For Herschell...

Artwork inspired by Herschell Gordon Lewis

We lost Herschell Gordon Lewis, the Godfather of Gore, yesterday. He was 90, so his death was hardly unforeseen. But, still, it's a less interesting world without him. I first saw his two most famous films, Blood Feast and Two-Thousand Maniacs, back in the VHS days when they came packaged with lurid, eye-catching covers. These were unlike the horror films I had seen in the past. The violence was outrageous, bloody, and right out in the open. No editing tricks or dim lighting to mask things here. I was shocked, scandalized, and enthralled. I rented them again and again.

Later, I found what an impact Lewis' movies had on John Waters and became even more of a fan. A former college professor with a varied writing resume, Lewis was an extremely funny, articulate man who gave great interviews and commentaries about his own work. Something Weird Video brought a lot of Herschell's films back into print and gave them nifty special editions. I feel like I learned a lot from those. Nuanced his films were not. Those looking for plausible plots, believable acting, or deft storytelling need not apply. But for those looking for pure, raw aggression against humanity, Lewis' films were heaven sent. I loved them to pieces. The artwork above is my modest tribute to the splatter king. RIP, HGL.

I have an idea for the next 'Child's Play' movie if anyone wants that.

The Chucktator.

I didn't really keep up with the long-running Child's Play horror film franchise after the first couple of flicks. I haven't even gotten around to seeing 2004's Seed of Chucky, despite the fact that one of my personal heroes, John Waters, appears in it. I only know that the murderous Chucky doll (voiced by Brad Dourif) acquired a female counterpart and some nasty, Frankenstein-like facial scars along the way. I'm still not wild about those scars, since I think they undermine the whole point of the character, which is that he looks like a creepy but harmless My Buddy doll from the 1980s.

Anyhow, despite my almost-total ignorance of the property, I nevertheless would love the chance to write the next Child's Play sequel, if there is one. I have an idea ready to go. Be forewarned: This gets a tad convoluted.

Accurate but not respectable.

I've been obsessed lately with the saga of General Idi Amin Dada (ca. 1923-2003), the military strongman who seized control of Uganda in the 1970s. He terrorized and bankrupted the country for years as its dictator, killing off his enemies, real and perceived, by the thousands. YouTube has countless hours of footage related to Amin: documentaries, news reports, interviews, etc. There, one can also find Amin: The Rise and Fall, a sensational 1981 exploitation film featuring Kenyan actor Joseph Olita as the boastful African strongman.

What's really surprising about The Rise and Fall is that, apart from the inclusion of some tasteless urban legends like the depiction of Amin as a cannibal, the script largely sticks to the historical record and depicts Amin as he really was. Some especially horrific details, such as keeping the severed heads of his foes in his kitchen freezer, are drawn from real life. So what makes this movie "exploitation" rather than an Oscar-winning, critically-praised drama, like 2006's The Last King of Scotland? It's all a matter of tone, I guess. The Rise and Fall treats Amin's reign as a horror story, an approach that extends to the music, the camera angles, the acting, and the editing. It's all done for maximum shock effect. That makes critics uncomfortable.

While re-watching Amin: The Rise and Fall, I started thinking of General Idi Amin as a potential horror star. He's a lot more effective than most of the major icons of the slasher genre, who tend to kill their victims one at a time. In terms of his overall body count, Amin leaves Freddy, Jason, Michael, and the rest in the dust. He operates boldly in broad daylight, rather than skulking around in the shadows. Another advantage is that he doesn't have to do all the killing personally. He has soldiers and guards to do a lot of the dirty work for him.

So then I started imagining a franchise film in which a famous horror character becomes the brutal dictator of a small country. Long-running horror franchises often tend to become gimmicky as the years go by, and this seemed no more extreme than, say, putting Jason Voorhees into outer space. But Jason's no good for this kind of picture. He doesn't talk, and he seems to derive no real pleasure from his killing. Ditto Michael Myers and Leatherface. It's difficult to imagine Freddy Krueger holding down a government job for long. Ditto Hannibal Lecter. So who's left?

Chucky, that's who. He's perfect. He seems like the kind of guy who'd get a kick out of bossing around a whole country. I pictured the little doll getting sick of causing mayhem in his home country and moving to some fictional country in Central America or South America, where he becomes known as "El Juguete," an incredibly corrupt, violent, and sadistic martinet. He'd have everything: an army of henchmen, a harem of love slaves, and a torture dungeon. And the image of little Chucky, still doll-sized, in a military uniform dripping with medals is surreal and funny and terrifying to me. I'd call it Reign of Chucky: Puppet Regime and advertise it with this tagline: "Running a country? It's child's play."

As for the content of the movie, just watch this trailer for the Idi Amin flick and imagine that it's Chucky doing all of this awful stuff. Doesn't that sound kind of awesome?

My idea for a can't-miss Halloween theatrical event

Neither Sissy Spacek nor William Katt are involved, unless they want to be.

Be part of the magic!

So I had this idea a few years ago for what I still think would be a really cool theatrical experience. I'd stop short of calling it a "play" because it's not quite that, though it would involve actors, props, costumes, a massive "set" (more on that later), and some ingenious practical effects. It's an immersive adaptation of Carrie, specifically based on the 1976 film version by Brian De Palma, and it's called Bates High Prom '76. De Palma renamed the high school in the story "Bates High" as one of the many, many, many Psycho homages he's made in his career. Anyway, Bates High '76 would not be staged in a traditional theater, but rather a gymnasium, VFW hall, or other large public space, possibly even a warehouse if need be.

The idea would be to recreate the prom from the movie as closely as possible. The venue would be decorated to look just like the gymnasium in the movie, complete with silvery stars hanging from the ceiling. We'd get real musicians to portray Vance or Towers, the band seen in the movie. They're the ones performing "Education Blues" in the background. I guess I'd also have them perform "I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me" and other tunes from the Carrie soundtrack. Mostly, they'd be playing mid-1970s Top 40 stuff all night. Ticket-buying attendees would be encouraged (not required) to wear either prom-appropriate clothing or 1970s-appropriate clothing. Both, if possible.

My actors would portray all the characters from the movie: Carrie White, Tommy Ross, Sue Snell, Billy Nolan, Miss Collins, and the ginger-haired super-villainess herself, Chris Hargensen. The prom would play out more or less in real time, and the actors would just be intermingled with all the other attendees -- not bothering people, you understand, just doing what they'd normally be doing under the circumstances. A lot of what they said and did would be scripted, but they'd have to improvise a lot, too. What would set the actors apart from the spectators is that the former would be miked and made up to look like the actors from the movie. How much of what a spectator hears during Bates High Prom '76 depends on his or her relative location and ability to notice details. If you attend the show, the story would be happening all around you: Carrie coming out of her shell, Miss Collins beaming from the sidelines, Chris and Billy rigging the election, etc.

And then... well, you know. You've all seen the movie by now, I hope, and you remember what goes down at the prom. Imagine living through it... or a safe simulation of it, at least. That's where practical effects, lighting, and sound come in. We'd have smoke machines, sprinklers going off, strobe lights, gallons of fake blood everywhere. It would be the most fun ever. Bates High Prom '76 is one of my many totally impractical ideas, and it probably wouldn't work in real life, but I'd like to give it a try sometime.  

