Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 224: Mondo Oscenità (1966)

Ed Wood's footage wound up in the strangest places, but few were stranger than this.

In 1962, Italy dropped the bomb. Its name was Mondo Cane aka A Dog's Life, and it had the effect of a nuclear blast on the world of exploitation cinema. 

The first "mondo" film.

This modestly-budgeted travelogue, which purported to depict strange practices and rituals from around the world, became a huge hit with Western audiences thanks mostly to its heady mix of sex and violence. Even the film's catchy theme song, "More," became a pop and jazz standard. ("More than the greatest love the world has known...") Did it matter that numerous sequences in Mondo Cane were staged or manipulated by the film's three directors? Apparently, not much. Thrill-hungry audiences of the '60s flocked to see such scenes as a human woman breastfeeding a piglet. Wouldn't you? Remember, the internet wouldn't be invented for decades.

It's not often that you can say a single film inspired an entire subgenre of cult cinema, but that's exactly what happened in this case. Naturally, the makers of Mondo Cane produced a series of official sequels, ultimately leading to their beyond-insane Addio Zio Tom (1971), but schlockmeisters everywhere were eager to copy the profitable Cane formula and make lurid shockumentaries of their own. Many of these had the word "mondo" right in the title so that audiences would know exactly what they were getting for their money. We were given Mondo Freudo (1966), Mondo Balordo (1964), Mondo Hollywood (1967), and even Russ Meyer's Mondo Topless (1966).

One of the lesser-known examples of the phenomenon is a film called Mondo Oscenità (1966) aka World of Obscenity. Right off the bat, the film's Italian title is bogus, since it's an American production. This demonstrates the across-the-board popularity of Mondo Cane: for a brief period in movie history, American filmmakers were pretending to be Italian! Director Joseph P. Mawra—best known for his work on the kinky, bondage-heavy Olga movies, such as Olga's House of Shame (1964) and Mme. Olga's Massage Parlor (1965)—actually called himself "Carlo Scappine" for this one. A likely-nonexistent producer called "Gino Poluzzo" (with no other credits) is also listed in the main title sequence.

Mondo Oscenità pretends to be a documentary about the history of obscenity in motion pictures. I say "pretends to be" because Joseph P. Mawra is clearly using this film as an excuse to show as much salacious (for the time) material as he can possibly assemble. And to get this thing to feature length, he just throws in whatever scraps of celluloid he had lying around the editing room, including some silent comedy footage that has nothing to do with anything. Fortunately, deep-voiced narrator Joel Holt (billed as "Lou Hopkins") is there to tie it all together with ponderous pronouncements like this:

In the next 75 minutes, we will take you into the world of motion pictures, into a world unfamiliar to most. A world made up of thought, sight, and imagination. A special kind of medium that can transport you into the future and take you back to the past. It is a state of unrealities, where sight, sound, feelings are all too real, where stimulations are aroused, where feelings are raised and lowered according to the thoughts of the director. We will show you what was considered too strong for the public in the early days of the motion picture and what is being viewed today. We will show you scenes from motion pictures that were judged as obscene only a short time ago, scenes that led to the outcry that obscenity in motion pictures was taking over the industry, that this is becoming a world of obscenity.

I'm guessing Mawra was more than a little influenced by Rod Serling. This is essentially The Twilight Zone: After Dark. The above monologue is even accompanied by footage of the stars in space.

What makes Mondo Oscenità of interest to us today is that it includes some otherwise-unused footage from Ed Wood's abandoned film Hellborn (1956). While he was an avid follower of trends in the entertainment industry, Eddie never even attempted to make a "mondo" movie of his own. Some of his nonfiction books and articles, like Drag Trade (1967) and Bloodiest Sex Crimes of History (1967), are written in the same basic spirit as those films, however. In fact, every time Wood writes about the odd sexual practices of Japan, as he does in Drag Trade and several of his magazine articles, he's channeling the spirit of Mondo Cane.

It was reader Brendon Sibley who hipped me to Mondo Oscenità, and I'm grateful he did because this is quite a find. I'd recently compared two different versions of the Hellborn footage, one from a 1993 documentary and one from a 2017 Blu-ray, and found that they contained the exact same footage, only projected at different speeds. In brief, the film alternates between two different groups of juvenile delinquents, one male and the other female, as they commit various crimes and get into fights. In the end, the boys and girls come together for a sort of picnic at Griffith Park. The footage ends with a black-clad hoodlum, played by Conrad Brooks, wandering off into the woods with his date, a curly-haired brunette in an angora sweater. This was the Hellborn I knew, and I thought it was all there was to know. I was dead wrong.

Podcast Tuesday: "But What I Really Want to Do is Direct"

This moment is the culmination of a longtime dream for Garry Marshall.

By the summer of 1982, it looked like Garry Marshall's long and prosperous career in television was slowly winding down. Mork & Mindy had just wrapped, while Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days were obviously in their waning years. Garry had been a writer, producer, and occasional director in that medium for decades, but he was understandably anxious to move on to the next phase of his career: directing feature films.

Fortunately, he got his chance with a wacky ensemble comedy called Young Doctors in Love. Set at the fictional "City Hospital" and partially filmed at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, the film follows the misadventures of some rambunctious young interns over the course of a single, eventful year. The cast Marshall assembled for this movie is astonishing: Michael McKean, Sean Young, Pamela Reed, Taylor Negron, Harry Dean Stanton, Dabney Coleman, Patrick Macnee, a pre-Seinfeld Michael Richards, and many more. This was also the film that established the working relationship between director Marshall and actor Hector Elizondo. And it was all underwritten by ABC Motion Pictures, the filmmaking branch of the TV network that Garry Marshall had served so faithfully in the '70s.

Does any of this add up to a good movie? You can find out by listening to the newest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 223: 'Drown the Devil: A Spiritual Biography of Ed Wood' (2024)

In Drown the Devil, Angel Scott finds the connection between Ed Wood and religion.

Neighbors, said the reverend, he couldnt stay out of these here hell, hell, hellholes right here in Nacogdoches. I said to him, said: You goin to take the son of God in there with ye? And he said: Oh no. No I aint. And I said: Dont you know that he said I will foller ye always even unto the end of the road? 

Well, he said, I aint askin nobody to go nowheres. And I said: Neighbor, you dont need to ask. He’s a goin to be there with ye ever step of the way whether ye ask it or ye dont. I said: Neighbor, you caint get shed of him. Now. Are you going to drag him, him, into that hellhole yonder?

-Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985)

The field of Woodology has now progressed to the point that we are getting books about fairly specific aspects of Ed Wood's life: his military career, his marriage to Kathy Wood, his unproduced screenplays, etc. Of all these, few projects have intrigued me more than Angel Scott's Drown the Devil: A Spiritual Biography of Ed Wood (Bear Manor, 2024). A real-life pastor, Angel has been a vital part of the Ed Wood online fan community for years now, and I knew she was working on a religious-themed book about Wood and his films. Naturally, I was curious to see what she uncovered in her extensive research.

My guess was that this would be another book that used popular culture as a springboard to talk about matters of theology and philosophy. I was thinking specifically of The Tao of Pooh (1982) by Benjamin Hoff, The Gospel According to Peanuts (1965) by Robert L. Short, and the popular anthology The Simpsons and Philosophy (2001). So has Angel Scott written The Tao of Wood or The Gospel According to St. Eddie? Not exactly. While there is some discussion of the religious content in Wood's films, particularly Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), this is not primarily an interpretive or analytical book. For readers seeking something like that, I'd recommend Ed Wood, Mad Genius (2009) by Rob Craig.

Instead, this book is exactly what its subtitle proclaims it to be: a spiritual biography. In Drown the Devil, Angel Scott tells the story of Ed Wood's life and career, from his birth in Poughkeepsie, NY in 1924 to his death in Hollywood in 1978. We hit all the expected stops on the tour. Eddie works as a movie usher in his hometown, serves a stint in the Marines during World War II, comes home after the war, heads out to California, makes some infamous horror and sci-fi movies for a few years, and finally descends into pornography before dying penniless at 54. Along the way, he develops a serious, crippling addiction to alcohol and has at least three significant romantic relationships, two of which lead to marriage. 

Drown the Devil examines the role that religion played in these events. To put it another way, where is God in the strange, sad story of Edward D. Wood, Jr.? To be honest, it's not a question I'd spent a great deal of time pondering before now. When I think of directors whose films frequently grapple with spiritual matters, my mind goes to Martin Scorsese, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Ingmar Bergman. While Ed Wood's movies are not entirely godless—indeed, Bela Lugosi's character in Glen or Glenda might be a stand-in for the Almighty—I wouldn't exactly say religion was one of the director's main motifs. Ultimately, each one of us has to deal with God in some way, whether it's to follow Him, scorn Him, or deny His very existence. So it does make sense to examine Ed's life and work from a religious standpoint.

As I mentioned earlier, Angel Scott did an admirable amount of research for this book, and some of her most interesting findings occur in the early chapters that deal with Eddie's youth in Poughkeepsie. I really had no idea of his Methodist upbringing or the fact that he served as chaplain for the Poughkeepsie chapter of the Marine Corps League for a year after his military service ended. So Ed Wood was much more grounded in religion than I had previously assumed. I was also very intrigued by an extended comparison of Glen or Glenda to Rowland V. Lee's I Am Suzanne (1933), a now-obscure romantic melodrama about the relationship between a dancer (Lilian Harvey) and a struggling puppeteer (Gene Raymond).

The heart of Drown the Devil, accounting for about a third of the book's total length, is a very detailed telling of the making and distribution of Ed Wood's most famous film, Grave Robbers from Outer Space aka Plan 9 from Outer Space. As Ed's fans know, Plan 9 was partially financed by the First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills, and the relationship between the director and the church was not always harmonious. The unlikely story (a Baptist church making a cheap horror film?) has already been told in numerous books and articles and was played largely for laughs in the Tim Burton-directed biopic Ed Wood (1994). One particularly memorable scene has Eddie and several members of his oddball entourage being baptized in a swimming pool. In the published version of the Ed Wood screenplay, writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski talk about how they handled this aspect of the plot:

We had to turn Plan 9 from Outer Space into a climax. After much thought, the solution hit us, simple and elegant. The bad guys would become the Baptist moneymen, who want nothing more than a coherent film. All they are asking for is what any rational person would: continuity and logic. It is irony on top of irony. In the world of Ed, this impudence makes them villains. How dare they compromise him!

So it seems that the biopic was more interested in telling an entertaining, sympathetic story than in being strictly truthful to history. Fair enough. I don't fault the screenwriters for that.

For this book, Angel Scott has combed through the archives, including some decades-old church newsletters, to discover the truth of the Plan 9/First Baptist saga. It turns out that the story is more nuanced and complicated than I had previously suspected. Yes, Eddie got into contact with the Baptist church through his then-landlord, J. Edward Reynolds, who was a member of the congregation. And, yes, Ed joined the congregation himself in order to curry favor with the church's leadership. But Scott's book reveals that Ed Wood was not the opportunistic carpetbagger you might assume him to be. He attended services at First Baptist for two years and even penned a pageant for the organization, though no scripts have survived. Meanwhile, the infamous baptism of Wood's coterie had a surprisingly long-lasting effect on some of them. And J. Edward Reynolds, essentially a comic character in Ed Wood, emerges from Drown the Devil as a tragic figure with some of the same demons that ultimately claimed Eddie himself.

After directing The Sinister Urge (1960), his last ostensibly "normal" film, Ed Wood spent most of the rest of his life working prodigiously in the adult entertainment industry. He penned dozens of pornographic novels and wrote many short stories and articles for nudie magazines. He also worked on both hardcore and softcore films as a writer, director, and occasional actor. Ed's "porno" work constitutes a major part of his canon, perhaps even the majority of it. So what do we do with all this as we try to make sense of Eddie's life? Some books and documentaries about Wood either marginalize or ignore this material, while others revel in it. Scott takes a moderate stance, giving Ed's adult work ample space in the manuscript without wallowing in the truly unpleasant details. She acknowledges the reality of Eddie's career prospects in the 1960s and '70s while leaving him with at least a modicum of dignity.

As I made my way through Drown the Devil, naturally I reflected on my own complicated history with religion. I was raised in a traditional Roman Catholic family and attended weekly masses until I was in my late twenties. My faith was greatly shaken by my mother's death when I was in high school, but I continued to go through the motions of being a Catholic for roughly another decade after she passed away. As of 2012, I was calling myself an atheist, even though I never actually stopped praying. Today, I honestly don't know where I stand. There are days when God seems impossible to deny and others when He seems impossible to believe. I can't say that Ed Wood's movies have shed a great deal of light on the matter for me, but Angel Scott has certainly given me some new questions to ponder as I screen Plan 9 for the umpteenth time.

