dominated MTV in the early 1980s—but the overall homogenization process could not be stopped.

The 1990s was the last golden age of quirkiness before the Great Evenness took hold for good. Perhaps dreading where pop culture was headed, hipsters of the era began to dig through the archives in search of oddball celebrities from the past. In an increasingly same-y world, we yearned for something different. (Or something weird, you might say. Hint, hint.) Eccentric filmmakers, musicians, and other wacky celebrities of the past suddenly became beautifully imperfect role models. I don't think it's a coincidence that this was when writer-director Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1924-1978) experienced his second wave of posthumous popularity. This was the era of Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992), Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), and numerous Wood documentaries and VHS rereleases. Eddie represented an era of Old Weird Showbiz that was fading away.

Podcast Tuesday: "Hot Lutheran Love!"

Kate Hudson in the somewhat forgotten 2004 film Raising Helen.

When I sat down to screen Garry Marshall's 2004 romantic comedy Raising Helen for the podcast, I knew virtually nothing about the movie other than its title and the fact that it starred Kate Hudson. I didn't even know about the tragic incident that sets the plot in motion. In other words, I went into the movie as blank as possible.

However, within just a few minutes of pressing play on Raising Helen, I started to suspect where the film was going. Kate plays Helen Harris, an "executive assistant" at a chichi New York modeling agency run by the Anna Wintour-esque Dominique (Helen Mirren). Helen's life is frantic and fast-paced, but she's good at her job and seems to be enjoying herself immensely.

I knew that this couldn't last. By Hollywood law, Helen would have to be tamed over the course of the movie. By the end of the story, she'd either be married or at least in a serious relationship, and she'd probably given a child to raise, too. And if the plot could get her from the city to the suburbs, all the better.

Was I right? Do any or all of these things happen to Helen? Listen to the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast and find out for sure.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 247: Killian H. Gore's Plan 9 from Outer Space Quiz Book (2018)

Tor wants you to answer a few questions.

As Conrad Brooks taught us all in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), "It's tough to find something when you don't know what you're looking for." Which is true. But sometimes, it's also tough to find something when you know exactly what you're looking for. I'll give you an example.

I found this by accident.

If you've ever read one of Shakespeare's plays, you know that his scripts are not formatted like those for modern day stage plays. For one thing, his stage directions are brief, sparse, and very vague. For another thing, his characters often speak in iambic pentameter, so their speeches are formatted like poems. 

I was under the impression—false, it now seems—that there was a version of the Plan 9 script formatted to look like a Shakespearean play. I had a strong memory of such a book existing, and I thought it might make interesting fodder for the blog. It's October, and I wanted to do something suitable for "spooky season." So I searched for it. And searched. And searched. I eventually came to the conclusion that no such book was ever written. I can't find anything remotely like it.

NOTE: After this article was published, reader Ed Goldstein informed me that such a book definitely does exist. It's The Tragicall Historie of Plan the IX (2018) by Ryan D. Smith, and it is indeed a rewrite of Plan 9 in iambic pentameter. There is apparently a filmed performance of the play, also from 2018. The cast includes Dana Gould, Tonjia Atomic, MST3K producer Greg Tally, Jackey Neyman Jones, and others. I do not have a copy of the play or the movie, but they are both candidates for future discussion.

But you know what I did find? Killian H. Gore's self-published Plan 9 from Outer Space Quiz Book (2018). The title tells you exactly what to expect: a collection of trivia questions about Ed Wood's best-known movie. But who is this Killian H. Gore and what caused him to compile such a volume? And could this humble little book actually teach me a thing or two about a movie I've seen dozens of times? I was able to snag a copy from Amazon for only about seven bucks, so I took the risk.

Like many of the hyper-specialized books about Ed Wood that I've read for this blog in recent years, the Plan 9 from Outer Space Quiz Book was print-on-demand, so it arrived extremely quickly. Personally, I love this new publishing model. It allows us to have physical copies of works that might have limited or niche appeal. But Gore's book is also available in a Kindle edition for just 99 cents, should that be a more attractive option to you.

The book runs just over a hundred pages and contains four quizzes in total. The first is a general quiz about Plan 9 consisting of 150 questions. The second is an "out of this world difficult" quiz about Plan 9 with ten additional questions. This is followed by a 25-question quiz about alien invasion movies and a 25-question quiz about zombie movies. Naturally, answer keys are provided for all four quizzes. Gore rounds out the book with an original short sci-fi story called "The Truth Will Astonish Us," which I will discuss later in this review. All in all, pretty decent value for money.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 246: "5 Questions with Bob Blackburn"

Who better to consult on Ed Wood's birthday than Bob Blackburn?