UPDATE: My ever-reliable West Coast connection, Bob Blackburn, informs me that Carrie:The Musical is actually being staged in a manner similar to this in Los Angeles... to great reviews, no less! In a way, I feel justified. Maybe my ideas aren't as impractical as I'd thought. I'd love to see it. I think the only way to really do Carrie as a live show is to completely engulf the audience in the story and make them feel is if they are living it.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 50: "Meatcleaver Massacre" (1977)

Believe it or not, this poster actually does sort of summarize the plot of Meatcleaver Massacre.

catholic [kath-uh-lik, kath-lik]  

adjective

1. broad or wide-ranging in tastes, interests, or the like; having sympathies with all; broad-minded; liberal. 
2. universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all.
3. pertaining to the whole Christian body or church.

Ed's 1977 novel.

What might Ed Wood have given for the opportunity to direct a non-porno movie in 1977? His situation was exceptionally grim that year, with his only known creative output being a single transvestite-themed paperback, TV Lust (billed as "The Fictional Memoirs of One of America's Best-Known Drag Queens"), for a publisher called Eros Goldstripe, which had previously released his novels Forced Entry and Diary of a Transvestite Hooker in 1974. Thwarted projects from that period include Shoot 7, an unproduced musical about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and Venus de Milo, a proposed film vehicle for Ed's nascent punker neighbor Shannon Dolder involving a search for the missing arms of the titular statue.

As intriguing as Shoot 7 and Venus de Milo sound, such never-to-be endeavors clearly do not pay the bills. Eddie was broke, drunk, in showbiz exile, utterly lacking direction, and only a year away from his untimely death. So seedy and crime-ridden were his surroundings that he lived in a state of constant fear and paranoia, a situation that served to exacerbate his racial and ethnic prejudices. There were even times when, according to his wife Kathy, Ed pawned his typewriter -- his only conceivable source of future income, mind you -- to pay for booze. All he really had left with which to bargain by then was his immortal soul.

Under those circumstances, Ed Wood might have made a tempting mark for Mephistopheles. Had the Horned One come knocking on the door of Eddie's squalid Yucca Street apartment in Hollywood, clutching a sheaf of parchment, would Eddie have affixed his name in blood to the cursed document? Would he have even flinched?

I ask these questions because of the strange, occult-themed movie that serves as our focal point this week. Though I had never even heard of it until a few months ago, the title kept recurring with regularity throughout the course of my Wood-ian inquiries. Which books and movies do you cover and which do you ignore in a series such as this?

There are definite, identifiable levels of orthodoxy in Ed Wood scholarship and journalism. Some ultra-strict observers limit themselves to the six feature films he wrote and directed under his own name between 1953 (Glen or Glenda?) and 1960 (The Sinister Urge). Most will at least allow for the films he wrote under his own name in the 1950s and 1960s (The Violent Years, Orgy of the Dead, Bride of the Beast, etc.). Heartier explorers will make room in their lives for the softcore and hardcore pornographic films Ed wrote and/or directed in the 1970s, some of which (like The Snow Bunnies and Fugitive Girls) were even done under his own name.

But then, my friends, there is a whole world of speculative Wood work: projects Eddie may have, might have, could have, sort of, supposedly, allegedly, or probably worked on. What does one do with such movies? I grew up in the Catholic faith, a religion whose very name means "all-encompassing," and I have taken an appropriately catholic approach to Ed Wood's filmography and bibliography. Certainly, some of what I cover will be fool's gold. But to neglect these auxiliary films is to potentially miss a large -- perhaps even the largest -- chunk of Eddie's career. Eddie labored in Hollywood for 30 years, and for much of that time he was an undocumented worker.

My job, then, is to do some documenting. Let's proceed.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 38: 'It Came from Hollywood' (1982)

It Came from Hollywood... and went to videodisc somewhere along the line, apparently.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

-Percy Bysshe Shelley 

 

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality by not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment."

-Woody Allen

Ramesses II on display in the UK.

Legacy. That's pretty much all a man has left after he dies. Will I be remembered? And if so, how? And by whom? Try as we might, plan as we may, we cannot control how others will judge us and judge our actions after we die. After the funeral, the narrative is simply out of our hands. Some fare better than others in this respect. Take a fellow like Ramesses II, the seemingly omnipotent pharaoh who ruled over the formidable Egyptian Empire over three-thousand years ago. As the most powerful man of his day, Ramesses II, who would come to be known as Ozymandias to Greek historians, was immortalized in stone many times over by his contemporary artisans. These statues, in fact, long outlived the Egyptian Empire itself.

One such likeness, called the Younger Memnon, was shipped off to the British Museum about two-hundred years ago and is still there now. It's object EA19, if you're interested. It was this particular piece, eight feet tall and carved in over seven tons of granite, along with the inscription on another massive statue of Ramesses, that inspired British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to compose his famous sonnet, Ozymandias, in 1817. In Shelley's poem, a statue of the once-great ruler stands abandoned and forlorn in the desert. All that remains are "two vast and trunkless legs of stone," a "shattered visage," and a pedestal upon which is carved a boastful message about the importance of this long-dead man and his triumphs. These accomplishments have obviously been erased by time, however, since the shattered relic is surrounded on all sides by a bleak and barren landscape.

Interestingly, Shelley gives us all this information third-hand, so to speak. The narrator of Ozymandias tells us that "a traveler" once described the scene to him, and now he is passing the story along to us. The point of the poem, I think, is that Ozymandias is a chump. At least, that's the way Shelley sees it. The pharaoh thought he had it all figured out, lording over his magnificent empire that was supposed to last forever. And now, all that's left of it is a busted-up statue in some crummy desert. Time, Shelley implies, has neutered Ozymandias. In his lifetime, he accomplished a great deal, but in the long run it was all for naught.

"Ozymandias melancholia"

Shelley's discouraging, humbling poem must have struck a chord with filmmaker Woody Allen, because he coined a term, "Ozymandias melancholia," for his film Stardust Memories (1980) and reused it in To Rome with Love (2012). Allen defines this phenomenon as "that sad and depressed feeling you get when you realize that no matter how great and majestic and important something is at the time, in time it's going to pass." Given his advancing age and myriad scandals, Woody Allen may have some legitimate concerns about his own legacy. He's been a public figure for about 50 years, and his name is still up there in the firmament... for now. Who knows what the ensuing decades and centuries have in store for the former Mr. Allen Konigsberg?

Percy Shelley's brief life was also pockmarked by scandals -- expulsions, suicides, charges of blasphemy -- yet his work has survived at least two centuries and seems good for at least a few more. I can't imagine high school English teachers dropping Ozymandias from the curriculum anytime soon. We can all rest assured that students will be writing perfunctory, semi-incoherent essays about it for years to come. And what about the inspiration himself, Ramesses II? Sure, his empire didn't last forever, and his statue is just another exhibit at which tourists will likely gawk for a few moments before heading to the gift shop. But here we are, three millennia hence, and I'm still puzzling over him. Percy and Woody have a long way to go to catch up to Ozzy in terms of longevity. So maybe he wasn't such a chump after all. He didn't live on the way he wanted, but he did endure after a fashion.