Drown the Devil may be purchased from Amazon here or directly from the publisher here. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 222: Ed Wood and Admit One Video Presentations (Part 2)

Ed Wood (top row, center) stars in Glen or Glenda, as released by Admit One Video Presentations.

Last week, we got to know Admit One Video Presentations, the offbeat Toronto-based company that distributed Ed Wood's movies in Canada in the 1980s. Like numerous other companies from that era, Admit One acquired vintage low-budget sci-fi and horror films and released them profitably for home viewing, much to the delight of the emerging "bad movie" cult. You might think of them as Canada's answer to Rhino Home Video or Something Weird Video. To my knowledge, Admit One put out their own versions of all six of Ed Wood's directorial efforts from Glen or Glenda (1953) to The Sinister Urge (1960). If eBay listings are to be believed, these releases are now pricey collector's items.

I was unaware of Admit One until recently, when reader Brandon Sibley brought the company and its products to my attention. To me, the most intriguing of the company's tapes is their release of Glen or Glenda because it gives us yet another slightly different cut of the film. In the past, I've explained how Glenda was released under numerous titles and was edited to various lengths, often to appease the censors. To summarize, the main edits I'm familiar with are:

• The Rhino cut. The longest, least-censored edit I've seen, if not necessarily the best looking or sounding. It was released on VHS tape by Rhino Home Video and was included on the two-disc set Ed Wood: A Salute to Incompetence (2007) from Passport International Entertainment. The film's title card is obviously, clumsily doctored. Whatever real title appeared onscreen has been blurred out, and the title "GLEN OR GLENDA" has been pasted over it. I believe this change was made by distributor Wade Williams, who did something similar to Night of the Ghouls (1959) aka Revenge of the Dead.

• The Image Entertainment cut. The most common version I've seen on the market. This is a sharper, cleaner transfer of the film with less static on the audio track, but it's plagued by numerous omissions, including a scene in which a homosexual man (Bruce Spencer) hits on an unfriendly straight man (Conrad Brooks). The dialogue also deletes certain references to God and sex. Some shots, including part of Glen's nightmare, have been trimmed for pacing reasons. Image's cut is the one used for the colorized version of Glen or Glenda and was also the one Rob Craig consulted for Ed Wood, Mad Genius (2009). It, too, has the doctored title card.

• The AGFA cut. The most recent edition of the film and the one that has provoked the most angry reactions from Ed Wood fans. This transfer from the American Genre Film Archive features dramatically brighter, crisper images than we've ever seen before, but it is also easily the shortest, most censored cut of the movie on the market. It's missing many sequences, some of which are iconic and crucial (e.g. the buffalo stampede) and also reorders certain scenes, especially during Glen's nightmare. The film features a unique credit sequence, including a title card that incorrectly identifies the movie as Twisted Lives. 

Podcast Tuesday: "Coping with the Happy Days Musical (Act 2)"

The Dialtones sing one of their many, many songs in Happy Days: A New Musical.

I watch a fair amount of product review videos on YouTube, and recently, a channel I follow called Freakin' 2 tested out some novelty Easter candies. Among the items being reviewed were those Dr. Pepper-flavored Peeps you may have seen at the supermarket. I was especially interested in these because I'd tried them myself a few weeks ago and found them to be a decent facsimile of the popular beverage. But I don't really drink a whole lot of Dr. Pepper, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

The host of the Freakin' 2 video reached this conclusion: "I think occasional fans of Dr. Pepper will probably like it, but purists may not be convinced."

Well, friends, that's exactly my reaction to Happy Days: A New Musical, the show we're reviewing this week on These Days Are Ours. If you've seen a handful of Happy Days episodes and have a basic grasp of the characters and their relationships, the 2007 stage musical will probably be satisfactory to you. It's pleasant enough and doesn't overstay its welcome. But if Happy Days is burned into your brain because you've reviewed all 255 episodes, plus the animated series, the stage version may seem slightly "off" to you.

In other words, Happy Days: A New Musical is the Dr. Pepper Peeps of musicals. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Listen to our review of Act 2 and find out!

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 221: Ed Wood and Admit One Video Presentations (Part 1)

This quirky company brought Ed Wood's movies to the Great White North.

The home video gold rush of the 1980s and '90s was a boon to director Ed Wood, even though he was already dead by then. By pure serendipity, the book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980) made Eddie and his films famous at the same time people were starting to buy VCRs for their homes. Naturally, those folks needed plenty of prerecorded videotapes to play on those expensive new machines of theirs, and numerous distribution companies popped up to supply those tapes. Ed Wood's movies certainly were not left out in the cold. His best known works, including Glen or Glenda (1953), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), were released on tape numerous times by numerous labels.

In the 1980s, a Canadian company called Admit One Video Presentations produced its own line of Ed Wood tapes, perhaps hoping to capitalize on the Golden Turkey publicity. Very little evidence of Admit One survives today, apart from some Ebay listings for their products, but they released editions of numerous sci-fi and horror films: Robot Monster (1953), Reefer Madness (1936), Spider Baby (1967), The Horror of Party Beach (1964), Chained for Life (1952), Satan's Satellites (1958), She Demons (1958), Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), Monster from Green Hell (1957), The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy (1958), White Zombie (1952), Lost Planet Airmen (1951), and Bowery at Midnight (1942), which came paired with Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946). 

What concerns us, however, are Admit One's releases of Ed Wood's movies. It was reader Brendon Sibley who brought the company to my attention. As far as I can tell, Admit One put out its own editions of Plan 9 from Outer Space, Bride of the Monster, and Glen or Glenda plus Jail Bait (1954), Night of the Ghouls aka Revenge of the Dead (1959), and The Sinister Urge (1960). In case you're counting, that's all six of the feature films Ed directed during his classic period. You must admit that's a very decent Ed Wood catalog, especially considering the Tim Burton biopic was a decade away and Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) hadn't even been published. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 220: "Never Too Late—Never Too Soon" (1973)

This article captures Ed Wood in his "Cliff Clavin" mode.