October is Ed Wood's birth month. The director/writer/star of Glen or Glenda (1953) would have turned 101 years old on October 10, 2025. I couldn't just let this milestone pass without adequate fanfare. And so, I bring you the following conversation with the illustrious Bob Blackburn, one of two heirs to the estate of the late Kathy Wood. (That makes him the de facto spokesman for the Ed Wood estate as well.) A second-generation radio industry professional, Bob is also a musician and author. In addition to his 2024 memoir, Kathy Wood & I, he has compiled three indispensable volumes of Ed Wood's magazine work from the 1960s and '70s: Blood Splatters Quickly (2014), Angora Fever (2019), and When the Topic is Sex (2021).

Despite all this, Bob was never a guest on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast during its original run (2021-2023) when it was hosted by the late, much-missed Greg Javer. Bob has certainly given plenty of interviews about Ed Wood over the years, but he somehow never wound up on this particular show. Well, today, we change all that. On this episode, Bob shares some rare items from his collection of Ed Wood memorabilia and answers some general questions about Ed and Kathy. I think it's a fun and informative chat. Enjoy.

Podcast Tuesday: "Straight Outta Genovia"

Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries.

August 2001. It must have happened. There must have been one. The month before everything changed. America's Last Days of Pompeii. 

Thinking back, that was a very busy month for me. That was when I quit my customer service job in Flint and moved to Joliet, Illinois to become a middle school Spanish teacher. It was also the first time in my life I ever had my own apartment and lived totally on my own. (I don't count living in the dorms.)

Yeah, August 2001 was a pivotal time in my life. And yet, for obvious reasons, I barely remember it. Because of... well, you know.

This week on These Days Are Ours, we review a movie from August 2001: Garry Marshall's The Princess Diaries starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews. The lightest of light entertainment. Just the thing for a late summer movie. I hope America enjoyed the holy hell out of it.

But how does it hold up in October 2025? Push play on the podcast below and find out.

Update regarding that 'Happy Days' documentary that I'm in!

Some promotional artwork for TV We Love.

In case you don't follow me on any of my social media accounts, I have some exciting news about the Happy Days documentary that includes an interview with me. The show will air on the CW on Monday, November 10, 2025 at 8:00 EST and 7:00 CST! The title of the series has changed from TV That Changed the World to TV We Love, and it has switched networks from CBS to the CW. That's showbiz, I guess. I'm just happy that it's finally going to air, and I hope you will watch it.

In the meantime, TV We Love will air every Monday night on the CW for the next eight weeks. The show premiered tonight with a look at I Love Lucy. Future episodes will cover Dynasty, Cheers, The Love Boat, The Brady Bunch, and more.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 245: The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen (1999) [PART 3]

Director Steve Apostolof poses with actress Rene Bond, who starred in several of his movies.

It's taken me a while, I realize, but it's finally time to wrap up my look at the 1999 Something Weird compilation tape, The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen, gifted to me by reader Brendon Sibley. What can I say? There was just too much material in The Erotic World to cover in a single article. Or two articles. I spent five years working on a book about Stephen C. Apostolof, and there were things on this tape even I hadn't seen in my research.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 244: The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen (1999) [PART 2]

Steve Apostolof looks over a script, probably an erotic one.

So where were we?

Two weeks ago, I started discussing Something Weird Video's The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen (1999), a compilation of clips from the films of softcore director and frequent Ed Wood collaborator Stephen C. Apostolof (1928-2005). Reader Brendon Sibley sent me a copy of this rare tape, and I was happily making my way through its contents. When we left off, I was talking about Bachelor's Dream (1967), a very obscure short film that began life as some black-and-white test footage that was shot for Orgy of the Dead (1965).

But that was just the opening act! The Erotic World has so much more to offer. After Bachelor's Dream ends, we see some trailers for Steve's non-Ed Wood films: Office Love-In (1968), Motel Confidential (1969), Suburbia Confidential (1966), and College Girls (1968). These were nudity-filled, black-and-white exploitation flicks from Steve's "confidential" phase, when he was busy exposing the seamy side of average, everyday American life. Several of these films feature Steve's most-frequent leading man, Harvey Shain (aka Forman Shane), and his most-frequent leading lady, Marsha Jordan.