Columbus' reputation is fading.

Lady Fortune can play some weird tricks on you even after you're dead. She's that kind of gal. Just this week, the city council of Minneapolis voted unanimously to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day in honor of the city's local native tribes. The council said its decision was "not about Christopher Columbus," but I find that somewhat difficult to fully believe. In my lifetime, I've seen Columbus' reputation as an icon in the history of our country virtually evaporate. Once lauded as the man who "discovered America," the Italian explorer is now treated as a racist, lying thief and bully who brought greed, genocide and misery along with him on the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Based on the objective historical evidence, the man is truly indefensible and doesn't deserve a holiday in his honor. Still in all, what rotten posthumous luck for Columbus! His legacy survived largely unscathed for not decades, but centuries -- well into the 1980s -- only to collapse about 20-25 years ago. Ironically, the tipping point was probably 1992, i.e. the 500th anniversary of his famous voyage. The occasion brought him back into the public consciousness but also inspired renewed skepticism and criticism. The much-lauded quincentenary fizzled, and two competing Columbus biopics were box office bombs.

In the oddest of coincidences, both Christopher Columbus and Edward D. Wood, Jr. died at the age of 54. Ed is another case of a man whose reputation has taken some weird detours after his demise. The debate over Eddie's image has continued for decades now. Who was Ed Wood, Jr., exactly? A drunk and transvestite who made the worst movies of all time? A mad, misunderstood genius? A misguided but sincere outsider artist? A martyr? A fool? The film I'm covering this week, Paramount's comedic semi-documentary It Came from Hollywood, played a not-insignificant role in shaping the legend of Ed Wood in the early 1980s. In this motion picture, released only four years after Eddie's untimely death, the man's life and work are represented through the merest of remnants -- brief clips, a few questionable factoids, and some comedic conjecture.

These fragments strike me as the equivalent of the "trunkless legs of stone" described by Shelley. They don't give you the whole picture, certainly, but they do offer some insight to the life and times of a noteworthy individual. This isn't Ozymandias. It's Eddie-mandias.

IT CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD (1982)



Alternate titles: Direct from Hollywood (Venezuelan title)

Availability: Naturally, because of all the clips it contains, It Came from Hollywood is rather a nightmare from a copyright standpoint. Paramount intended on releasing it to DVD circa 2002, and one can still locate official-looking cover art for the disc. Due to rights issues, however, this DVD never made it to market. Used copies are still available in other formats, however. You can still purchase the film on VHS ($34) or laserdisc ($60) through Amazon. Additionally, a site that specializes in "Rare, Out of Print and Lost Cult Films on DVD," markets a DVD-R of the movie for $20. I have never dealt with this site and cannot say how reputable it is. Caveat emptor.

Additionally, an iOffer user named doctorkildare366 is selling it for $14. Used copies in a variety of formats -- VHS, laserdisc, and video disc -- are up for bid on Ebay, with prices ranging from $22 to $60. If that's out of your price range, the entire film has been uploaded to YouTube.

NYC's (sadly) long-gone Sutton Theatre

The backstory: Paramount Pictures obviously took note of the success of Harry and Michael Medved's The Golden Turkey Awards, the book that almost single-handedly brought Edward D. Wood, Jr. and his work to America's attention, for good or ill, in 1980. The very next year, the major studio acquired the rights to Ed's inaugural and most idiosyncratic feature, Glen or Glenda? (1953), and planned on exhibiting it prominently at New York's upscale (and now demolished) Sutton Theatre, only to back out at the last moment. Paramount's unlikely alibi was that such a release would have been in poor taste following the assassination attempt on recently-inaugurated President Ronald Reagan's life on March 30, 1981. All that remains is a remarkable ad from the "Arts & Leisure" section from a March '81 edition of the New York Times. The ad took the form of a fancy wedding announcement and contained the following text:

In the vast parade of motion pictures,
there are a few that marched to a different drummer.
Some were one of a kind originals.
Like "Citizen Kane."
Some told their story on a wide emotional canvas.
Like "The Godfather."
Some were provocatively bold, thumbing their noses at convention. 

Like "Freaks."
Some were lost, like "Napoleon."
They all had one thing in common.
They were different, more special than the other movies around them. 

Beginning on April 1st at 8:00 P.M.
The Sutton Theatre and
Paramount Pictures Presents
Edward D. Wood, Jr's
"Glenn or Glenda."

An ancestor of It Came from Hollywood

Note the incorrect spelling of Glen and fortuitous mention of Citizen Kane, directed by Ed Wood's idol, Orson Welles. The above account, incidentally, comes from J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbuam's invaluable text on paracinema, Midnight Movies (Da Capo Press, 1983), which states that Paramount's "interest in the film has never satisfactorily been explained." Nevertheless, the studio was still convinced that there was some gold to be mined from the Medveds' "golden turkeys," particularly the outlandish, low-budget horror and science-fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s. Harry and Michael had, if nothing else, proven that there was a resurgence of interest in such movies, one fueled partly by mid-century nostalgia and partly by the desire of younger viewers to mock the naivete of an earlier generation.

These particular movies, born of both Cold War paranoia and the rise of the American teenager as a cultural force, had a unique and potent effect on viewers of the 1980s, who reacted to them with a combination of befuddlement, incredulity, delight, and cynical superiority. The supreme and definitive expression of this phenomenon, television's Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988-1999), would not arrive for several more years. In the meantime, Paramount gamely bankrolled an unusual "grab-bag"-type compilation film consisting of clips of dozens of these movies, interspersed with newly-shot vignettes featuring top comedians of the era.

The result, It Came from Hollywood, certainly stood out from the rest of Paramount's 1982 release schedule, which included 48 Hrs., Some Kind of Hero, An Officer and a Gentleman, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. There were a few Paramount films that year that spoofed the cinema of the past, including Airplane II: The Sequel and Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again.

This movie's clearest antecedent, however, was from another studio entirely: MGM's massively successful That's Entertainment (1974). That film, a surprise $19 million box-office hit, was a tribute to the golden days of movie musicals and consisted of clips from vintage films, interspersed with newly-shot introductions featuring such familiar stars as Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, and Liz Taylor. It Came from Hollywood was structured vaguely along those lines, only minus the reverence. Like That's Entertainment before it, this new film was a "greatest hits" reel of a particular chapter of movie history and also contained freshly-minted interstitial material.

In this case, however, the presenters were comedians who had come up through National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live and the Second City franchise in the 1970s and were poised to become major movie stars in the 1980s. And instead of offering fond reminiscences and pertinent background information about the films they were exhibiting, as the co-hosts had in That's Entertainment, the stars of It Came from Hollywood performed in madcap comedy sketches and offered smart-alecky comments about the various brief clips. Some of these cheeky remarks, in fact, were used as narration over the clips themselves, making It Came an apparent predecessor of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Perhaps we can think of this movie as a missing link between MST3K and some earlier efforts at redubbing and repurposing movies for comedic effect, including Jay Ward's television series Fractured Flickers (1963-1964) and Woody Allen's feature, What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966).