Ed Wood died less than four years before the TV sitcom Cheers debuted on NBC in September 1982. Isn't that wild? They seem like they belong to two very different eras of popular culture, but they were closer than you'd guess. In fact, I think Eddie would have been a great character on the show, had it taken place in L.A. instead of Boston. From his writing, I gather that Ed was contemptuous of "beer bars" and "beer joints," but the man clearly loved to drink and to socialize, and a bar like the one in Cheers would have allowed him to do both. (Fun fact: Eddie's last apartment was only two miles from the Paramount soundstage where Cheers was filmed.)

In the 1960s, director Joe Robertson owned a bar in North Hollywood called the Surf Girl, and Ed Wood was a regular there, sometimes even showing up in drag. I bet everyone there knew his name. I can imagine a bedraggled Eddie coming into the bar after a hard day—his wig crooked, his makeup smeared—and everyone yelling, "ED!!!!"

In the past, I've compared Ed Wood to Cliff Clavin, the motormouthed, know-it-all mailman John Ratzenberger played so ably on Cheers. I think Eddie considered himself something of an expert on numerous topics, and he was not one to keep his opinions to himself. This side of his personality comes through in his writing occasionally. I've also referred to this as Eddie's "professorial mode" in which he aims to dazzle us with his knowledge. And this week, we encounter another sterling example of this phenomenon.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 219: Exploring Ed Wood's contributions to Boyplay magazine (1973)

Two gentlemen frolic in the pages of Boyplay.

Do you have a "good" pair of scissors in your home, one that cuts more cleanly and assuredly than the others? How about a "good" flashlight that you always reach for whenever there's a blackout? Perhaps in your closet is a "good" pair of jeans that fits you just right, even when you've cheated on your diet a little. Chances are, if you own multiples of any item, one always becomes your favorite, simply because it works so reliably.

Here's to the "good" things in life.

For publisher Bernie Bloom—who oversaw a multimedia porn empire in the 1960s and '70s—Ed Wood was definitely his "good" writer. Bernie published a wide variety of adult books and magazines in those days under such banners as Pendulum, Calga, and Gallery (all the same company), and Eddie was his man-of-all-work. If Bernie needed text of basically any description, Ed Wood could provide it, quickly and dependably. This could mean full-length novels or nonfiction books, but it could also mean short stories, editorials, or even photo captions. When Bernie's son Noel got into making adult features and loops, he also hired Eddie frequently, but that's a whole other story.

The point is, in the final decade of his life, Ed Wood wrote a massive amount of text for Bernie Bloom. Some of that was written under his own name, making it easy enough to spot. Some was written under well-known pseudonyms like Dick Trent and Ann Gora. That's fairly easy to identify, too. Eddie himself kept track of this kind of material on his own resumes. But, once you start delving into this subject, you start to realize that a great deal of the Wood text in the Bloom publications is not attributed in any way; sometimes it's not even titled.

One thing (among many) that the late Greg Javer taught me is that, if a Calga/Pendulum/Gallery magazine contains a known Ed Wood article, it probably also contains some other, uncredited Wood text, too. As I told you in a recent blog post, I purchased a copy of Gallery Press' Boyplay magazine, vol. 2, no.2 from May/June 1973. This is the first vintage adult magazine I have ever purchased, and having a physical copy of such a publication gives me a new perspective on the world Ed Wood inhabited in the 1970s. 

Podcast Tuesday: "Coping with the Happy Days Musical (Act 1)"

The happy, happy cast of Happy Days: A New Musical.

When Howard Ashman and Alan Menken adapted Roger Corman's dark comedy Little Shop of Horrors (1960) as a stage musical in 1982, it was rather a novelty in the theater world. Stage shows based on movies weren't exactly unknown back then—think of Sondheim's A Little Night Music (1973), based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)—but generally the adaptation process went the other direction. Stage musicals became movies, not the other way around.

Nowadays, due to the success of movie-based shows like The Producers (2001), Hairspray (2002), and Spamalot (2004), it seems like every fondly-remembered pop culture property gets its own theatrical musical eventually. It's not surprising at all that Happy Days (1974-1984) would also get this treatment, especially since the long-running sitcom was already heavily influenced by the stage show Grease (1971). And so, in 2007, Happy Days: A New Musical debuted to generally positive reviews. It never reached Broadway but has become a rather popular choice for high schools and community theater troupes.

A few years ago, my cohost suggested we cover the Happy Days musical on These Days Are Ours, but I've been putting it off for some reason. Now that we've finished all eleven seasons of the sitcom and both seasons of the cartoon, it feels like it's finally time to cover the stage show, which has a book by Garry Marshall and songs by Paul Williams. That's an impressive pedigree. Does the show live up to it? This week on the podcast, we try to answer that question as we review Act 1.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 218: What motivates Bela Lugosi's character in Plan 9?

Never is a long time, as Bela Lugosi proves in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957).

When I think about the movies I've seen the most times, a few titles come immediately to mind, including The Wizard of Oz (1939), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), This is Spinal Tap (1984), and The Big Lebowski (1998). Among Ed Wood's movies, however, the clear winner is Plan 9 from Outer Space aka Graverobbers from Outer Space (1957). I first sat through this notorious sci-fi horror chiller in October 1992 as part of a four-film Ed Wood marathon in Flint, Michigan. Since then, I've probably seen Plan 9 theatrically about a half-dozen more times. At home—through VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming—I've screened it dozens of times in whole or in part, often while doing research for this series.

In short, I've spent many hours of my life with this odd little film. And yet, all these decades later, it may still have things to teach me. I'll give you an example.

Critic Harry Medved, who helped give both Ed Wood and Plan 9 from Outer Space some measure of immortality with his book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), recently devoted an episode of his PBS documentary series Locationland to the making of Plan 9. Among the filming sites Medved visited was 15129 Lakewood St. in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles. Back in the 1950s, this charming domicile was the residence of actor-wrestler Tor Johnson, who played Inspector Daniel Clay in the film. Johnson allowed Ed Wood to use the site as the home of Bela Lugosi's unnamed character, generally referred to as Old Man or Ghoul Man. In Plan 9, we see a grief-stricken Lugosi—still reeling from the death of his young wife (Vampira)—smelling the roses outside the house before wandering into traffic and getting run over.

"Confused by his great loss," intones narrator Criswell, "the old man left that home, never to return again."

