Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Promo Odyssey, Part Four by Greg Dziawer

Ed Wood in the early 1970s, around the time of The Only House in Town.

On DVD at last!

The low-budget softcore sex film The Only House in Town—generally thought to have been written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.—remained something of a holy grail to his fans until it was released on DVD by Films Around the World in late 2015. Prior to that bare-bones disc, the film had been surreptitiously seen by a handful of hardcore Woodologists, thanks to a shoddy, time-coded bootleg copy that had been passed around for years.

After a nearly decade-long dry spell as a filmmaker, Ed Wood made his return to the director's chair in January 1970 for the sex comedy Take It Out in Trade. Along with Necromania, The Only House in Town was made in the aftermath of that unlikely comeback. Shot in mere days on 16mm, it is a freewheeling (read: all but totally lacking post-production) and nearly plotless feature financed by Noel Bloom's production company Cinema Classics. Noel's father, Pendulum Publishers honcho Bernie Bloom, was a patriarchal figure in Eddie's orbit at the time as well as his steadiest employer. In addition to its theatrical engagements, starting in 1971, The Only House in Town was chopped into pieces to make some 8mm home-market loops, which in turn were advertised in Pendulum's adult magazines. 

As it turned out, 1971 was a pivotal year in the evolution of the sex film as a mass cultural object. The Only House in Town played a near-invisible part in that story, though Ed's involvement would go unmentioned. His name is nowhere to be found in the credits, and his connection to the film was not widely reported until Rudolph Grey's biography Nightmare of Ecstasy in 1992.

Below are three Only House in Town ads from 1971. The first is from the July 23 edition of The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY). The second is from the February 6 edition of The Journal Herald (Dayton, OH). And the third is from the August 18 edition of The Journal Times (Racine, WI).

Three ads for The Only House in Town from 1971.

And here's an ad from the September 4, 1971 edition of The Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI). Looks like the movie was getting five screenings a day at the Globe Art Theatre.

"The very best in adult films."

This ad from the April 15, 1971 edition of The Amarillo Globe Times (Amarillo, TX) is interesting because The Only House in Town is paired with a film whose title is so scandalous it cannot even be printed. It also looks like the movie played at several locations in the Mini Vue Adult Cinema chain.

"A Most Unusual Kind of House."

This one comes to us from the February 25, 1972 edition of The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, GA). The New Glen Art was actually in nearby Decatur. Not a trace remains of it today. It's all dry cleaners and strip malls in this area now.

Compared to 8mm films, 16mm films were a luxury.

Securing playdates across America well into 1972 and beyond, The Only House in Town was but one of hundreds—perhaps thousands—of sex films in theaters at that time. As these vintage newspaper clippings attest, it largely occupied the bottom half of double bills, paired with films that are now forgotten. It, too, would likely be forgotten today if not for Ed's purported involvement. With its quasi-hippie characters, it paired well with films like Fred Baker's Events (1970) that attempted to capture the then-current zeitgeist of sexual permissiveness and open mindedness. The following ad appeared in the April 9, 1971 edition of The Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, NM). This is another Mini Vue location.

Balling it up in Albuquerque. I've heard it's strictly a 9:00 town.

The intersections between Baker and Wood are another matter for another day. (Hint: they involve both Lenny Bruce and Martha Graham!) Meanwhile, The Only House in Town maintained a steady drip of theatrical bookings between 1971 and 1973. The film's relative ubiquity is somewhat surprising. It's not difficult to imagine an extremely modest movie like this disappearing, little-seen, into the ether. The film's original marketing campaign was low-key but prolific. The existing newspaper ads display only the most basic promotional ballyhoo ("It's very, very wild"), but they do attest to the fact that this film was indeed playing in theaters across the country.

Here's another ad, this time from the March 14, 1971 edition of The Santa Fe New Mexican Sun (Santa Fe, NM).

Don't worry about Karen. She's much better now.

In fact, The Only House in Town kept getting theatrical showings on a regular basis right into the summer of 1973. Incredibly, in mid-June of that year, it played on a double bill with Necromania at the now-demolished Strand Theatre in Manchester, New Hampshire. Here's a clipping from the June 14, 1973 edition of The Nashua Telegraph.

A dollar off on Mondays, ladies.

By that time, thanks to the success of films like Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door, hardcore features had rapidly gained a foothold in the marketplace. We know that both Necromania and Take It Out in Trade existed in both softcore and hardcore versions. Furthermore, the AWOL, Wood-scripted Operation Redlight (1969) was shot softcore, but a crew member told the film's cinematographer/co-producer Jack Descent that he saw that film with hardcore inserts circa 1972.

