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.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 188: Ed Wood's recurring characters (including Kelton and Lobo)

For some reason, Ed Wood kept bringing Officer Kelton back.

Three of Ed Wood's 1950s films—Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), and Night of the Ghouls (1959)—are collectively known as "The Kelton Trilogy" because they all feature actor Paul Marco as bumbling, cowardly Officer Kelton, a uniformed cop who repeatedly comes into contact with the otherworldly and supernatural. In Ghouls, narrator Criswell gives us a succinct description of the character:

Patrolman Paul Kelton, 29 years of age, four years with the department, eager for the glory of the uniform but wide-eyed with fear at the thought of actually being on special duty. Unfortunately, though eager, not what the department usually looks for in their officers.

Ouch. The other characters in these movies tend to treat Kelton with utter contempt. In Night of the Ghouls, the character even describes himself as "the whipping boy of the whole police force." He's basically the Jar Jar Binks of the Ed Wood universe. So why did Ed keep bringing back Officer Kelton, reusing him the way Shakespeare reused Falstaff? A few reasons, I think. First, Paul Marco was one of his closest buddies and wasn't exactly drowning in work outside of Eddie's films. I'm certain the zany Kelton character was written especially with Paul Marco in mind. ("Hey, Paul, I've got a great part for you in my next picture!")

Beyond that, Ed Wood was heavily inspired by the Universal horror movies of the 1930s and '40s, and those films tend to include broad comic relief provided by wacky supporting characters—chambermaids, English bobbies, villagers, etc. It seems like a Universal movie isn't complete until some Cockney-accented stooge gets spooked by the monster du jour and trips over his own feet trying to run away. Paul Marco's scaredy-cat Officer Kelton is very much in that tradition. As unnecessary as the character may seem to modern viewers, he has his roots in classic horror.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 150: The Dead Never Die (1957)

(left to right) Kirk Kirkham, Ed Wood, Criswell, and David De Mering.

Prolific as he was, Ed Wood could not possibly bring all of his film projects to fruition. He simply had too many of them and not nearly enough money and time. Eddie left behind a veritable graveyard of unfinished, unmade, or otherwise abandoned movies. I've written in depth about some of them, including Trial by Terror, The Basketballers, and Hellborn.

But today, I'd like to turn your attention to one of those cinematic orphans that even hardcore Ed-heads never seem to mention: 1957's The Dead Never Die. Here's what Rudolph Grey's indispensable Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) has to say about this intriguing never-to-be project.

Rudolph Grey on The Dead Never Die.

What immediately sets this project apart is that Ed was going to direct someone else's script for what would have been the only time in his career. Eddie collaborated with other screenwriters, including Alex Gordon and Steve Apostolof, but he always had a hand in writing the movies he directed. This time, however, he would have been working from a story by Criswell and Paul Marco. Now that's a combination that should raise eyebrows. Cris and Paul were two of the, let's say, more eccentric members of the Wood coterie. I can only imagine the kind of tale these two men—neither of whom has a screenwriting credit to his name—might concoct.

But Criswell and Paul Marco didn't actually write the script for The Dead Never Die themselves! That chore fell to William "Bill" Harlow and Kirk Kirkham, another odd couple. Harlow (1922-1996) was an Ohio-born actor who worked mainly in television from the 1950s to the 1980s, turning up on such well-known series as The Rebel, Branded, Combat, B.J. and the Bear, and Knight Rider. As for Kirkham (1926-2001), he was a fairly well-known stage magician with only a handful of TV credits, either appearing as himself or playing a magician. I can only speculate that Kirk and Bill traveled in the same social circles as Cris, Paul, and Ed.