Solt and Leo's Elvis doc.

The masterminds behind It Came from Hollywood were a pair of up-and-coming producer-directors named Andrew Solt and Malcolm Leo, a Britisher and an American respectively. Solt and Leo were hot at the time, coming off the success of This Is Elvis (1981), an acclaimed documentary that combined existing newsreel and home movie footage with dramatic recreations in order to tell the life story of messianic rock star Elvis Presley. The underwhelming performance of It Came, which opened to dismal reviews (Leonard Maltin declared it "spectacularly unfunny") and lukewarm box office receipts in late 1981, does not seem to have caused long-term professional damage to either of its creators. Indeed, both Leo and Solt went on to lengthy, prosperous and still-ongoing careers making pop culture-based documentaries, though after It Came from Hollywood, they would do so separately and mostly for television. A prominent exception was Andrew Solt's theatrically-released Imagine: John Lennon (1988).

As for the star-studded cast, the first three comedians recruited for the film were all Second City alumni who had attained national fame through television. Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner had only recently left Saturday Night Live, while John Candy was still a cast member on SCTV, the shape-shifting sketch series then airing in a 90-minute block on NBC. Candy had already had prominent roles in The Blues Brothers (1980) and Stripes (1981), but according to biographer Martin Knelman in his book, Laughing on the Inside: The Life of John Candy (St. Martin's Griffin, 1998), the comedian's TV workload (he stayed with SCTV in one form or another from 1976-1983) had put a crimp in his burgeoning film career:

Because he had been consumed with SCTV, 1982 was the only year in which Candy did not have a movie coming out, except for It Came from Hollywood -- a forgettable anthology of clips from amusingly dreadful movies about aliens. Candy was one of the narrators, along with Cheech and Chong, Gilda Radner, and Dan Aykroyd. Candy's main contribution was to make jokes putting down that prodigious director of cheap, amateurish movies, Ed Wood. But the jokes seemed every bit as tacky as Ed's movies.

As for Cheech and Chong, the only performers in the film outside the Second City bubble, their appearance seems to have been an afterthought by a worried studio. In Cheech & Chong, The Unauthorized Autobiography (Simon and Schuster, 2008), Tommy Chong tells an anecdote about going to Vancouver Island for his mother's funeral, only to be met there by two Paramount executives, who had chartered a Cessna to track him down. After expressing their condolences, they gave him a pitch:

     "We need a favor from you and Cheech. Cheech is already onboard. So now we need a favor from you. We are doing a movie, a spoof actually, about Hollywood. It's called It Came from Hollywood and we need you and Cheech to do a cameo. And like I said, Cheech is already onboard, so..."
     "Sure. I would be glad to be in your movie," I answered. I still wondered why they went through all this trouble.
     The very next morning bright and early, we boarded the little Cessna and flew to Seattle, Washington, and then took a commercial flight to Los Angeles. The "we" being Jeffrey Katzenberg, Larry Marks, and me. Katzenberg was one of the top guns at Paramount at the time. The movie It Came from Hollywood was in trouble and needed some star power to put some butts in the seats. Cheech and Chong were the hottest movie stars at the time, so Jeffrey flew to Vancouver Island to get my support. [...] Cheech and I shot our part in It Came from Hollywood in one afternoon, ad-libbing the entire shoot and having a ball with the rest of the celebrity cast -- Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, and Gilda Radner among them.

So for Cheech and Chong, whose partnership was nearing its end, this was a pleasant experience on the back half of their career. (The duo broke up in 1985.) It Came from Hollywood was not a complete commercial failure, as I had remembered. It grossed $2 million on what must have been a very modest budget. The new segments were all shot within the confines of Paramount Studios in L.A., with only a few rudimentary interior sets (a movie theater, an operating room, a suburban home) and exteriors that were obviously filmed on the backlot, with its permanent cluster of fake-looking buildings. After a brief theatrical run, it enjoyed a fairly healthy afterlife on VHS and cable before disappearing into obscurity. In a truly bizarre coincidence, the film opened two days before Halloween in Los Angeles but did not go national until December 10, 1982 -- the fourth anniversary of Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s death.

Ed Wood gets a posthumous "salute" from Paramount.

Ed Wood dominates It Came from Hollywood as much as -- or more than -- any of the high-profile comedy stars on the marquee. The compilation includes clips from dozens of films by dozens of filmmakers, yet almost none of these are specifically named... except Eddie's movies. The directors of It Came, Andrew Solt and Malcolm Leo, drew their source material mostly from the movies of the 1950s and 1960s, but It Came from Hollywood spans nearly a half-century from the late '20s to the late '70s. Apart from an affectionate roll call (set to the strains of "Hooray for Hollywood") at the very end of the picture, however, almost none of these clips are identified in any way, either by onscreen captions or by the presenters. Leo and Solt merely selected noteworthy clips from the original movies and grouped them into a series of fast-paced montages*, each with its own theme ("Gorillas," "Aliens," "Troubled Teenagers," etc.), bookended by the shenanigans of the five famous comedians. Except for Phil Tucker's Robot Monster (1953), the only films specifically identified by the hosts are those made by Ed Wood.

In fact, about 22 minutes into the film, there is an entire segment entirely devoted to the infamous auteur entitled "A Salute to Edward D. Wood, Jr." This passage is anchored by John Candy, who begins by delivering the following monologue directly to the camera while standing amid a variety of props, including a flying saucer:

One man who usually gets singled out when people talk about third or fourth-rate movies is Ed Wood, the man who brought you such classics as Glen or Glenda? and the science-fiction epic Plan 9 from Outer Space, which could have used this flying saucer here. As a matter of fact, I'd like to present a salute to Ed Wood, a true master of the B-movies. Well, D-movies. You judge for yourself.

Candy then shows the audience a few representative excerpts from Plan 9 and Glenda, remarking on the chintzy special effects ("You can hardly see that string!") and unconvincing acting ("Oh, look at the motivation! The deep concern! The confusion! Marvelous performance!"), but also mixing in a few factoids about Ed and his career, information likely cribbed directly from the Medveds' book. Some of what Candy says is accurate. Yes, Ed wrote and directed these films and played the lead in Glen. Yes, that's a shower curtain in the cockpit from Plan 9. Yes, Ed used his wife's chiropractor as a stand-in for the late Bela Lugosi. Some of the information, though, is the stuff of urban legends. No, Plan 9 was not made for $37 and those flying saucers are not hubcaps.

Generally, the clips here are well-chosen -- Duke Moore scratching himself with his gun; wobbly UFOs zooming past a matte painting; Dolores Fuller dramatically removing her sweater -- the kinds of memorable moments that would make strong impressions on viewers who had never seen Ed's work before. By far, though, the most stunning aspect of "A Salute to Edward D. Wood, Jr." is its ending, in which a bra-wearing Dan Aykroyd joins John Candy onscreen and the two comedians, their voices dripping with mock sincerity, re-enact the crucial "angora sweater hand-off" scene from the climax of Glen or Glenda? before zooming off in Aykroyd's motorcycle.