It makes me wonder. Could The Only House in Town also have hardcore inserts?

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Preview Odyssey by Greg Dziawer

Plenty of time to get some popcorn at the refreshment stand.

Things are happening, folks. Exciting things that I can't wait to share with you.

I have a lot of upcoming articles in the works for Ed Wood Wednesdays. In fact, I have too many balls thrown in the air! As we wait for one to come down, I'd like to preview just some of the topics I'll be covering in the coming weeks and months.

• Ed Wood's career in sponsored and industrial films has gone largely undocumented until now. In addition to discussing Eddie's work with Story-Ad Films in the late 1940s, I'll detail the nature of the closed circuit live television broadcasts that Ed listed on his resume, while working at Autonetics at the dawn of the '60s.

An article from the Poughkeepsie Journal, September 18, 1949.

• I'll also be covering the distribution history of the final four films that Ed is known to have directed in the 1970s: Take It Out In Trade, The Only House in Town, Necromania, and The Young Marrieds. All four of these adult movies made the rounds before disappearing into decades-long obscurity. We'll find out where and when they played, and ID the films they were paired with. It's quite a wild story. The Young Marrieds, for instance, was astonishingly still playing in theaters into the early 1980s! But more on that to come.

An ad for Take It Out in Trade.

• In addition, I'll take a closer look at a couple of vital figures from Ed Wood's past: Eddie's young brother Howard William Wood (who typically went by William) and his close friend from high school and beyond, George Keseg.

• The unseen garage-cinema of Ed and Bela (1986) will finally get its due. Ahead of its time in more than ways than one, this biographical short film's interpretation of Bela Lugosi eerily anticipates Martin Landau's award-winning performance in Tim Burton's Hollywood biopic Ed Wood (1994).

• If that isn't enough to get your attention, I'll also be attempting the most comprehensive index yet of Tor Johnson's wrestling matches.

Tor with hair, 1936.

All this and much more awaits you, true believer, right here at Ed Wood Wednesdays. Whatever you do, keep watching this space for updates!

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Plan 9 Odyssey, Part One by Greg Dziawer

Ed Wood's name has long been synonymous with "turkey."

The First "Worst" 
   

When the Medved Brothers, Harry and Michael, released their book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (1978), coauthored with Randy Dreyfuss, it contained nary a mention of Ed Wood or any of his movies. In the Medveds' follow-up, The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), that all changed dramatically: Ed seemingly appearing from nowhere to be dubbed the Worst Director of All Time and Plan 9 from Outer Space the Worst Film Ever. Thus, the story goes, began the film's—and its producer/writer/director's— reassessment as "so bad it's good" cult object.

Of course, by 1980, Ed had passed. While certainly aware of the negative reviews of Plan 9 that appeared during his lifetime, he couldn't have imagined the film becoming revered—and for that very reason—within just a few short years of his death. Plan 9 had enjoyed nearly two decades of afterlife in TV syndication before reaching this dubious pinnacle. By the time the first Medved book asked readers to submit their nominations for the Worst Film Ever, receiving 3,000 votes, with Plan 9 from Outer Space the winner, a small following had begun to emerge, shaping the "worst" viewpoint.

This attitude hardly originated with the notorious Medved book. If we dial it back a few years, in soon-to-be-director Joe Dante's serial column "The Frankenstein TV Movieguide" from Castle of Frankenstein magazine (specifically issue 22 from 1974), we see that the "so bad it's good" viewpoint is already fully developed. Dante's capsule review of Plan 9 is delirious, deeming the film an "unalloyed delight," owing to its "rank amateurishness" and incompetence. Ed is a name "to conjure with." Effusively, Dante ends the review: "Wow." Still, he steers clear of the "worst" moniker. 

On the index page for that issue of Castle of Frankenstein, the listing for the article mentions two films beginning with the letter P: Psycho and—you guessed it!—Plan 9 from Outer Space. Already, in 1974, the film had begun its reassessment. This prompts some questions:

1. Just how far back can we go to find the "worst" root? 
2. Is it really a reassessment? 

To which I would answer:

1. All the way back. 
2. No, Plan 9 was assessed in this same manner right from the beginning. 

Ad for an early showing of Plan 9.