Now, let's turn our attention to the film's projected cast. Rudolph Grey dates this project to 1957, so naturally The Dead Never Die would have shared numerous cast members with Plan 9 from Outer Space. Cris and Paul would have been in it, of course, alongside such Plan 9 vets as Vampira, Bunny Breckinridge, and David De Mering. I'm sure Tor Johnson and Mona McKinnon could have been persuaded to take part, too. I'm even more intrigued by the other names in this list: Brad Jayson, Lynne Brighton, Lee Trant, and Judy Parks. Judy is a total mystery—no known credits, and she's never mentioned again in Nightmare of Ecstasy. Same goes for Lee Trant and Lynne Brighton. Who were these wonderful (or terrible) people? 

The only one with any kind of paper trail is Brad Jayson. This is a name that I've known for a while, since Criswell dedicated the truly bizarre, nigh-indecipherable 1972 book Criswell's Forbidden Predictions to him: 

I wish to express my deep appreciation to BRAD JAYSON for his tireless efforts in researching the heretofore unknown meanings of Nostradamus from the archaic French in which they were written.

For these noble efforts, Brad is mentioned just once in the 2023 book Fact, Fictions, and the Forbidden Predictions of the Amazing Criswell by Edwin Lee Canfield, and there his name is spelled "Brad Jason." Criswell's art director, Claudia Polifronio, describes Brad as a "good-looking actor wanting to break into Hollywood." Did he? Well, someone named Brad Jayson worked as a dialogue coach on the last three seasons of Petticoat Junction in the late 1960s and served as an associate producer on a Jack Benny special in 1965. The timeline matches up, so this could be our guy. Maybe after Petticoat Junction wrapped in 1970, Brad had plenty of time to translate Nostradamus.

As for the content of The Dead Never Die, one can only guess. Rudolph Grey provides no plot details, so all we have is the title. That phrase suggests two of Ed Wood's pet themes: death and resurrection. It's easy to imagine the film revolving around ghosts or zombies, both of which abound in the Wood canon. It's also interesting to consider that, in 2019, Jim Jarmusch wrote and directed a film with the very similar title The Dead Don't Die. (This was Jarmusch's star-studded take on the zombie subgenre.) And then there is the truly dreadful 1990 comedy Dead Men Don't Die. 

Perhaps we will never know the truth behind The Dead Never Die. I'm not even sure if the screenplay is extant. But that title unintentionally serves as a fitting epitaph for Ed Wood himself. As he keeps proving to us, decade after decade, the dead really never die. At least not completely.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 136: The Huffman Files

"We have top men working on it right now." "Who?" "Top... men."

This series has unexpectedly been on hiatus for the last few weeks. Sorry about that. What can I say, folks? Life gets in the way of Ed Wood scholarship sometimes. It's certainly not for lack of material to cover. In fact, there's way, way too much still left to cover. And more of Ed Wood's work is being discovered all the time—articles, stories, novels, scripts, loops, and even feature films. Had we but world enough and time...

Meanwhile, loyal reader and former Ed Wood Summit Podcast guest Rob Huffman has been faithfully flooding my inbox with photos and press clippings about Eddie and his various professional associates. I think his intent was to inspire me or Greg Dziawer to write a new article. Well, in a roundabout way, he was successful, because this week we are delving deep into The Huffman Files.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 60.5: A roundup of Wood news!

The cover of a soon-to-be-released book about Ed Wood's movies.

NOTE: It had been my intention today to present my findings on Mrs. Stone's Thing (1970), an extraordinary film whose cast features Mr. Edward D. Wood, Jr. However, some heavier-than-expected work commitments have forced me to reschedule that posting. Rather than shortchange Mrs. Stone's Thing with a sloppy or incomplete analysis, I have decided to postpone that article one week. It will appear in this space on May 20, 2015. In the meantime, I have accumulated a few bits of Ed Wood-related news which I wanted to present to you. Please enjoy. - J.B.

Try as he might, our boy Eddie just can't stay out of the news for long. You might think that it would be easy keeping up with a guy who's been dead since December 1978, but that's just not the case with Mr. Edward Davis Wood, Jr. You see, dear readers, Eddie's is a restless spirit which the afterlife simply cannot contain. That's the only explanation I can offer for the man's remarkably busy post-death career. 