Dan Aykroyd (left) and John Candy re-enact the climax of Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda?

And this surreal scene is far from the only Ed Wood-related content in It Came from Hollywood. In fact, clips of Eddie's work are interspersed throughout the entire film.. and not just the familiar titles like Plan 9 and Glenda, but the obscure ones as well, including The Violent Years, The Bride and the Beast, and even Married Too Young. The very first glimpse of Plan 9 arrives about two minutes into the proceedings, with a clip of Dudley Manlove and Joanna Lee as aliens Eros and Tanna prompting this reaction from a baffled Tommy Chong: "I want my money back!"

In a later segment sarcastically called "Technical Triumphs," John Candy offers some whimsical thoughts on the production values of Ed's Bride of the Monster. He describes a laboratory scene between mad scientist Bela Lugosi and test subject Tony McCoy thusly: "A man with a spaghetti strainer strapped to his head gets tortured by a photo enlarger on a microphone stand." Maybe not the greatest compliment in the world, but this is (again) one of the rare instances in which the stars of It Came from Hollywood bothers to name one of the movies he is mocking. Ed Wood might have very well appreciated the fact that he was getting some name recognition from a major studio production like this. After all, there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?

*Interestingly, one of the editors who labored on this movie was Janice Hampton, who was John Waters' resident cutter from Hairspray (1988) to Pecker (1998).

The ill-fated DVD release.

The viewing experience: That will vary greatly depending on what kind of viewer you are and how seriously you take your B-movies. As regular readers of this feature will know, I've taken a moderate, pragmatic stance on the "to laugh or not to laugh" issue when it comes to the work of Ed Wood and other low budget filmmakers of his era. While I never want to be snide or dismissive in these articles, I cannot help but be moved to laughter occasionally by these often-ridiculous, delirious movies. It was laughter that originally made me a fan of Ed Wood in the first place. If, however, you are one of those ultra-orthodox fans who cringe at the very thought of these science-fiction and horror films being treated disrespectfully, you will want to give It Came from Hollywood a wide berth. Certainly, such viewers will be offended to see such well-made and highly-regarded films as The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), and War of the Worlds (1953), included alongside and thus essentially equated with such no-budget bottom feeders as The Creeping Terror (1964), as if any older film that included monsters or aliens was inherently worthless.

Personally, that last point bothered me more in theory than in practice, since the jokes lobbed at these movies throughout It Came from Hollywood are strictly softballs. "On Earth, we throw a dog a bone. We don't turn him into bones," goes one of Dan Aykroyd's typically toothless non-zingers after witnessing an alien casually dispose of a defenseless pooch with a laser gun.

The script for It Came is credited to comedian and writer Dana Olsen, whose CV includes such cartoon-to-screen adaptations as George of the Jungle and Inspector Gadget. Olsen is currently working for an upcoming Nickelodeon series called Henry Danger. As you'd expect from those credits, Olsen's work here is innocuous -- amiable, if not exactly funny. (To his credit, Olsen has also written screenplays for beloved cult directors like John Carpenter, Greydon Clark, and Joe Dante.) Given the improvisational backgrounds of literally all the film's stars, it's difficult to say how much of the finished movie can truly be attributed to its screenwriter.

By any yardstick, however, the sketches in It Came from Hollywood are fairly weak, and the commentary by John Candy and the others is fairly puerile and witless. The clips themselves are the true stars here. The comedians mostly get in the way. I will say, though, that the hosts genuinely appear to be having fun, which in turn made this film more fun for me as a viewer. Aykroyd gets to ham it up as a German-accented mad scientist. Gilda Radner trots out her famous "Judy Miller" character, a hyperactive and talkative child, from Saturday Night Live. She also stars in one of the more successful interstitial routines, portraying a hapless housewife who all but destroys her own living room trying to heed the urgent advice of a radio announcer. And Cheech and Chong chortle at the pitifully-inaccurate depiction of the dope-smoking lifestyle in Reefer Madness (1936), with Chong pointing out that the potheads in that film don't hold the smoke in their lungs but just puff and puff.

John Candy: Canadian sincerity.

MST3K viewers will no doubt notice that a great many of the films excerpted in It Came From Hollywood were later used as full-length episodes of the long-running cable series. But MST took a sharper, more critical approach to the films it used whenever necessary (e.g. Jerry Warren's interminable The Wild World of Batwoman), diplomacy be damned, and their jokes tended to be specific, esoteric, and obscure. The humor in It Came from Hollywood, on the other hand, tends to focus on the same basic subjects over and over, namely the shoddiness of the props and sets, the stiffness of the acting, and the overall implausibility of the plots. The grand message of this film is: "Gee, aren't these old movies kooky, folks?" That's pretty much it.

Make no mistake: It Came From Hollywood is a PG-rated major studio comedy aimed at a broad audience. The actors in it are clearly playing to the gallery, to borrow an idiom from the theater.

Perhaps for more timid viewers, It Came could serve as a "gateway drug" to MST3K or at least a "sampler platter" of the sci-fi and horror flicks of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. If only the clips were better labeled, this would be a terrific "what to see next" guide for adventurous viewers. In addition, It Came from Hollywood is recommended to Ed Wood fans, as it is one of the first mainstream acknowledgements of the Wood cult, more than a decade before the famous Tim Burton-directed biopic. Although the principal point of this movie was to hold Ed and his work up for ridicule, it is difficult to become too offended by It Came from Hollywood.

A lot of that has to do with the onscreen persona of the late John Candy, who was one of the most gregarious and ingratiating screen personalities of the 1980s. With his tousled hair and rumpled, loose-fitting attire, Candy very much resembles an overgrown kid in this movie. And there's a touch of humble Canadian sincerity to this ostensibly comedic monologue, which Candy delivers about two-thirds of the way through:

You know, up until this point, there's been a lot of laughing and sneering going on, directed at some of the films we've been watching. And I've gotta admit, I've been laughing a bit myself. Thing is, you've gotta keep an open mind about these things. Most of these guys were working under a very tiny budget. And when that's the case, even the most fundamental things become difficult, if not impossible. Like makeup and wardrobe. Just because you can't afford the best doesn't mean it's bad filmmaking.

I'm sure Eddie would have agreed very heartily with that sentiment. After all, he knew from first-hand experience just how true those words were.

In two weeks: My humble little "Ed Wood Wednesdays" series takes a tuneful detour with its first album review. "The sick musical flowering of a twenty-year obsession with the extraordinary life, work, and sexual paraphilia of Ed Wood, Jr., pornographer, war-hero, director of unspeakable celluloid tortures, big-time lush and cross-dressing angora adorer." So says the ad for a bizarre concept LP about Poughkeepsie's favorite son. And it was created by a musician and journalist of some prominence, no less! How could I resist such a trinket? Mosey on back here in a fortnight, folks, when I sink my fangs into Josh Alan Friedman's The Worst! (2007)

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 20: "Venus Flytrap" (1970)

These days, you're most likely to find Venus Flytrap under the inaccurate title The Revenge of Dr. X.