Except Lugosi totally returns again just 23 minutes later, as proven by that aforementioned episode of Locationland. When Harry Medved visited the house in Sylmar, the owner graciously let him film the outside. But Medved and his guest, comedian and writer Dana Gould, wanted to film the back porch of the house as well, because this is where Ed Wood shot the scene in which Bela's character, having been resurrected from the grave as a zombie, enters his former home, now owned by pilot Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott) and his wife Paula (Mona McKinnon). Jeff's away when Bela arrives, so Paula is all by herself and quite vulnerable when this strange figure suddenly appears in her bedroom.

Even though I've been watching Plan 9 for decades, it took Locationland to make me realize that the Trents are living in Lugosi's character's former home and must have moved into the place shortly after he died. Jeff's coworker, sassy stewardess Edie (Norma McCarty), comments that the house is too close to the local cemetery, "I tried to get you kids to not buy too near one of those things," she opines. "We get there soon enough as it is." She also says Jeff's house is "quiet alright, like a tomb." Jeff is rightfully concerned that the police keep showing up at the cemetery for unknown reasons. What exactly is going on there?

We soon find out what's happening at that cemetery, and it's more bizarre than we could have possibly guessed. Aliens from a faraway planet, represented by the arrogant Eros (Dudley Manlove) and the more pragmatic Tanna (Joanna Lee), are using their "electrode guns" to resurrect some recently deceased earthlings, including both Lugosi and Lugosi's wife. This is all part of a larger campaign to strike fear in the hearts of the human race and thus deter us from creating a weapon called "Solaronite" that will destroy the entire universe. Got all that? 

The aliens' plan is quite convoluted and doesn't come close to working. But they do manage to bring Lugosi back to "simulated life" for a short while. Once resurrected, he is more like a traditional obedient "voodoo zombie" rather than the cannibalistic, aggressive zombies we know from the George Romero films, starting with Night of the Living Dead (1968). Eros and Tanna can control the zombies to some extent, but Lugosi is apparently allowed to explore the world on his own for a while when he's revived. And where does he choose to go first? Right back to his old house.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 217: Some more info about Ed Wood's "TV" novels

Ed Wood wrote two very similar novels late in his career.

If you've been following this blog, you know that I recently reviewed two of Ed Wood's rather obscure gay porn novels from the 1970s: Diary of a Transvestite Hooker (1973) and TV Lust (1977), both credited to his "Dick Trent" pseudonym. Technically, Diary is one of Ed's "nonfiction" books, since it supposedly contains the true-life reminiscences of an actual gay prostitute in Hollywood. However, since the prostitute in question ("Randy") is totally imaginary and his memories utterly bogus, I consider the book just another of Ed's novels. Either way, Diary is mainly an opportunity for Ed to indulge in his love of women's clothing and describe various outfits in fetishistic detail. TV Lust contains much of the same.

A Wood twofer.

The reason I reviewed Diary of a Transvestite Hooker in the first place is that a reader named Leonard Johnson mailed me a bootleg reprint from Amazon that he no longer wanted in his collection. Somehow, having a physical copy in hand (rather than just another PDF on a screen) made me think about the book for the first time in quite a while and consider it as an individual work. Once I'd written extensively about Diary of a Transvestite Hooker, it only felt right to review its little sister, TV Lust, since those two books are so similar thematically. They were even published as a twofer in 2009 under the title Wood on TV by Ramble House. How could I break up such a perfect set?

Side note: When I first bought a copy of Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) about 30 years ago, I was so unschooled in the ways of porn that I didn't even know "TV" was slang for "transvestite." I figured that TV Lust was about the proliferation of sex on television or something similar. Ed Wood was known to watch hours and hours of television, so it's not an entirely far-fetched notion.

Anyhow, in my review of Diary of a Transvestite Hooker, I noted that my bootleg edition contained the full text of the book as well as the photo captions but was missing the actual photographs from the original 1973 paperback Well, as usual, the ever-reliable James Pontolillo swooped in to rescue me. Not only did he have the pictures, he had some trivia to go along with them. Here are two pics from Diary, supposedly depicting the book's subject on the job.

Randy conducts a typical transaction. Note the john's plaid pants.

Due to the obvious signage, you can easily see that these photographs were taken on the 7000 block of Hollywood Boulevard, near the Hollywood Walk of Fame. More specifically, in the background, you'll spot a business called The London Shop. According to James, this was "housed in the ground level of the Roosevelt-Hollywood Hotel." The Roosevelt is still very much in business, but The London Shop has since gone the way of all flesh.

The world's ugliest?

As it happens, I do have the photos from TV Lust in my collection. I didn't comment on them in my review because I wanted to focus solely on the text of the book, which may well be the last Ed Wood novel published in the author's lifetime. In Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2001), David C. Hayes described the pictures thusly:

The novel is illustrated with photos of the world's ugliest transvestite in some really awful poses.

Ouch. I feel that Hayes may have been experiencing some burnout by the time he got to TV Lust, having worked his way through many Wood books in a row, and this may have clouded his judgment somewhat when it came time to write his review. Once again, James Pontolillo had some insights to offer on the book's mysterious cover model:

The model featured in TV Lust (1977) went variously by the names Dean Noel and Dena Noel and appeared in only one photoset, apparently originating in 1975. Contrary to the TV Lust cover banner proclaiming “Exclusive Photos,” all of the book's photos came from this photoset, portions of which were first published in Female Mimics magazine some two years earlier. Various pictures of Dean/Dena were published from 1975-1985 in a variety of East and West Coast adult fetish magazines (Female Mimics, Guys in Drag, Ladies by Choice, More She-Males, Transsexuals) and novels (Transvestite Bride, Transvestite Housewife – both by Star Distributors).

Thanks again to James for providing some interesting background information on these striking photographs.

Podcast Tuesday: "The Top 5 Episodes of The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang"

Scenes from various episodes of the '80s animated series The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.

Rather like Joanie Loves Chachi, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang occupies a place of infamy in the Fonzieverse. Why did we even need an animated version of Happy Days? Why does it feature a talking dog and a "future chick" with magic powers? Why are the characters traveling through time in a flying saucer? The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang seems like another example of the Happy Days franchise completely selling out and betraying its own origins as a sweet, simple show about 1950s nostalgia. File it alongside that time Fonzie jumped over a shark in Season 5.