When I found an ad for a showing of Plan 9 in the November 8, 1959 edition of The Sarasota News, I was happy to see the movie playing on a quadruple bill mere months after its initial widespread distribution. One of the Big "Space-O-Rama" showings that night at the Siesta Drive-In, Plan 9 was the only film to play twice on that sprawling bill. 

I immediately spotted the lengthy "special note" included in the ad, which turned out to be penned by one of the film's two associate producers: Hugh Thomas, Jr. Like co-producer J. Edward Reynolds, Thomas  was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention of Beverly Hills.

Thomas appears in Plan 9 as as the taller and thinner of two gravediggers, with Reynolds as his stockier companion. He's credited as the movie's sole producer in the ad. His note is simply amazing. Unique details include the mention of another film "we" produced entitled The Peacemaker. Thomas is surely speaking of the low-budget religious propaganda Western from 1956. The word "we" likely refers to Reynolds specifically or to the church generally. In that film, although Thomas and Reynolds were uncredited, they successfully managed to Trojan horse their religious views. Not so with Plan 9, and perhaps that partly explains Thomas' startling decision to run down the film in print, in fact right in an ad for a showing of the film. 

Special note about "PLAN NINE" . . . Some months ago we called to your attention we had spent a few years (And numerous dollars) in Hollywood having a fling at making pictures. Our first effort was "THE PEACEMAKER" which we played back in June. Well, now comes another one in "PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE". Not only did I produce it, I had a hand in developing the thin story, and I am even in the darn thing. If you'll study the above ad you will see two grave diggers, that's me on the right. I don't want to be misleading, so I'll just tell you in all honest that the picture stinks!!! It's strictly from corn. There have probably been worse pictures made; but I haven't seen one yet. Anyway, I had a lot of fun making it and you will have more of the same watching yours truly making a vain attempt to copy Marlon Brando, etc. Come down and have a big belly laugh on and at . . . Hugh Thomas, Jr.

The reference to an earlier message from "some months ago" suggests that this note was repurposed from some communication between Thomas and his church. The would-be producer also indicates that the church went to Hollywood expressly with the intent to make films. 

Although he remains gregarious overall, Thomas flatly states that the film "stinks." And, yes, for likely the first time in print, he says the magic words: "There have probably been worse pictures made; but I haven't seen one yet."

Echoing these sentiments, it certainly wouldn't be the last time.

The world is my BarcaLounger. I shall not want.

Men love to recline in their BarcaLoungers. Women like to stand next to BarcaLoungers.

No joke here. No clever insights. No navel-gazing critiques. Just a man and his BarcaLounger. There is, I think, no greater achievement of Western Civilization in the 20th century than the luxuriously-padded reclining chair. A BarcaLounger or a La-Z-Boy is the finest chair a man could hope for in this lifetime, certainly far superior to any king's throne. Have you ever seen a throne, like the ones on Game of Thrones? Not comfy. Some thrones are made of gold and bedecked with jewels. But gold and jewels do not caress the nether regions. The opposite, really. So give me a BarcaLonger any day. In fact, let's just look at some more vintage recliner ads, eh?

"Santa, it's been three days. Is everything all right at home?"

"Okay, Gretchen, you can sit in the special chair, too. When the men aren't using it."

"We need to talk about your drinking, Helen. It's awesome. Keep it up."

Would you believe Ted died 20 minutes ago? You would?

Imperial margarine commercials lied to us

Da da da DAAAAAAH!

One of the (many) great disappointments of my youth was that my mother never once bought Imperial margarine at the grocery store. I'm not sure which brand we used, but it wasn't Imperial, that's for sure. I always wanted to try this perfectly-ordinary butter substitute so that, upon eating it for the first time, an Edward-the-Confessor-type crown would magically appear on my head and I'd hear the familiar regal fanfare, just like the people in the TV commercials. I was understandably curious, too, about Parkay and its mysterious talking tubs of oleo. But Imperial held the greater fascination. Imagine being one dinner roll away from becoming royalty! Did the crown come with any attendant power, I wonder? Did you get to keep it, or did it vanish once you became acclimated to the taste of Imperial? So many, many unanswered questions.

Stan Freberg has died, darn the luck.

Stan "The Man" Freberg: Floats the jokes right down the drain! (And "pay radio" did come to pass!)

Somehow, I wasn't ready for the death today of Stan Freberg, even though the man was 88 and had been in failing health for years. All I know is that yesterday, there was a Stan Freberg, and today there isn't one. So today loses in a landslide. A comedian, satirist, radio star, voice actor, singer, songwriter, puppeteer, TV pioneer, and game-changing ad man, Stan was a wizard with words. But words are failing me now, as I try to describe what Mr. Freberg's work meant to me and why it was so important to the history of comedy.