"Science fiction, double feature. Dr. X will build a creature."

-Richard O'Brien, The Rocky Horror Show (1973)

May the gods of drive-in cinema bestow their benevolent blessings upon Fred Olen Ray. The director of Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988), Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds (1995) and dozens of other features, Ray was born in 1954 in Wellston, Ohio, a humdrum little iron-and-coal-producing town whose only other alumnus of real note was Kansas City Royals relief pitcher Jeff Montgomery. That horsehide hurler's 304 career saves notwithstanding, Fred Olen Ray is clearly the community's most distinguished ex-citizen, even though the lad actually did most of his growing up in Florida.

I wonder what Wellston thinks of its renowned native son, who currently directs made-for-TV and direct-to-DVD comedies and sci-fi films (e.g. Abner the Invisible Dog; Super Shark) under his own name and churns out softcore sexploitation flicks (e.g. Bikini Jones and the Temple of Eros; Tarzeena: Jiggle in the Jungle) under assumed names like "Nicholas Medina" and "Sherman Scott." Ray's also been known to wrestle under the name "Fabulous" Freddie Valentine from time to time. 

Like Edward D. Wood, Jr., Fred Olen Ray was obsessed with movies from his early childhood. While Ed was weaned on the Bela Lugosi movies he saw at the local bijou, Fred's young mind was warped by monster model kits, Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and the horror and sci-fi flicks he watched on television, including a couple of the films Eddie had directed back in the 1950s, most likely Bride of the Monster (1955) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). When Ray grew up, there was no doubt about his career choice. The die had been cast.

A scene from Beach Blanket Bloodbath (1978).

Fred Olen Ray directed, produced, and wrote his first film, The Brain Leeches, in 1978. He was 24, the very same age Ed Wood had been when he'd shot his own would-be debut, Crossroads of Laredo, thirty years previously. Crossroads was the first of Eddie's many ill-fated Hollywood projects, doomed never to go before an audience in its creator's lifetime. Among the very last was Beach Blanket Bloodbath (1978), a horror-comedy spoof Ed wrote for Fred Ray, who shot a few minutes of the proposed feature in a fruitless attempt to secure funding. (This footage can be glimpsed in Ted Newsom's Look Back in Angora.) Three decades of thwarted ambitions, missed opportunities, ever-worsening alcoholism, and just plain rotten breaks separated Crossroads and Bloodbath.

By the time battle-scarred veteran Ed met eager up-and-comer Fred in the late 1970s, there was almost nothing left of the once-promising young man who'd come to Tinsel Town with such high hopes in 1947. Just as Ed had once done with a down-and-out Bela Lugosi in the 1950s, however, Fred Olen Ray took an interest in this forgotten old-timer and did what little he could to revive his career. The humble, unassuming Ray later admitted that he had no idea how famous Ed would become in just a few years. As he told interviewer Giovanni Spada:

Early in my career, I wanted to make films and get people to put money into films, and I wanted to associate myself with people who had already made films that other people might know. And someone introduced me to Ed Wood, Jr., who had made some films with Bela Lugosi in the 1950s, and I hired Ed Wood to write a script for a movie called Beach Blanket Bloodbath. And I sent him some money, and he got started on the script. And I sent him a Christmas card, 1978, and the card came back, "Moved. No longer at this address." And I later find out that Ed had died. And where my script is, no one knows. But he was a very friendly guy, a very outgoing guy. He laughed a lot. And little did we know that years later, Ed Wood would become so famous.

From the 1960s on, Ed Wood was often either uncredited or billed under a pseudonym for much of his film work, which by then mainly consisted of writing screenplays for others to direct. How do we know, then, which movies Ed worked on? Well, for one thing, he apparently kept a record of them himself and added them to his résumé or CV (curriculum vitae), which he kept updated even during his declining years, still optimistic enough to be planning ahead for the next job opportunity. Though I've never had the chance to peruse these documents myself, I've seen references in print to Ed Wood résumés dated 1970 and 1974. If Rob Craig's book, Ed Wood, Mad Genius:A Critical Study of the Films (McFarland, 2009), is to be believed, the consummately professional Eddie presented his CV to the young Fred Olen Ray back in 1978. And it is from this list of accomplishments that we can now trace Ed Wood's connection to a curious Japanese-American co-production whose very origins remain shrouded in mystery today.

VENUS FLYTRAP (1970)

The Rifftrax edition of the film.

Alternate titles: The Revenge of Dr. X, The Revenge of Doctor X, The Venus Flytrap, Body of the Prey, The Double Garden, The Devil Garden, The Revenge of the Venus Flytrap.

Availability: Take your pick. After being distributed by various labels, including Reel Classic Films, Regal Video, and New Horizons, the film has fallen into the public domain and is available freely under the completely inaccurate title The Revenge of Dr. X. 

In this version, the opening credits are for another movie entirely, specifically Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1968). Despite what the opening titles say, Venus Flytrap was not produced by Eddie Romero and Kane W. Lynn, written by Ruben Canoy, or co-directed by Romero and Gerry DeLeon. Furthermore, the cast does not include John Ashley, Angelique Pettyjohn, or Ronald Remy. Again, all of these wonderful folks worked on Mad Doctor of Blood Island, which is an entirely different movie. Perhaps Venus Flytrap and Mad Doctor were intended to run as a double feature.

In any event, The Revenge of Dr. X (which pointedly features neither revenge nor a character named Dr. X) is available as part of the Chilling Classics 50 Movie Pack (Mill Creek, 2005) for about the same price as you can buy it as a standalone DVD (Syngergy, 2007). Through Amazon Instant Video, you can download the movie for eight bucks or rent it for three. For ten bucks, you can download the Rifftrax version of the film, with humorous commentary by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett.

Regal Video's VHS version.

The backstory: Hoo boy. This is a tricky one. More so than with any previous film in this series, I will have to rely on third-hand information, rumors, and hearsay in my discussion of Venus Flytrap. Let's start with a basic question: who directed this movie? Well, it was not Ed Wood. On that issue, all sources are in agreement. Ed's authorship of the screenplay seems no longer to be in dispute, and reference books which include this film also acknowledge that it was made in Japan in either 1966 or 1967. The appearance of a slightly-worn 1966 Chrysler in the film is a reliable indicator of its age. Where the 1970 release date comes from, I do not know, as the film does not seem to have achieved widespread theatrical release under any of its multiple titles.

By most accounts, the film acquired the title The Revenge of Dr. X as well as the totally inaccurate credits during the 1980s, when it was released on VHS tape by a company called Regal Video. The rumor mill has it that Regal was founded by furniture retailers and that the company carelessly disposed of the original master, which had no opening credits at all, after transferring the film to videotape. Whether or not this is true, the only version of the movie currently available was clearly made from a rather murky VHS copy. No better prints of the film have surfaced, if in fact they even exist at all.