But, over the course of doing These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast since 2018, I've learned a few surprising things. Joanie Loves Chachi, though totally disposable, is a competent, occasionally amusing sitcom. The "jump the shark" episode is actually a lot of fun if you don't take Happy Days seriously (and you shouldn't). And even The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang has its redeeming qualities.

This week, my cohost and I go over our respective picks for the Top 5 episodes of the animated series, and we talk about our overall impressions of the show and its characters. It'd be awfully nice if you would join us.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 216: TV Lust (1977)

For what might be his last novel, Ed Wood returned to familiar territory.

Fans can never agree which of Ed Wood's movies qualify as his "first" and "last." Admittedly, there are a lot of factors to weigh here. Do the films in question still have to be extant today? Does it matter if they were never completed or released in Ed's lifetime? Furthermore, are we only considering his directing jobs, or should we take Ed's numerous credits as a producer, actor, screenwriter, and assistant director into account as well? It all depends on your definitions and your parameters.

Was this the end for Ed Wood?

Similar confusion surrounds Ed Wood's "first" and "last" novels. To the best of my knowledge, the earliest surviving Wood novel we have today is Casual Company: The Laugh of the Marines (1948), but in interviews, Eddie alluded to a few early manuscripts, including The Sunset Murders and The Inconvenient Corpse, that have not yet resurfaced. If one of those is found, it may supplant Casual Company as Ed Wood's literary debut. As for his last novel, the bibliography in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) ends with TV Lust (1977), a gay porn paperback that Eddie wrote for Eros Goldstripe under his most-used pseudonym, Dick Trent. The guidebooks Muddled Mind: The Collected Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2001) and Ed Wood's Sleaze Paperbacks (2013) likewise end their lists of Wood novels with TV Lust.

I cannot say with 100% certainty that TV Lust is the final full-length literary effort of Edward D. Wood, Jr. But it certainly arrived very late in Eddie's life. The author was in the end stages of alcoholism by the time it came out, and his most productive years were behind him. I think, when we ask about the first and last works of any artist in any medium, what we really want to know is: Where were they at the beginning of their career and where were they at the end of it? By those standards, TV Lust is a fitting farewell to Eddie's writing career. While Casual Company gave us a snapshot of twentysomething Eddie at the outset of his career, TV Lust shows where that career had taken him in three decades: straight into the gutter.

At first glance, TV Lust feels like a mere rehash of Killer in Drag aka Black Lace Drag (1963), the lurid, violent novel that truly marked the beginning of Eddie's prolific career in adult paperbacks. (For what it's worth, the bibliography in Nightmare of Ecstasy starts with Killer in Drag.) Once again, in TV Lust, Ed tells the story of an androgynous, cross-dressing young man, in this case Chris/Christine, who becomes a hired killer and makes some good money before his luck inevitably runs out. In Muddled Mind, author David C. Hayes is offhandedly dismissive of the novel due to its perceived absence of originality and flair. He writes:

The rigors of writing smut were definitely telling on Wood at this point. The rehashed plot of the transvestite hitman certainly wasn’t original this time around, and the usual colorful characters are almost nonexistent. The flair that made some of his other novels and films bearable, even through a thin plot and the strange grammar, was noticeably absent from TV Lust. It seems as though Ed Wood had finally given up.

As I've made my way through the Wood novels over the course of the last decade, I've found myself agreeing with Hayes less and less, and this is definitely one of those times when I feel his review is not terribly accurate or helpful. Hayes' problem may be that he chose to read too many of Wood's books in too short a timeframe. I've been there myself. Once you get to TV Lust, you start to feel like a bloated contender in the final round of an eating contest, forcing yourself to take just one more bite but hardly being excited about doing so. 

While TV Lust will never be one of my favorite Wood novels, I see no evidence indicating that Ed Wood had "given up" on anything when he wrote it. It's the kind of story that he might have told at any point in his writing career, at least from the '60s onward. With the benefit of hindsight, knowing the author's remaining time on earth was short, we can see this book as Ed exploring his career-long obsessions—women's clothing, death, booze, prostitution, etc.—one last time. Along the way, the author even trots out some of his classic phrases, like "youthful boobs," "sweater girl," "swap spits," and "love object." It's like all these classic Woodian tropes are taking their curtain call. Besides, you can flip to pretty much any page in this novel and find examples of Ed Wood's beautifully tortured writing style. Here's an evocative passage from Chapter Five as the protagonist deals with his father's death:

He got up from the bed and crossed to a chair which was near the window. There wasn’t much to see beyond, but he stared into space … a starless space …the great black beyond. … that’s where his father was … out there somewhere in eternity … he’d never come back. … he’d never be able to tell what he had thought at that moment of recognition, that he had sired a pup which was neither boy or girl.

TV Lust is filled with passages like that, so I'm not sure what Hayes means when he says the book lacks "flair." From where I stand, it has plenty of Ed Wood's unmistakable style. No other author could (or would) have written this.

When I reviewed Diary of a Transvestite Hooker (1973) a couple of weeks ago, I noted that Ed Wood must have been more sober and coherent than usual when he wrote it, because the book largely tells the main character's story in a straightforward, linear fashion. TV Lust, in contrast, is one of Ed Wood's rambling, Proustian novels. Most of the book is taken up with flashbacks that Chris/Christine is having while preparing to carry out a hit. Through these detailed memories, we learn quite a bit about the character's previous life: how he started cross-dressing as an adolescent, how this habit led to a rift with his wealthy father, how he got involved with the sex film industry, and how he eventually became a hitman for the syndicate. Ultimately, because of these extensive flashbacks, Chris becomes one of the more well-rounded and fully-dimensional characters in the Wood canon.

A Station of the Cross.

Hayes complains that TV Lust lacks "the usual colorful characters" that we find in Ed Wood's other novels. Again, I'd point out that Chris himself is given a surprising amount of depth in the novel. We follow him from his early days in the small town of Grandview, where he has his first, fumbling sexual encounters. After a brief, traumatic stint in college, he transitions into the professional world, working as a secretary and living completely as a woman. It's the secretarial job that becomes the unlikely springboard to his criminal career. Above all, what seems to motivate him is his total obsession with women's clothing. When he schemes to get his hands on an angora sweater, it's like a junkie scheming how to get his next fix.