I don't want to fall back on that label of "influential." Yes, it's very nice that he was influential on several generations of fans, some of whom grew up to create music and books and movies of their own. "Weird Al" Yankovic is probably Stan's most famous acolyte, and the two got to work together in the 1990s on CBS' short-lived Saturday morning offering, The "Weird Al" Show. Many more Stan fans probably went into advertising themselves and enjoyed the creative freedom he helped make possible with his innovative "soft sell" campaigns. His ads still work! In particular, a decades-old spot for the Milky Way candy bar created in me an irresistible craving for Milky Ways, even though it's not a product I normally purchase. Stan should've gotten a commission on that sale.

But, still, I say phooey to that "influential" jazz. That word makes it seem like Stan Freberg's whole purpose on this earth was to provide an example for others to follow later, like he was a means to an end. Stan was not a means to an end. He was the end!. His work provides plenty of pleasure on its own, well beyond its historical importance. I should know. I have several hours of his material on my iPod, and it is rare that a week goes by that I don't listen to some of it.

I hardly know where to begin in recommending his work to you. Maybe Three Little Bops, a jazzy little cartoon he voiced for Warner Bros in 1957? Something from Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, perhaps? (There, I'm partial to "A Man Can't Be Too Careful What He Signs These Days" with Stan as a curmudgeonly Ben Franklin with serious qualms about affixing his name to the Declaration of Independence.) I could point you in the direction of his brief-but-brilliant CBS radio series, The Stan Freberg Show or one of those masterful sides he cut for Capitol Records, like "St. George and the Dragonet" or "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" or even "Widescreen Mama." (Sample lyrics: "Widescreen mama, don't you Cinerama me!")

All of these things are Stan, and yet none of them "are" Stan. He was a complicated guy: multi-faceted, multi-talented, and multi-media, though he loved radio best of all. Maybe I'll just play you the record that turned me from a Stan Freberg fan to a Stan Freberg fanatic. It's called "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise," and it's a parody of a then-current hit by Les Paul and Mary Ford. He leaves the lyrics of the original song intact, more or less, and instead chooses to spoof the fussed-over, studio-perfected sound of the record. Here, just listen:



"Look out!!! The equipment is smoking!!!!! Run for your life!!!!'

How could I help but love something like that? For more on Stan Freberg, please see my review (a love letter from start to finish) of A Child's Garden of Freberg.

The Clearblue commercial makes a great argument for mass sterilization

"Oh my god, I think I'm gonna cryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

In their infinite wisdom, the gods who run the internet have decided that I must sit through the Clearblue Advanced pregnancy test commercial several dozen times each day. Why, internet gods, why? What did I do to offend thee? Whenever I click on a video or article these days, I brace myself for that insipid music, that stilted acting, that dreary dialogue. Keep in mind, I have now seen this commercial more times than I've seen all my favorite movies put together. I should have it memorized by now,

There are a few different versions of this commercial floating around. The shortest edit mercifully cuts down the dialogue by a few lines, for example, but adds an uncomfortably long, text-only, oppressively silent disclaimer at the end explaining that this particular pregnancy test is not meant to take the place of a visit to a real doctor and that, if you use it, your child has a 40% higher chance of being born with either more or fewer fingers than what is considered "normal."

Either way, you get the basic plot here: two textbook "basic bitches" sit across a kitchen table, and one reveals to the other that she is two weeks pregnant, causing the other to squeal with delight. And how does the baby-mama-to-be know the number of weeks? With the Clearblue Advanced Pregnancy Test with Weeks Estimator™, of course! It seems pretty benign, and it only lasts 15 seconds. So why do I hate this ad so much? Let me count some of those ways.

This ad's color scheme: taste the rainbow.

• The music. I mentioned this before, but the background score is beyond wretched. There's no integrity to it whatsoever. I mean, just listen to it! It's this sappy, wussy, "la la la," frou frou frippery, the musical equivalent of low-fat yogurt with no fruit on the bottom. And I think part of the melody is swiped from the "Every kiss begins with Kay" jingle from Kay Jewelers. At least those ads have the decency to include Jane Seymour, a lady of character and taste, rather than these two colorless ninnies. And speaking of color...