The actress Valda Hansen, who sexily starred in Eddie's 1959 classic Night of the Ghouls, repeatedly claimed that she had felt the ghostly presence of Ed Wood in her life and that Eddie had appeared to her in her dreams long after his demise. 

While he was alive, Eddie repeatedly wrote stories and scripts about supposedly "dead" people who enjoy no solace in their own graves. The female narrator of "The Night the Banshee Cried" is summoned back to our world, for instance, to haunt the grounds near her ancestral family home. The protagonist of "Into My Grave," on the other hand, is able to give us a blow-by-blow description of his funeral as it happens. The dancers in Orgy of the Dead, all purportedly deceased, are condemned to thrust and gyrate for all eternity in order to please Criswell, Emperor of the Dark World. The scam artists in the aforementioned Night of the Ghouls are so adept at pretending to contact dead people that they inadvertently manage to attract some of the genuine articles. And, of course, Plan 9 from Outer Space has its trio of shambling human zombies in the thrall of some snooty space aliens. Death, then, is rarely "the end" in an Ed Wood story.

I don't wish to give the impression that there is a geyser or deluge or downpour of Wood news to share. It's more like a slow, steady trickle which never quite ends. If you have a slightly leaky roof and you leave an empty bucket on the floor beneath the source of the seepage, the water will accumulate deliberately, drop by drop. After a while, when the bucket is full or half-full, you can dump it out and start over again. That's basically how I deal with the Ed Wood-related news items which accrue in my e-mail inbox: I let them build up for a while, then dump 'em out all at once.

To wit:

I. A new book about Ed Wood is on its way.

A body of work: These are among the films covered in The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood.

The big news, obviously, is the imminent release of a brand-spanking-new, career-spanning critical study of the films of Edward D. Wood, Jr. The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood (Bear Manor Media) by Andrew J. Rausch and Charles E. Pratt, Jr. is scheduled to ship on June 15, 2015. That's just over a month away, folks! Ted Newsom, the director of the Wood documentary Look Back in Angora and the genial host of the Big Box of Wood DVD collection, provides the book's foreword. The cost is about $35 for the hardcover edition and $25 for the paperback. Tonally, this looks to be rather less formal and academic than Rob Craig's Ed Wood, Mad Genius from 2009, but the general scope of the new book seems to be about the same as Craig's. The focus is on Ed's canonical feature films as a director and writer. The book's Amazon page states that the authors will be "providing in-depth looks at the 29 existing films written and/or directed by Wood." While Craig's book is largely quite serious, this one claims to be "hilarious and reverential." We'll see. I'd certainly be curious to learn which movies constitute "the 29 existing films" in the eyes of Messrs. Rausch and Pratt, since I'd put the total at around 40.

In any event, The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood is a book long in the making. I first heard about this project way back in January 2014, when Andrew Rausch was a guest on the Projection Booth podcast for an episode devoted to Orgy of the Dead. Rausch's subsequent health problems have likely delayed the release of Cinematic Misadventures, and for a while I thought the book had just vanished into the ether, but now it looks like it's really going to happen. I can't wait to read it. Here, for the curious, is Bear Manor's official description:

Coming June 2015! 

Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), a critically acclaimed film starring Johnny Depp that earned two Academy Awards, only told part of the fascinating story of the strange American screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and film editor. Now, authors Andrew J. Rausch and Charles E. Pratt Jr. unreel the unreal back stories of the much-maligned “Worst Filmmaker of All Time” and his 29 films that sometimes outshone Wood’s off screen shenanigans.

In the 1950s, audiences cringed at Glen or Glenda, Jail Bait with Steve Reeves, Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space with Bela Lugosi, The Violent Years, and Night of the Ghouls. In the 1960s, moviegoers winced at The Sinister Urge and Orgy of the Dead. Though his films sometimes shocked the delicate sensibilities of post-war audiences, modern moviegoers often love the good, bad, and ugly movie millstones. 