Along the way, as he races toward the inevitable, Chris encounters any number of memorable characters. Early on, for example, we meet Chris' fun-loving, hard-drinking older sister, Shirley—what, you thought we were getting through an Ed Wood novel without a Shirley?—who at first enables her brother's cross-dressing but then disowns him when he takes it too far. Then, there is Tiny, a vivacious and outgoing bisexual woman who takes a keen interest in Chris after they meet at work. Even more intriguing is Tiny's fashionable, mysterious, cross-dressing brother Richard aka Regina, who leads Chris into a life of crime, becomes his lover, then betrays him. Naturally, we have to have a few truly unsavory characters in every Ed Wood book, and TV Lust is no exception. Besides Richard, the heavies here include Talley, Richard's thuggish college roommate, and Solly, an overweight, cigar-chomping pornographer with possible mob connections.

More than anything, reading TV Lust took me back to those Catholic masses that my parents made me sit through, week after week, when I was a child. Along the walls of the church were displays showing the Stations of the Cross, and I spent hours studying these bas-relief vignettes of Christ's suffering and death: "Jesus Falls the First Time," "Jesus Falls a Second Time," "Jesus Speaks to the Holy Women," and so on. Well, TV Lust is like Ed Wood's Stations of the Cross. We get all the classic Woodian moments: "Chris Trades Clothes With an Adventurous Local Girl," "Chris Gets Caught in Drag by His Conservative Father," "Chris Becomes Estranged from His Entire Family," "Chris Dresses Like a French Maid While Being Whipped by His Favorite Prostitute," "Chris Makes His First Porno Film," and finally, "Chris Gets Killed in an Alley."

Come to think of it, maybe there's some special significance to the lead character's name: Chris/Christine. If TV Lust is meant to be Wood's twisted, degraded version of the Christ story, complete with its own cognates of Judas Iscariot and Mary Magdalene, that makes it one of the most intriguing novels he ever wrote.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 215: "Zeus and His Lovers" (1973)

Zeus was a horny bastard, as Ed Wood understood all too well.

I've covered dozens of Ed Wood's short stories and articles over the years, but I've never owned any of the vintage adult magazines in which they were originally published a half-century or more ago. Most of the short pieces that I've reviewed on this blog have come from the three marvelous Wood anthologies assembled by Bob Blackburn between 2014 and 2022. The magazines Ed Wood worked on during the 1960s and '70s have become very expensive on the secondary market—well out of my price range—and I'm grateful to Bob for buying dozens of them so that Ed's work can be reprinted and enjoyed by fans today.  A few more of Ed's articles have been sent my way by generous readers, typically as PDFs or JPGs. Those were much appreciated as well.

I now own this exact magazine.

Recently, though, reader and podcaster Rob Huffman let me know that a copy of the May/June 1973 issue of Gallery Press' Boy Play was available online for a stunningly low price, and I couldn't resist. The Nixon-era gay porn magazine contained one verified short story credited to Ed Wood, but based on past conversations with Greg Javer, I knew that Eddie probably wrote multiple pieces for that same issue. Sure enough, when the copy of Boy Play arrived in my mailbox a couple of weeks later, I found Ed's unmistakable writing style throughout the entire issue. My preliminary diagnosis is that Eddie wrote every last word in it, including the unsigned editorial at the beginning. Hell, he may have written the copy in the ads!

Would you believe it took me this long to realize that Boy Play is a mere reversal of Playboy, the most famous adult magazine ever published in America? Funny how swapping those two syllables makes all the difference in the world.

I'll probably end up writing multiple blog posts about this one magazine. For now, though, I'd like to concentrate on the one short story in this issue that Ed wrote under his own name. It's called "Zeus and His Lovers," and the title gives you a good indication of its contents.

The story: "Zeus and His Lovers" (aka "Zeus... and His Lovers"), originally published in Boy Play, vol. 2, no. 2, May/June 1973. Credited to Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Synopsis: Zeus, king of the Greek gods, is happily married to Hera. They have an extremely active and mutually satisfying sex life. In addition, Zeus has numerous mistresses, a fact he does not hide from Hera. However, there is still something bothering him. He feels tremendous pressure to compete sexually with the other male gods, and it seems that all of them have taken young boys as lovers. Zeus is the only one who hasn't.

Zeus and Hera have a marathon lovemaking session. In the afterglow, the god and goddess discuss Zeus' sexual dilemma. The other gods have definitely noticed that he doesn't have a boy lover, and they're starting to talk. There's even a popular "epigram" about Zeus that's going around. Hera tells her husband that she supports him totally in whatever he does and would not be hurt if he took a young male lover. Zeus tells her he already has a boy picked out: a beautiful mortal named Ganymede, who will be the new cupbearer to the gods.

Wood trademarks: mythology (cf. "Thor and His Magic Hammer"); the word "lovely" (cf. Glen or Glenda, many others); heavy use of ellipses and italics; sheer material; supposedly "new" things that are not really new (cf. Glenda); references to characters' body temperatures; pink clouds; kaleidoscope; androgyny; ancient Greece (cf. "The Greeks Had a Word For It," "Sappho Revisited").

Excerpt:

"It is not for me to say what you should do, Zeus. It is only that I must serve you. You must do as you see fit. And if that is the fad, then you should most certainly investigate the cause for the fad and find out what enjoyment might be captured in the tender young bodies of boys."

Reflections: Back in 2022, the late, great Greg Javer and I reviewed an Ed Wood story from 1973 called "Thor and His Magic Hammer." As its title suggests, this strange little fable explores the sex life of the Norse god of thunder, specifically how a mortal woman named Andralia gives Thor a few pointers in the bedroom and makes him a better lover. "Magic Hammer" originally appeared in the May/June 1973 issue of Gallery Press' Goddess. That makes it an obvious counterpart to "Zeus and His Lovers": same publisher, same release date, similar subject matter. Eddie must've been going through a mythology phase in 1973. Or maybe the subject was always on his mind. Remember that Glen or Glenda (1953) makes an incongruous reference to Morpheus, god of sleep.

In hindsight, it's not difficult to see what attracted Ed to this strange, often disturbing material. Greek mythology is rife with loathsome and depraved behavior, much of it sexual in nature, including instances of adultery, rape, incest, and pedophilia. This is the stuff of trashy, exploitative fiction, exactly the kind that Ed Wood wrote. The fact that the Greek gods are capable of supernatural acts, such as turning into animals, only aids them in their debauchery. Their perversion truly knows no bounds.

