Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 143: Cult Movies 3 (1988)

Danny Peary returns to the subject of Ed Wood in Cult Movies 3 (1988).

Over the course of his three highly influential Cult Movies books, originally published between 1981 and 1988, critic Danny Peary covers a wide variety of offbeat films with devoted fan followings. This makes sense, since "cult" is more of a mindset than a narrowly-defined category. Fittingly, the films Peary discusses hail from different eras, ranging from the 1910s to the 1980s, and represent a number of cinematic genres: comedy, drama, science fiction, horror, action, Western, musical, fantasy, and even pornography. Along the way, Peary also covers a wide variety of filmmakers, everyone from John Ford to John Waters.

An interesting photo collage poster.

Still in all, there are a scant few cult directors whose films merit multiple essays in Peary’s Cult Movies books, including Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese,  Michael Curtiz, John Carpenter, George Romero, Stanley Kubrick (to my knowledge, the only director to inspire three essays), Russ Meyer, and our very own Edward D. Wood, Jr. That's right! Eddie's a two-time Cult Movies inductee. That ties him with his idol, Orson Welles. 

Seven years after reviewing Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) in the original Cult Movies, Danny Peary reviewed Glen or Glenda (1953) in Cult Movies 3 (1988). I'm not sure how I learned of this third volume in the Cult Movies series, but when I did, I special ordered it immediately from the same Flint bookstore where I'd previously purchased the other two Cult Movies books. As I remember, it arrived at the same time as the elaborate, oversized script book for Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979). Getting those two books simultaneously must've been one of the most exciting days of my adolescence. 

Keep in mind that I read Danny Peary's books before I ever saw one of Ed Wood's movies, so Peary's essays about Plan 9 and Glenda helped shape my perception of those films. I'm sure Peary has deeply affected the way I write about Ed Wood, even today. So does Cult Movies 3 still have anything to teach me in 2023? Let's find out.

Like all the films included in the Cult Movies series, Glen or Glenda merits a few pages of coverage. We get a cast and crew list, some publicity photos (all B&W), a plot synopsis, and an explanatory essay. The cast and crew list comes directly from Glenda's own credits. No complaints there. The seven-paragraph plot synopsis is surprisingly accurate and lucid, considering the disjointed and often surreal nature of Glen or Glenda. Good job, Danny! Bonus points for working in a reference to "Morpheus, god of sleep."

As for pictures, we get a "slightly out-of-focus shot" (the book's term) of Bela Lugosi mixing chemicals in the lab set. ("It's always enjoyable to see Bela Lugosi," says the caption, "but it's impossible to figure out what his role is in this film.") Peary also gives us a photo-collage poster for the film, supposedly from its original release in 1953. (Tagline: "Strange Case: ONE BODY--TWO SEXES.") Remarkably, Cult Movies 3 includes a publicity still from Glenda's extended nightmare sequence. I was so taken by this picture—showing a woman bound-and-gagged on a couch and being menaced by a second woman—that I included it in the very first article in this series back in 2013.

This Bear is no golden turkey, says Peary.

Peary's essay starts with a broader discussion of the "bad movie" phenomenon, of which Ed Wood is only one part. Harry and Michael Medved's book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980) was fresher in people's memories back then, and it was still the driving force behind the Wood cult in those pre-Tim Burton days. Peary seems to have soured on the Medveds somewhat in the years since reviewing Plan 9, saying that he finds "worst film festivals" to be "particularly annoying" and "the equivalent of self-pleasing sports fans who do 'the Wave.'" (Peary has also written several books about baseball, so his irritation is earned.)

Overall, Peary concludes that Plan 9 and Glenda aren't really among the worst films ever made, "just the worst watchable movies." In this respect, he puts Ed Wood's movies into the same category as Phil Tucker's Robot Monster (1953) and Arch Hall, Sr.'s Eegah! (1962), among others. But Peary has some strict criteria for what constitutes a true "golden turkey." Films like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978) don't count, he says, because they're self-aware and trying to be campy. ("The hilarity must be unintentional," Peary insists.) Meanwhile, films like I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and Bloodsucking Freaks (1976) are too offensive to be enjoyable. He also rules out movies that are too boring to be fun and cites Michael Chapman's The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) as his prime example.

Frankly, all this "so bad it's good" stuff doesn't really interest me anymore—even though it's what initially got me into Ed Wood's movies when I was a teenager—so I was relieved when Peary started discussing the specifics of Glen or Glenda. Peary takes a measured approach here, admiring Wood's film for its sincerity and daring while pointing out the film's numerous technical and aesthetic shortcomings. On the one hand, it took genuine courage for Ed Wood to make a movie about cross-dressing and transgenderism in 1953. If you've been following the news at all lately, you know that these issues are still controversial seven decades later in 2023! Eddie not only wrote and directed Glenda, he played the title role himself! Peary gives Wood all due credit for this, even complimenting him for tackling a sensitive "taboo" subject in "a non-exploitive, non-sensationalistic way."