• The overall production design. I know that Clearblue has "blue" in the name and that the company's business model is founded upon baby-making, but even so, the "baby blanket blue" color scheme in this ad is oppressive to my eyes. I mean, the clothes, the walls, the furnishings, and even the actresses' faces and arms have this pale, washed-out blue tint to them. This whole commercial looks like it got badly faded on laundry day. And, of course, the women in this world don't eat, so what do they do with their plates? Stick 'em on the wall, of course! Gah! What awful parallel universe is this? Because it certainly doesn't look like any place on Earth.

• The acting. I can't decide whether the acting in this commercial is subtly brilliant or not-so-subtly terrible. If these women are supposed to be actual friends who really do care about one another, then the acting on display here sucks eggs. But, on the other hand, if the subtext here is that these women secretly hate each other and can barely disguise their contempt for one another, the acting is pretty good. Because that's what comes across when Not Pregnant Lady covers her face to deliver the commercial's big line: "Oh my god! I think I'm gonna criiiiii-yeeeee!" On the outside, she's pretending to smile. On the inside, she's screaming, "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" But I'm pretty sure these women are genuinely supposed to enjoy each other's company, so I'm going to say that the acting is lousy.

• The women themselves. One of my favorite hobbies is making snap judgments about people based on just fleeting first impressions and very little actual evidence. So, of course, that's what I did with the women in this commercial. I've judged them and found them guilty on a number of charges. Specifically, I have decided that these two ladies are the poster children for "basic bitchery" in the social media era. Their lives revolve around yoga, North Face jackets, UGG boots, pumpkin spice, and their own smartphones. And what do they do to relax? Well, they sip overpriced coffee from giant white mugs in a hermetically-sealed kitchen and natter on about the joys of getting knocked up. 

So there you have it, folks. I think the evidence is all there. The Clearblue Advanced pregnancy test commercial is a flagrant and unmistakable violation of the Geneva Convention. Its cast and crew should be soundly horsewhipped for a period of no less than 15 consecutive hours. Thank you.

Ed Wood Wednesdays temporarily delayed by research for Ed Wood Wednesdays

Perhaps this eye-catching photograph will distract people while I'm away.

A little programming note is in order, people. Normally, I post a new Ed Wood Wednesdays article every two weeks, but that's not going to be possible this week because I'll be out of town. Way out of town, you might say. Ironically, what is preventing me from working on my Ed Wood project is the project itself. Or rather, one aspect of the project is muscling out another aspect of it. Tomorrow, folks, I'm flying to New York City so that I can attend the final two days of the Ed Wood retrospective currently going on in Manhattan. I'd be lying if I said I weren't a little nervous about all of this. Not that I'm afraid of flying. I'm just really, really bad at traveling. I have no knack for it whatsoever. I hate having to make arrangements and show up at certain places at certain times. I simply do not possess the organizational skills necessary for travel. So tomorrow will be a high stress day. Today has been a high stress day, in fact, because I've been dreading tomorrow. I feel like I'm going to take the SATs or something. It's been that kind of day. Anyway, I'm about halfway done on the next Ed Wood column. I'll be posting it in the near future. This one is exciting (I hope) because it's about a mystery movie which I did not plan on covering in this series. To quote an ad campaign from the 1980s which has stuck with me much longer than it should have, BE THERE! In the meantime, please wish me luck on this trip. I'll tell you all about it when I get back home.

P.S. - How do you like the new look of the blog? I spent some time this weekend making it over and have added some extra features to make it easier to find past content. I hope you like it.

Is Stanley Kubrick selling Nissans from the Great Beyond?

Top: A banner ad for Nissan. Bottom: (left) the carpet from The Shining; (right) a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The power was restored a little after eight this morning, and I immediately got back to the hard work of mindlessly bumming around the Internet in search of entertainment. One of my first stops, of course, was YouTube. And it was there I discovered an intriguing banner ad for the Nissan Altima. Apparently, they have some new model with what they're calling "zero gravity seats" or something, and their marketing wizards have cooked up a little animation involving a floating spaceman looking at various glowing information screens. I couldn't help but notice the resemblance between the ad and a couple of Stanley Kubrick movies. The astronaut himself (or herself; it's tough to tell under those suits) looks like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey, while the background pattern seems to resemble the carpeting from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. I wonder if the homage was intentional. Look at the images above and draw your own conclusions.

See, this is why I'm an atheist...

I kept seeing this dumb ad on every website, so I had to fix it. You're welcome. (The one on the left is the original, by the way, in case you weren't clear on that.)