The authors share a passion for all things Ed Wood and wanted to explore, deplore, and implore the always unvarnished facts about the born loser, who continually defied odds to achieve each scrap of success in Hollywood. Wood refused to allow his dreams to die, despite the seemingly-insurmountable hurdles he faced in life and with his own lack of talent, yet he found a way to continue making movies. Discover his daring deeds in detail, from the crowd favorites to the more obscure nudie films that Wood made late in life. 

Illustrated. 293 pages, 42 chapters, and 10 interviews with a variety of people involved with Ed Wood films.

Rausch, incidentally, is the author of such books as Dirty Talk: Conversations with Porn Stars (2015) and The Godfather of Gore Speaks: Herschell Gordon Lewis Discusses His Films (2012). Wood fans, however, will likely take note of another intriguing title in Rausch's back catalog. In 2008, he co-wrote Gary Graver's Making Movies with Orson Welles: A Memoir. Welles, of course, was Eddie's role model and hero, as memorably depicted in Tim Burton's Ed Wood. Graver, on the other hand, directed the Wood-scripted (and still missing) Excited in 1970 and may have been the cinematographer on One Million AC/DC in 1969. That makes him one of the few people who worked with both Ed Wood and Orson Welles! A fascinating figure, this Gary Graver, and one definitely deserving of further study. Meanwhile, though I may be looking in the wrong places, I cannot find any other books by Charles E. Pratt, Jr.

II. So what happened to Ed's possessions after that auction?

Anyone who has been following the Ed Wood Wednesdays series will know all about the recent auction of Eddie's personal belongings which took place in Boston back in March. I was very excited about it at the time, especially the prospect of bidding on Ed's monogrammed trunk from the 1950s. Apart from some old movie posters and lobby cards, however, I didn't win anything from that particular sale. Too rich for my blood, as they say. But who did end up with that stuff? 

Well, I was contacted recently by Jason Insalaco, the grand-nephew of Plan 9 actor Paul Marco. Jason is the one who helped restore Ed Wood's Final Curtain pilot from 1957, which makes him a saint in the field of Wood-ology. In his e-mail to me, Jason wrote: "I recently purchased Ed's personal items, including many items from western star Kenne Duncan that Ed inherited." He also sent me a link to a very neat Los Angeles Magazine article about the auctioned items and how Jason was sorting through them, along with Ed Wood scripters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. And at the beginning of this month, Ed Wood's co-heir, Bob Blackburn, posted to an Ed Wood Facebook group about the items. Bob knows a lot more about this subject than I do, so I'll let him take over for a while:

A peek inside Ed Wood's suitcase.

Okay, so yesterday I met up with Jason Insalaco, a friend I have known for about 10 years or so. Jason is Paul Marco's grand nephew. Some of you may know that he and his friend found and restored a copy of  Final Curtain that was shown at the Slamdance Film Festival a couple of years ago. I brought him a CD of the current music in the Ed Wood musical, some of which I'd given him about four years ago when I first got involved with Rick Tell. So the basis of our get together was twofold. We hope to be able to work together in the future to display some of the items we both have related to Ed Wood. I have a few, and Jason, well, now he has the mother lode! Yep, it was he who won the trunk filled with Ed's personal items in the auction last month. he already has a ton of items from Paul, including Paul's working script for Bride of the Atom, yep, under the original title, as well as tons of photos. Now he has the trunk. He brought with him a few items to show me, one of Ed's scrapbooks with unpublished 8x10 B&W production photos from Grave Robbers [from Outer Space], also clippings and ads for [The] Violent Years, I Changed My Sex, etc., etc. It was/is amazing, and this is the tip of the iceberg. 

Ed Wood's personal letterhead.

I hope to get together with him with in a few weeks to see the collection in person. He said Ed was the executor of Kenne Duncan's estate and there's a lot of material from there, which he and I hope to take over to [actor and Wood associate] David Ward to show and get his thoughts and comments. There are a lot of photos that have never been published. He also showed me Ed's resume, which I only have a copy of. This was Ed's personal copy. He was surprised that the lot didn't go for more, as I would assume most of us were. 