On the other hand, even Glenda's most fervent admirers must admit that this film is cheaply made, haphazardly assembled, and patently ridiculous in many ways, from its stiff acting and its stilted dialogue to its stream-of-consciousness editing style. Peary discusses all of these topics and more in his review of Glen or Glenda. He writes:

Like other Wood films, Glen or Glenda? is distinguished by embarrassingly bad acting, dialogue, direction, cinematography, editing, music, cheap sets, and, significantly, ugly costuming. As usual there are zany moments that are guaranteed to make you both laugh and cringe. [...] The scenes with Lugosi contribute to the film's structural problems and incoherence. Even without his mindless banter, there is enough confusion caused by flashbacks within flashbacks, the use of several narrators, stylistic changes throughout, nonsensical dialogue, and the inclusion of meaningless images (lightning, stampeding buffalo, cars on the highway) only because Wood had free use of these stock shots.

I must say that, when I finally saw Glen or Glenda a few years after reading Cult Movies 3, the film actually exceeded my expectations. Peary's review, descriptive as it is, could not have prepared me for the real movie.

Don't get the impression that this review is all mockery, though. Along the way, Peary makes some cogent points about Glen or Glenda and its approach to transgender issues. I think my favorite observation is: "This is a rare film where men sit at a table (like old-style soap opera women) and converse about their personal problems!" I also appreciated a passage that compares Ed Wood's film to the educational "civics films" that we used to show to middle school and high school students. Peary deftly points out that the "Alan/Ann" sequence near the end of the film, in which a man becomes a woman through surgery and hormone injections, is similar to the process of an immigrant becoming an American citizen.

By the way, if you have any interest whatsoever in those vintage educational films, I highly recommend Ken Smith's book, Mental Hygiene: Better Living Through Classroom Films 1945-1970 (Blast Books, 1999). And from there, spend some time browsing the Prelinger Archives. I think you'll find that Danny Peary's comparisons are quite apt.

P.S.  One interesting aspect of Danny Peary's review of Glen or Glenda is that it includes numerous quotes from the film's producer, George Weiss. Peary says he took these from "an interview with Rudolph Grey for a book on Wood." Peary does not name the book, but Cult Movies 3 came out in 1988, four years before Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy saw the light of day. Reader Willie Murrah informs me that these quotes came from a 1987 issue of Filmfax magazine with a twelve-and-a-half-page article about Ed Wood. Thanks, William! 

The 2022 Ed-Vent Calendar, Day 18: Cult Movies (1981)

The book that changed my life. Maybe for the worse.

Sometime in my early adolescence, I devised a very handy method for finding the weird and outrageous movies I'd been craving all my life. I'd simply flip through video guides and look for all the one-star and zero-star reviews, making sure to note the titles, directors, and actors. This is how I found out about Herschel Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer, John Waters, and, yes, Ed Wood. Armed with some promising leads, I'd head down to one of several video stores in the area and start hunting. (Or, failing that, I'd look through the TV listings to see what was playing in the wee small hours.)

The guru: Danny Peary.

This strange technique of mine worked because, back then, movie critics were much more square and stodgy than they are today. In their reviews, they were generally aiming for what I'd call middlebrow respectability. (Think: Merchant-Ivory films. Classy but not too demanding.) They were allergic to the  kind of stuff I was looking for—trashy movies with lots of sex, violence, surrealism, and bad taste. But the authors of video guides reviewed everything, whether they wanted to or not. Learning about what they hated taught me about what I loved.

Then, in high school, I hit the motherlode. At the late, much-missed Young & Welshans bookstore in Flint, MI, I found a copy of Danny Peary's seminal 1981 tome, Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird, and the Wonderful. Peary didn't even bother covering "normal" mainstream movies; his book was wall-to-wall weirdness. Just what I'd always wanted! And these weren't mere capsule reviews like I'd find in the video guides. These were lengthy, illustrated essays, complete with cast lists and plot summaries. The author would give a brief history of the film alongside analysis and commentary. I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven. 

While I had first seen Ed Wood's name in print in those video guides, it was Peary's Cult Movies, specifically his four-and-a-half-page essay about Plan 9 from Outer Space, that truly made me want to seek out Eddie's work. Without Danny's book, this series of articles (and possibly this entire blog) would never have happened. Who knows? I might be doing something profitable with my life today.

In those primitive, pre-internet, pre-streaming days, Danny Peary was a hero to an entire generation of information-starved film freaks who wanted to explore the world of offbeat cinema. The curmudgeonly critic was an unlikely tour guide, though, since he often seemed at odds with the material he was covering. My copy of Cult Movies, for instance, has this quote from Playboy emblazoned on the cover:

"Wild bunches of film freaks would brave the badlands of a forbidden planet for a compendium like this!" 