The identities of the filmmakers are still up for debate as well. Several reference works -- including Rob Craig's Ed Wood, Mad Genius and Thomas and Yuko Weisser's The Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia (Vital Books, 1997) -- claim that the film was directed by Kenneth G. Crane (1907-1995), who also helmed The Manster (1959) and Monster from Green Hell (1957) and was chiefly employed as an editor by the mid-to-late 1960s. The IMDb's current director of record is Norman Thomson (1916-2000) aka Earl Norman aka Norman Earl Thomson, a pulp novelist and stage/screen actor who had been part of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater Players, including their infamous War of the Worlds broadcast. Thomson spent most of his career in Tokyo, Japan, where for thirty years he served as the entertainment supervisor for all American military bases in the Far East under the direction of the US Department of Defense.

Thomson's daughter, Patricia Ayame Thomson, was born in Tokyo during this time and grew up to become an actress herself, with appearances on Days of Our Lives and Seinfeld. Her IMDb biography discusses her father's career somewhat. The Toei Company, a prominent Japanese film and TV studio incorporated in 1950 (and responsible for such MST3K favorites as Invasion of the Neptune Men and The Green Slime as well as the highly-regarded Battle Royale), may have been involved in the production of Venus Flytrap.

While the company has officially disavowed any connection to it, as have all Japanese studios, an Ed Wood scholar identified as Doctor Kiss has stated that there is paperwork indicating that the company did finance Venus Flytrap. For what it's worth, the IMDb currently lists the movie as a Toei production.

The case for Norman Thomson as the movie's director is strengthened by some vintage articles from Stars & Stripes, the American military's official newspaper. On page 13 of the October 6, 1967 edition is an article by Miami serviceman and columnist Al Ricketts, who has a prominent and pivotal role in the film as an eccentric, grease-stained gas station attendant. In the piece, which was part of his regular column called On the Town, Ricketts writes about Atsuko Rome, the film's lead actress. In particular, the article describes the making of one of the movie's many diving scenes, which were apparently as grueling as they appear to be in the finished movie:

Atsuko Rome on film and in print.

I would imagine that most girls in the world, regardless of their vital statistics, dream of becoming movie stars. Or Miss Universe. Or maybe even the Playmate of the Month in the centerfold of Playboy Magazine. 

But there's one girl I know currently making her debut in motion pictures who really doesn't care whether she becomes another Marilyn Monroe or not. I'm referring to the pert and shapely Atsuko Rome, who is actor James Craig's co-star in Earl Norman's "Body of the Prey." The Tokyo-born daughter of a well-known pottery artist (her husband is a retired Army colonel) is in the seaside city of Shimoda right now getting her first taste of what it's like to work in a Hollywood-type atmosphere of cables, bright lights, angry shouts from the director and numerous retakes. 

I found her dripping wet, wrapped in a blanket, her hair an absolute mess -- and shivering -- after repeated plunges into a cold salt water aquarium. To make matters worse, the tank was at least 20-feet deep and the pressure on the eardrums at the bottom was fierce.  

Yet, Asuko was in good spirits and quite excited about her first day as a movie star. "I'm nervous," she said, "and a little frightened. The water is not so cold ... but the pressure on the ears is terrible. And I almost freeze to death every time I come out of the water." 

Does she like the idea of becoming an actress? "It has been exciting -- this first day. And I think I will like it. But I don't want to go to Hollywood. And I won't care if I never make another picture ... At least I don't think so right now. 

"Maybe I am being too honest? I don't know what to say. Maybe I'm saying all the wrong things. I really don't know how to handle these things. I just feel that I have to be myself, that I must tell the truth. Is that wrong/" 

It's not wrong, Atsuko. It's refereshing. But you would cause a Hollywood press agent to have a heart attack by making remarks like that. Like it ain't show biz, baby.

Venus Flytrap's ultra-manly star, James Craig

Neither Mr. Ricketts nor Ms. Rome ever had occasion to step in front of a motion picture camera again after this film was completed. The other few performers in this movie who can be identified -- such as John Stanley and Edward M. Shannon (likely backers who play "Dr. Stanley" and "Dr. Shannon" respectively), plus Lawrence O'Neill and Tota Kondo -- are one film wonders with no other movie or TV credits. American-born James Yagi, who plays the level-headed Dr. Paul Nakamura, did rack up a number of Hollywood credits in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly on TV shows like Dobie Gillis and My Three Sons. It is also possible, though not positively confirmed, that Miyoshi Umaki (1929-2007) of Flower Drum Song and TV's The Courtship of Eddie's Father, has a bit role in the production as well.

As Al Ricketts mentions in his article, however, the real star of Venus Flytrap (or Body of the Prey) and easily its most recognizable face is James Craig (1912-1985), an actor who by then was nearing the end of a 35-year movie career. Named by exhibitors as the second-most-likely new star of 1944 (just behind perennial punchline Sonny Tufts), Craig appeared in a few high-profile productions like Kitty Foyle (1940) and The Devil and Daniel Webster (1944) early in his career, but was more often relegated to low-budget "B" features and serials. By taking whatever parts came his way, he managed to stay employed for several decades before finally bottoming out with 1972's pitiful Doomsday Machine.

In 1968, after the production of Venus Flytrap but before its release, Craig appeared in arguably his most popular film, the David L. Wolper-produced war story The Devil's Brigade, alongside such manly actors as William Holden, Cliff Robertson, and Richard Jaeckel. By that time, with his slicked-back hair and neatly-trimmed pencil mustache, Craig bore a striking resemblance to the older Clark Gable but apparently did not have Gable's effortless magnetism or broad appeal with audiences. After producers stopped calling and the offers dried up, Craig retired from acting and made his living as a successful real estate agent. Interestingly, this parallels the career of another Ed Wood graduate, Tom Keene, who got out of show business to sell life insurance in his autumn years.

Is this character intended to be a "sneaky Jap?"

The viewing experience: Venus Flytrap offers everything you would expect from an Ed Wood movie from the 1950s -- including highly quotable dialogue, lovably naive special effects, and a baffling, nonsensical plot -- except that it takes place in Japan in the late 1960s. It is possible that the film's exotic setting is a remnant of Ed's own haunting WWII experiences in which he was forced to kill Japanese soldiers. Or it may be that the plot of Ed's script was simply transplanted to Japan by the filmmakers because that's where they were stationed. The island nation provides an intriguing backdrop to the film, with its looming volcanoes and deferential women, but it is not actually essential to the story. This is simply a mad doctor movie which happens to take place in Japan.

Rob Craig comments on the "creeping racism" of the resulting film, but I feel he's overreaching with this observation. Easily the film's most negative character, agitated NASA rocket scientist turned botanist Dr. Bragan (James Craig), is American. The Japanese characters are presented in a neutral-to-positive way throughout the film. Yes, Bragan does have a leering, creepy, hunchbacked assistant who is Japanese, but I feel this character owes far more to the deformed servants played by Dwight Frye in Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) than to the "sneaky Jap" stereotype as Rob Craig suggests. And the hunchback is in no way representative of the film's other Asian characters, who are mostly helpful, sane, and reasonable, especially in contrast to the temperamental, volatile, and selfish American Dr. Bragan.