But I know just from seeing the small amount that he brought me, that the overall value if sold separately would be close to that $20,000-$30,000 that the auction house thought it would sell for. Anyway, I asked him if I could mention his name on here, and he said that was okay. We hope to work together down the road. Would love to screen some of Ed's films here in L.A. and have a lobby exhibit, and also sell a few copies of Blood [Splatters Quickly], but I had to share as I was sooooooooooo excited that the trunk is with someone who has a connection to Ed through Paul Marco and who is now the owner of the largest collection of Ed Wood memorabilia in the world. I can say that because it's true. I hope we can get some pictures up here, and I would love to see if Joe Blevins might be able to see this and write about it. Anyway, there ya go. Will keep this group up to date on whatever I can regarding this goldmine.

Thanks for the news, Bob. We'll be waiting to see what eventuates from this.

III. Yes, the Plan 9 studio is for sale.

Interested in a real estate investment? This place is for sale if you want it.

Read all about it in L.A. Weekly. 

An interesting bit of Los Angeles real estate hit the market recently: 5628½ Santa Monica Boulevard. Back in the 1950s, this was the site of Quality Studios, a tiny little cheapjack soundstage where Ed Wood filmed portions of Glen or Glenda? and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Anyone who has seen the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion (1992) will be instantly familiar with this particular spot, because the filmmakers visited it and brought actor Conrad Brooks along for the ride. It didn't look like much when Conrad visited back then: just a dark little room at the back of an alley with a broken cymbal on the floor. That last detail makes sense because, after its days as a movie studio were done, the building became a rehearsal space for rock bands. Musicians including the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, and Guns N' Roses are said to have played there. I don't know whether they did or they didn't. Conrad Brooks remembered that Quality Studios was next door to a bar called Gold Diggers. Remarkably, that extremely skeevy-looking establishment was still standing in 1992 and even seems to have survived to 2015. Such longevity!

I know that this will be terribly old news for anyone who is even vaguely interested in Edward D. Wood, Jr. You're probably all sick to death of this item by now. But you know what? I maintain an Ed Wood-themed blog, and this was sent to my inbox about half a dozen times, so I figured I had to include it here at least once. And now I have.

IV.  Here's an Ed Wood DVD set worth purchasing!

A good purchase for $10.

This is not "news" in the traditional sense, just an interesting little discovery I made last week. As if I don't have enough Ed Wood detritus in my life and in my apartment, I occasionally browse through Amazon looking for more of it. What can I say? It's a sickness. 

Recently, I decided to take a gamble on a two-disc DVD set from Passport Video called The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence. It carries a 2007 copyright, but I remember something very similar to it in the DVD bargain bins back in the late '90s or early 2000s. I never purchased it back then, but I decided I had to have it now. For some reason, Amazon's price has shot up very recently to the $30-$50 range, but I was able to get it for less than ten bucks (shipping included) on May 4, 2015. 

Anyway, it contains six films (Glen or Glenda? Plan 9 from Outer Space, Bride of the Monster, Jail Bait, Night of the Ghouls, and The Violent Years), plus a little documentary featurette called The Ed Wood Story with Dolores Fuller, Johnny Depp, and Martin Landau. I haven't gotten around to viewing that quite yet, but I did make a cursory examination of the films themselves and was delighted with what I found. Though the transfers are just adequate and carry an "Ed Wood Collection" watermark in the corner, the Passport Video versions contain some material which I had not seen on other Ed Wood DVD sets. Namely:

• Jail Bait is presented in the Rhino Video "Director's Cut," meaning that the minstrel show footage has been replaced by saucy striptease footage. According to Rhino, the burlesque sequence was "discovered when the long-lost negative was unearthed." All previous DVDs of Jail Bait that I've ever seen contain the Cotton Watts and Chick routine from Ron Ormond's Yes Sir, Mr. Bones (1951).