A nice thought, but Danny gave largely negative reviews to The Wild Bunch (1969), Badlands (1973), and even Forbidden Planet (1956). Of the films cited in that Playboy quote, only Freaks (1932) met with Peary's approval. Danny was no fan of H.G. Lewis, Russ Meyer, or John Waters either, and he had little affection for arguably the biggest cult movie of them all, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

So where does he stand on Ed Wood? I decided to revisit Peary's Plan 9 essay and find out. His cast and crew credits are accurate, as is his plot summary. No quibbles there. As for the essay part, we must remember that Cult Movies came out soon after Harry and Michael Medved's The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), the book that crowned Ed Wood the worst director of all time and Plan 9 the worst film of all time. The popularity of the Golden Turkey book is the main reason Plan 9 is being covered in Cult Movies at all. Naturally, then, Peary largely follows the Medveds' lead and parrots a lot of what they had to say about Plan 9 being so cheap, flimsy, and ludicrous that it's perversely entertaining. 

If there's one line from Peary's essay that has stayed with me through the years, it's this one: "As bad as it is, Plan 9 is, except for about a hundred dull spots, a lot of fun." After screening the movie dozens of times for research purposes, I know what he means. For the most part, Peary points out the same continuity errors and silly dialogue that other critics point out, but there are a few examples that are unique to this essay. I'm sure, for instance, it was Peary who made me notice this underappreciated line from Rev. Lyn Lemon: "The bell has rung upon his great career." And Peary is the only critic in history to note that Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott) "goes off on a several-day trip with a teeny overnight bag." I also like Cult Movies' description of the infamous cockpit set: "the type of set used by improv groups."

Along the way, Peary repeats some long-debunked canards about Ed Wood and his films, again getting his dubious information third-hand from the Medveds. No, Eddie did not storm an enemy beach in World War II while wearing a bra and panties under his uniform. And, no, the flying saucers in Plan 9 are not paper plates. But that's what people thought 40 years ago. Also, Paul Marco's character is Kelton, not Calvin, as Peary has it. 

Peary also floats the theory that perhaps Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi were working on two different movies at the end of Lugosi's life. He thinks the footage of Lugosi at his wife's funeral and the footage of Lugosi entering the Trents' house and frightening Paula (Mona McKinnon) are from separate projects. Interesting notion, but I don't know that there's evidence to support it.

Peary has some amusing comments about Ed Wood's stock players. Of Criswell, whom he compares to Billy Graham, he opines: "This man belongs in a booby hatch." Of Tor Johnson, he says: "This is the only time I recall he was trusted with dialogue. He is no Leslie Howard." (Peary also recalls Johnson's "exciting" guest role on a 1960 episode of Peter Gunn that I may have to check out. For the record, it's from the show's second season and is called "See No Evil.") His comments about Vampira are quite intriguing: "Her looks remind me a great deal of Carol Borland, Lugosi's costar in Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire (1935)—except that Borland has screen presence and Vampira just looks like she has anorexia." Unkindness of that remark aside, the connection to Borland is aptly noted. Browning even films Borland approaching the camera with her fingers extended, just the way Wood does with Vampira in Plan 9. And the physical resemblance—the pale skin, the dark lips, the long, straight hair—is uncanny.

Blood sisters: Carol Borland in Mark of the Vampire; Vampira in Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Where the review really gets interesting for me is right at the end, where Danny Peary semi-archly suggests we have misinterpreted Ed Wood's movie all these years. "Could it be," Peary writes, "that putting up a crazy façade is the only way that Wood can get away with making a subversive movie?" After all, the author points out, this is a movie in which the U.S. government wrongly suppresses evidence of UFOs and aliens, prevents Jeff from reporting what he knows, and even covers up the destruction of an entire town. 

And Peary is one of the few critics who points out what I have long felt: that the snooty alien Eros (Dudley Manlove) is actually right, even though he's treated as a villain. "Only the fact that he has a diabolical laugh and a lot of conceit covers up that what he says to [the earthlings] makes sense." In reality, the nuclear arms race really has gotten out of control and could still lead to the end of the world. (We are currently 100 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock.) This passage, more than any other, turned me into an Ed Wood fan before I'd seen a second of any of his movies.

Danny Peary's Cult Movies is an important part of my past and a book that I hope fans will continue to rediscover for years to come. Its availability, apart from libraries, is a little dubious right now. You can read it and its 1983 sequel at The Internet Archive, though Cult Movies 3 (1989) is AWOL there. In the Kindle store, you can (and should) buy four short "samplers" that pull reviews from all three Cult Movies books. But used paperback and even hardback copies of those books are still out there on the secondary market for a reasonable price.

The Cult Movies book series didn't just come along at a pivotal time in my life; it came along at a pivotal time in the history of popular culture. In the 1980s, your home entertainment options were rather limited. You had the three major TV networks and maybe a few independent stations, plus AM/FM radio, and whatever magazines and newspapers happened to be available in your area. Your nearby movie theaters only had so many screens. Your local record stores and video stores only had so much shelf space. If you craved "weirdo" entertainment, you had to take it where you could get it. If you lived in Middle America, far from the big cities, an offbeat movie like Pink Flamingos (1972) or Eraserhead (1977) might seem like a miracle, as if you were receiving a coded message from a distant planet many light years away.