Apart from the Universal Frankenstein films, the clearest antecedents of Venus Flytrap are Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and Ed Wood's own Bride of the Monster (1955). As the movie opens, NASA scientist Dr. Bragan is severely stressed out by the many delays and miscaluclations which threaten the agency's space shuttle launches. (Bragan's most famous line is reminiscent of Plan 9's haughty alien Eros, only less polite: "How in the hell can anybody be so utterly stupid as to build a rocket base on the coast of Florida?") Bragan throws temper tantrums, yells at his subordinates, and seems to be experiencing migraines or even blackouts which are affecting his work, so his partner, Dr. Paul Nakamura, suggests a lengthy sabbatical in Japan and arranges for his lovely cousin, Noriko Hanamura (Atsuko Rome), to meet Bragan at the airport and serve as his assistant during his visit.

On the way to the airport in Wilmington, North Carolina, Bragan suffers a clogged fuel line and stops at a backwoods filling station to have the vehicle repaired. There, he meets the establishment's filth-encrusted but friendly owner (Ricketts, in a role Ed must have been intending for Harvey B. Dunn) who encourages Bragan to examine his collection of snakes while the car is being repaired. The doctor isn't much interested in snakes but is fascinated by some Venus flytraps he finds growing on the property and, with the owner's blessing, takes a few samples along with him on the plane trip to Japan.

Dr. Bragan chats with a topless diver in Venus Flytrap.

Once Bragan gets to Japan, the incredibly accommodating Noriko informs him that her father has a neglected resort with a functioning and well-maintained greenhouse high up in the mountains. Rock slides and volcanic eruptions make the place as impractical a vacation spot as The Shining's Overlook Hotel, but Noriko's family has held on to the place and kept the hunchback on salary as the hotel's full-time caretaker. (In their quite-funny commentary on the film, the Rifftrax guys repeatedly point out how unlikely and impractical this business model truly is.) Once Dr. Bragan has his new greenhouse laboratory set up, he begins an experiment to prove that human beings evolved from plant life. To accomplish this, he plans to splice together the Venus flytrap, a land plant, with the "Venus Vesiculosa," a large, tube-like sea plant, to create an ambulatory, carnivorous hybrid he dubs "Insectivorus."

Noriko assists Bragan in this utterly-insane scheme, but she is increasingly unsettled by his erratic behavior. There are several sequences in which she gets out of bed in the middle of the night, goes to the window, and watches the white-coat-wearing Bragan traipse off into the woods in search of... something. (One possible justification for these scenes is that they provide an excuse to show Atsuko Rome silhouetted in a sheer nightgown against the window.)

The side trip that Bragan and Noriko take to locate the elusive "Venus Vesiculosa," offers one of movie's few concessions to the era in which it was made. Namely, the two are assisted in their underwater scavenger hunt by the lovely, topless maidens of Chiba. In a weird detail seemingly cribbed from an old Disney animated movie, Bragan totes the rare plant around in what looks like a glass coffin once he's "liberated" it from the ocean floor, as if the plant were Snow White or Sleeping Beauty awaiting a kiss from Prince Charming.

From there, the movie progresses pretty much like you'd expect for a mad scientist film of this vintage... or, more accurately, of a mad scientist film from the 1940s. The Insectivorus, a huge, lumbering humanoid creature with Venus flytraps for hands and dreadlock-ish stalks growing out of its onion-like head, escapes from the lab and goes on a killing spree in a nearby village. This, in turn, attracts the attention of a torch-wielding mob (led by the father of one of the creature's victims) and leads to the downfall of both the doctor and his incredible creation. It's the standard "he tampered in God's domain" deal.

The movie swipes quite a bit from the Frankenstein films, especially a "creation" scene in which the monster is raised on a platform toward a skylight during a thunderstorm. In The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Bela Lugosi's Ygor famously described the Monster's origins: "The lightning! It is good for you! Your father was Frankenstein, but your mother was the lightning!" Well, Ed Wood has Dr. Bragan cycle through several variations on this line, including:

• "Your mother was the soil ... perhaps the lightning will become your father!"

• "The earth was your mother. Your blood will be the rain. Your father, the lightning!"

• "Your mother was the earth, the rain your blood,  the lightning your power!"

As indicated previously, Dr. Bragan also has a great deal in common with  Bela Lugosi's Dr. Eric Vornoff from Bride of the Monster. Vornoff is a grouchy, short-tempered mad scientist who once worked for the government and who has now isolated himself in a remote, creepy house where he spends his time making monsters in an attempt to prove some kind of asinine theory about the essence of life.

The Insectivorus, for its part, seems derived in equal measures from the Frankenstein Monster (at least the less-sympathetic version of that character played by Glenn Strange) and Audrey, Jr., the man-eating, bloodthirsty killer plant from The Little Shop of Horrors. Like the leafy menace from the seminal Corman film, the Insectivorus at first appears to be weak and fragile until it feasts on something living (in this case, sadly, a puppy) and grows strong. The plant gains control over its human master, and just like the hapless Seymour (Jonathan Haze) did in 1960, Dr. Bragan embarks upon furtive, late-night missions to acquire fresh blood for the hungry plant. In Bragan's case, this involves going to a Sanitarum and extracting the vital life fluid from a sleeping female patient, affording the filmmakers another chance to work in some gratuitous nudity. (Though as Joe Bob Briggs once pointed out, no nudity is ever truly gratuitous as long as it's any damned good.)

Whatever its title, Venus Flytrap seems deserving of a larger cult following. It contains all the elements that "B" movie fans would want, including a discordant and truly odd musical score, a profoundly silly monster, some very clumsy camera work, and acting which ranges from apoplectic (James Craig) to narcoleptic (Atsuko Rome, who seems to have learned her lines phonetically). But it also gives us some insight into the obsessions and diversions of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Many of Ed's pet motifs appear here, including alcohol, lightning, snakes, dogs, and frilly nightgowns. And in some of Dr. Bragan's lunatic ranting, there is even some existential Wood-ian philosophy evident. During a quiet moment with Noriko, Bragan looks up to the heavens -- the source of his livelihood -- and muses:

"My life has been out there, and it still seems to be. It's my probe, my project, that speeds on its way to another planet, to search its depth, its soil, its life perhaps, its mysteries... when there are so many mysteries right here on our own planet we haven't even solved."

This very project has taught me just how true that statement is.

Next week: Edward D. Wood, Jr. has had more "final films" than the Who have had "farewell tours." If you'll cast your minds back nine years, you might remember that there was a minor media sensation in 2004 when Fleshbot Films (a now-defunct spinoff of a still-existent porn blog) released Ed Wood's supposed "last movie "on DVD in both its softcore and hardcore versions. At the time, Fleshbot was owned by Gawker Media, so the story got around quite a bit. In fact, this particular title was not Ed's last directorial effort of all time. Heck, it wasn't even his last directorial effort of 1971! But it is, for now, the last movie written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. to receive an official DVD release. And now, dear readers, it has found its way to this blog. Meet me back here in seven days for an uncensored examination of Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love (1971).