Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 277: "Edward D. Wood Jr.: Hollywood Underground" (1987)

Five years before his book came out, Rudolph Grey gave us a preview of Nightmare of Ecstasy.

Author Rudolph Grey.

When musician-turned-author Rudolph Grey published Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. in 1992, it was a true breakthrough in the field of Woodology, one that has arguably never been matched. There had been numerous articles published about Wood and his movies by then, as well as the feature-length documentary On the Trail of Ed Wood (1990), but there was nothing with the scope and ambition of Grey's book. Nightmare contained not only the most complete filmography and bibliography for Ed Wood ever assembled to that time, but also interviews with numerous Wood associates and a whole host of rarely-seen photographs and other documents. Over 30 years after its publication, Nightmare remains the gold standard in its field.

A book like Nightmare of Ecstasy doesn't just happen overnight. In fact, the book was more than a decade in the making. When I attended a public appearance by Grey in 2014, he went into some detail about his working process. His research for Nightmare started in roughly the early 1980s. Eddie had just died, unfortunately, but plenty of his cohorts were still around. (Nearly all of them have since died.) And other authors shared their research with Grey, including interviews they'd conducted with Eddie toward the end of his life. It must have been a massive task, taking all this material and shaping it into a coherent book.

In 1987, Grey was still five years away from publishing Nightmare of Ecstasy, but he had accumulated enough material to write an article for Filmfax #6 called "Edward D. Wood Jr.: Hollywood Underground." And if you've already guessed that this article is the focus of today's column, you're right! Treat yourself to something nice! I thought it might be interesting to compare this article to the book and see where they overlap and where they diverge.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 276: "Paul Marco Remembers Ed Wood Jr." (1987)

Friends 'til the end: Paul Marco (right) and Ed Wood.

Something wonderful has been happening recently in the online Ed Wood fan community. A gentleman named Jason Insalaco has been sharing some rarely-seen photographs of his great-uncle, eccentric character actor Paul Marco (1927-2006), to an Ed Wood discussion group on Facebook. We all remember Paul as the bumbling, cowardly Officer Kelton in three of Eddie's best-known films: Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), and Night of the Ghouls (1959). Kelton reminds me of those wacky comic relief sidekicks they'd put into every action-adventure cartoon I watched as a kid. He's the Ed Wood equivalent of Snarf on Thundercats, Gleek on Superfriends, or Orko on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

But we should remember that there's more to Paul Marco than just being Officer Kelton. In addition to having a life and career all his own, he was a key member of Ed Wood's personal and professional circle for many years. In Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), Paul is portrayed by Doogie Howser star Max Casella as an eager but not-too-bright young man who will blindly follow Eddie (Johnny Depp) wherever he chooses to go, even if it's straight off a cliff. While this makes for some amusing scenes, it hardly gives us a complete picture of who Paul Marco was. The reality was more nuanced and complex than that.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 275: "Remembering Ed D. Wood, Jr." (1987)

Tor Johnson attacks Bela Lugosi in the pages of Filmfax.

A feature about Ed.

I was not a major reader of sci-fi and horror movie magazines when I was a kid. Oh, sure, I'd skim through Fangoria and the like at the local Walgreen's, but I rarely brought any issues home with me. What did I have to buy them with, my sparkling personality? If my parents gave me a couple of bucks to spend in those days, I'd buy comic books or MAD instead. Even as a teenager and young adult, I only bought movie magazines if they contained an article I really wanted. Any substantial story about John Waters, for instance, warranted an immediate purchase. By the late 1990s, when I was in college, I was largely getting my movie information from the internet.

As a result, I missed out on the print magazines that were so influential on other budding film fanatics, especially those of previous generations. This week, I'm choosing to spotlight just one of those gone-but-not-forgotten publications: Filmfax, which ran for 166 issues from 1986 to 2024. The creation of editor Michael Stein, Filmfax originally billed itself as "The Magazine of Unusual Film & Television." By the end of its run, that tagline had changed to "The Magazine of Unusual Film, Television & Retro Pop Culture." In its sixth issue, dated March/April 1987, Filmfax ran a sprawling,12-page feature about writer-director Edward D. Wood, Jr. It consisted of:

• a career overview, including quotes from actor and friend David Ward

• a preview of Rudolph Grey's then-untitled Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992)

• an extended interview with actor and Wood associate Paul Marco (1927-2006)

• a filmography compiled by Jan Henderson

This wasn't even Filmfax's first Ed Wood feature, since they spotlighted Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) in the very first issue. In those primitive, pre-internet days, a magazine like this must have been a veritable goldmine of valuable information for Wood fans. But does it still have anything to offer us in 2026? Let's find out.