• The Violent Years actually has a title sequence featuring a still shot of the girl gang. The Big Box of Wood version, the only one previously in my collection, skipped this altogether and started with the chalkboard scene. Score two for The Ed Wood Collection!

• Most amazingly of all, the cut of Glen or Glenda? is not the censored, shortened version on the Wade Williams and Legend Films DVDs. I'll have to make a more thorough study of this DVD, but it seems to be the longer version I remember seeing back in the 1990s. Anyway, it passed my initial test. Whenever I get ahold of any digital copy of Glenda, either in disc form or streaming on the Internet, I immediately fast-forward to the first big scene with Timothy Farrell as Dr. Alton and Lyle Talbot as Inspector Warren. Then I wait for the part where Farrell says, "Yes, but I wonder if it rated the death warrant it received." In the longer version of the film, Farrell adds, "I don't think so." Meaning that he doesn't think a transvestite deserved to die. In the censored version, after Farrell says the words "death warrant it received," the film cuts immediately to Lyle Talbot saying, "Well, that's why I'm here today, doctor." Passport Video's version was the first DVD to pass my test.

And that, my friends, is all the Ed Wood news I have for now. The bucket is empty. Time to set it back down on the floor and let it fill up again. 

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Ed Wood extra! A single by Paul Marco and Criswell!

In 1995, Dionysus Records released an unusual Ed Wood-themed single by Paul Marco and Criswell.

There passed a golden time in the early-to-mid-1990s when Edward D. Wood, Jr. was considered vaguely chic by people whose opinions actually matter. Eddie's first wave of anti-fame occurred in the early 1980s after the publication of The Golden Turkey Awards, of course, but his filmography did not take on the added luster of hipness for another decade. 

The Nihilistic Nineties were a time in which the trend-setters and tastemakers of America shunned the shopping mall monoculture of the Reagan era in favor of individuality, eccentricity, exclusivity, and (perceived) authenticity. Suddenly, it was no longer cool to be "into" what everybody else was "into." Instead, this was the time of indie movies, indie record labels, and indie bookstores -- smaller concerns catering to niche interests. I'm fairly certain this was when the word "mainstream" first took on a pejorative connotation. 

The atmospheric conditions were just right for someone like Ed Wood to become a secular saint of unpop culture. I don't think it's any coincidence that some of the bigger postmortem developments of Eddie's career, including the publication of Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy and the release of Tim Burton's Ed Wood, not to mention a whole host of VHS re-releases, occurred during this fecund era.

"Uncle Dale" Warner

And only during those kooky Clinton years would it have made sense for a label like Dionysus Records to put out an Ed Wood-themed 45 RPM single... on marbled orange vinyl, no less! In 1995, this SoCal surf rock company released "Home on the Strange" b/w "Someone Walked Over My Grave." The A-side was a newly-recorded "Monster Mash"-type novelty tune by actor Paul Marco, reprising his Kelton the Cop character from Bride of the Monster, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Night of the Ghouls. Aiding and abetting Paul was "Uncle" Dale Warner, a songwriter and musician best known for his work with the Rubatos. 

On the flip side was the vintage recording "Someone Walked Over My Grave," a morbid yet characteristically flowery recitation by the flamboyant TV psychic Criswell set to a cocktail lounge-type piano accompaniment. Supposedly, the famed prognosticator recorded this song specifically to be played after his death. Take these two ditties, add some eye-catching artwork by Kalynn Campbell, and you've got a neat little collectible for Ed Wood fans. 

Incidentally, according to the comprehensive timeline in Nightmare of Ecstasy, Eddie attempted something like this back in 1970, when he himself produced a 45 with Tor Johnson reading "The Day the Mummy Returned" on the A-side and Criswell reading "Final Curtain" on the B-side. Author Rudolph Grey states that it is "uncertain" whether or not the single was ever released. However, the Dionysus single from 1995 definitely was released and gives us a taste of what that 1970 platter might have been like. Enjoy.