While the story of Zeus and Ganymede inspired artists for centuries, it seems today like a textbook case of predatory sexual behavior.  According to the myth, Zeus was so taken with this beautiful adolescent boy that he took the form of an eagle, swooped down to earth, grabbed Ganymede, and carried him back to Mount Olympus. There, Ganymede indeed became the cupbearer to the gods, just as it says in this story, as well as Zeus' lover. It's never clear that Ganymede consented to any of this. Nevertheless, Zeus was so grateful for the boy's service that he granted Ganymede eternal youth and beauty. Is anyone else reminded of the real-life story of Liberace and Scott Thorson? While the famed pianist could not make his young lover immortal, he did pay for Thorson to have numerous plastic surgeries.

It's interesting to note that, in "Zeus and His Lovers," Ed Wood portrays Zeus' wife, Hera, as simpering and submissive. Greek mythology portrays her as anything but. In fact, Zeus' love affair with Ganymede angered Hera greatly. She was intensely jealous of her husband's new boy toy and made no secret of this. So why does Ed write her like the ultimate supportive wife, a woman who encourages her husband to have numerous lovers, even young boys? Perhaps this was Ed's commentary on marriage and how a wife "should" behave.

I'd also like to point out that the rest of Boy Play magazine is not about "playing" with actual boys. The magazine includes many explicit pornographic photos of men, and they're all very much of age. Some even look rather weather-beaten. Again, as with his story for Goddess magazine, Eddie may have taken the title of the publication too literally. Maybe even he didn't get the wordplay. 

Podcast Tuesday: "Fonz of the Baskervilles"

Fonzie (Henry Winkler) meets Sherlock Holmes in Victorian London.

Contemporary critics may see the animated series The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang as a disappointment or even an outright failure because it "only" lasted 24 episodes between 1980 and 1981. Apparently, to be successful by modern standards, a show has to accumulate many dozens of episodes spread out over numerous seasons. The live-action Happy Days, for instance, ran for 11 seasons and 255 episodes. Now that's an impressive run! Its cartoon counterpart didn't survive nearly so long.

What people overlook is that it was the norm at Hanna-Barbera from the 1960s to the 1980s to produce only a handful of episodes for each of its series and then rerun those same episodes over and over for years. Long-running series like The Flintstones and The Smurfs were the exception, not the rule. The original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? only ran 25 episodes from 1969 to 1970. Jabberjaw and Hong Kong Phooey ran 16 episodes apiece. Josie and the Pussycats ran 31 episodes, but that's only if you count Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. Wacky Races only ran 17 episodes, and that got two spinoffs! By those standards, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang did respectably.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we arrive at the final episode of the animated series, entitled "Give Me a Hand, Something's Afoot." This time, Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and his friends travel to 1894 London and meet the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes (Henry Polic II). If you were hoping for an epic Sherlock/Fonzie team-up, however, this episode may be a bit of a letdown. The characters do meet, but they don't really work together for long. The famous detective's archenemy, Professor Moriarty, is here, but Holmes' sidekick, Dr. Watson, is mysteriously absent.

Does this mean "Something's Afoot" is a bad episode, though? Listen to the latest installment of the podcast to find out!

Ed Wood Extra! Harry Medved revisits Plan 9 on Locationland (2025)

Tor Johnson emerges from his grave in Plan 9.

We may have celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ed Wood's birth in 2024, but the party is continuing well into 2025, folks. We all know film historian and critic Harry Medved as the co-author of The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), i..e. the book that brought posthumous fame to Ed Wood. Well, these days, Harry is working on a series of videos for PBS entitled Locationland in which he visits the Southern California filming locations of some of Hollywood's golden classics. 

Did you think he'd forget about Eddie? Fat chance!

In today's episode, premiering at 6:00 pm PST, Harry visits the filming locations for Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). Harry's guests include comedian and writer Dana Gould, author Katharine Coldiron, and our very own Bob Blackburn, the co-heir of Kathy Wood's estate. You can watch the premiere of Plan 9 episode of Locationland right here. And you can watch a trailer for the episode right here. And if, by chance, you need a little more Medved in your life, Will Sloan recently interviewed Harry about The Golden Turkey Awards. You can find that right here.

Happy viewing/listening!

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 214: 'Diary of a Transvestite Hooker' (1973)

Is this Ed Wood book from 1973 worth your time in 2025?

Ed Wood wrote many (!) books between 1963 and 1977, both fiction and nonfiction, but very few of them are in print and readily available to the public today.  Despite (or maybe because of) this scarcity, interest in Ed's written work remains high among fans. Dedicated Woodologists still want to study these forbidden volumes, especially after they've read Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992), which contains a lengthy and detailed bibliography section, complete with tantalizing cover art and lurid quotes from the original paperbacks. Subsequent books like Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2001) and Ed Wood's Sleaze Paperbacks (2013) have also focused on Ed's colorful and prolific writing career.

This has created a strangely persistent gray market on sites like Amazon and Ebay. Independent, small-time publishers with no legal claim to Ed Wood whatsoever will boldly put out their own editions of Eddie's books. The prices for such reissues, although not necessarily cheap, are substantially less than you'd pay for actual vintage paperbacks from the 1960s and '70s. The estate of Kathy Wood, Ed's widow, has tried to put a stop to this practice, but it's like a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole. You knock one down, and another has already popped up.

Here's what Bob Blackburn, co-heir of Kathy Wood's estate, has to say about the matter:

You are correct about the plethora of bootlegs out there. Part of the problem is, like on Amazon, I need to 100% prove that I am now the copyright owner for them to halt sales. This is nearly impossible to do, even though in the mid-late 1990s Bob [Weinberg, Kathy's attorney] got about 8-10 titles copyrighted in Kathy Wood's name. 

I have broached the subject with Ben Ohmart at Bear Manor of potentially re-publishing some of these down the road, and hopefully we will. Of course, Killer In Drag (1963) and Death of a Transvestite (1967) were legally reprinted in the late 1990s around the time Bob got [Ed Wood's memoir] Hollywood Rat Race published [in 1998]. And yes, it is "whack-a-mole." So, hopefully this year we can get some of Ed's titles out there legitimately. I am hoping to get some of those that come from ed's personal collection and call them, "The Ed Wood Jr., Signature Collection" and use scans of Ed's signatures as proof that they're from the estate.