Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 59: 'Cult Movies' No. 11 (1994) [part 2 of 2]

In 1994, a mere $4.95 (or $6.95 in Canada) would buy you the latest ish of Cult Movies magazine.

"I was classed as a madman, a charlatan, outlawed in a world of science which previously honored me as a genius. Now here in this forsaken jungle hell I have proven that I am alright. No, Professor Strowski, it is no laughing matter."
-Bela Lugosi in Bride of the Monster (1955)

Eddie's image was upgraded from this to this in the 1990s.

Ed Wood's ironic postmortem fame arrived in at least three distinct waves, as I see it. In other words, there have been three  separate and identifiable eras during which the name of Edward D. Wood, Jr. has possessed some pop cultural clout. For the last few decades, Ed's name always meant something to people, but exactly what it meant depended on the tenor of the times.

Wood's first wave of after-death notoriety occurred in the early-to-mid-1980s, spurred by the publication of Harry and Michael Medved's The Golden Turkey Awards. Only the rudiments of Eddie's life and work were widely known to critics and historians at the time, so the first wave was marked by breezy mockery of the man and his career. Wood was merely a cross-dressing clown who made cheap and incredibly amateurish flying saucer flicks. He was a punchline, nothing more.

For many, this is still the predominant image of Ed Wood, thirty-plus years later, so we can safely say that the first wave of Ed's postmortem fame was the most influential and durable of the three. During this wave, Eddie's three most famous films -- Glen or Glenda?, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Bride of the Monster, all from the 1950s -- were staples at revival houses and campus theaters, where they were loudly and joyously jeered by hip audiences.

The second wave happened in the early-to-mid-1990s and was centered around Tim Burton's Ed Wood and its literary progenitor, Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy. It was, in a way, a response to the first wave. Second wavers sought to rehabilitate Eddie's image, while still snickering at his life's work. Much more information about Ed Wood's life was known by then, including his debilitating alcoholism, his war record, his prolific career in pornography, and his tragic and poverty-stricken final years.

Appropriately, Eddie was treated with more sympathy and understanding by second wavers, though he remained a figure of fun to them. Wood was still a clown, but now he was a tragic clown; he'd been upgraded from Bozo to Pagliacci, so to speak. Besides Burton's film and Grey's book, the second wave was notable for the appearance of several loving yet cheeky and irreverent documentaries (typified by Ted Newsom's Look Back in Angora) that sought to put Wood's cinematic lunacy into some kind of understandable context while still having some guffaws at his expense.

Part of the third wave.

Third-wave Woodology (and, yes, I am hijacking this term from "third-wave feminism") is occurring right now, in the new millennium, and has no particular catalyst or obvious rallying cry behind it. If anything, it has been made possible by advancements in technology, including search engines and social media. These online breakthroughs have made it much easier for writers and researchers to access and disseminate information as well as stay in contact with other like-minded fans.

What, exactly, made me decide to write a series of articles about this man, a series that has now grown to something like half a million words? Why him? Why now? I don't know exactly, but there must have been something in the air, because the Wood cult -- which had been largely dormant since the Clinton years -- began to rise from its slumbers in the 21st century with crucial new books (Ed Wood, Mad Genius; Blood Splatters Quickly), DVD reissues (Big Box of Wood; Ed Wood's Dirty Movies), and special events (the gallery exhibition of his paperbacks; a week-long New York film festival). Private Edward D. Wood, Jr. had been officially called back into service.

Hopefully, the third wave of Wood's fame will be the one that finally "gets it right" by painting the most complete and honest portrait yet of this surprisingly complex man. Learning from the first and second waves (without letting our thinking be dictated by them), we third wavers can now use all the information at hand to accurately and evenhandedly assess Eddie's strengths and weaknesses, and we can identify what is still unique and fascinating about Ed's work, while not losing sight of Ed's shortcomings. Perhaps in this sense, time has been a gift to us. As Ed Wood's life recedes further and further into the past, the man himself can get the fair day in court he has been denied for decades.

But now, readers, it is time to revisit an artifact from the second wave of Woodology, specifically a fan magazine produced in 1994, right before the premiere of Disney-Touchstone's Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp and Martin Landau. A multi-million-dollar, star-studded, studio-financed biopic is the kind of honor normally reserved for those we call "heroes": chart-topping singers, record-breaking athletes, paradigm-shifting science whizzes. For such a biopic to be made about a so-called B-movie director whose films were neither critically nor financially successful in his own time was astonishingly, absurdly rare. And the fan community certainly took notice. Twenty-one years ago, when the now-mighty internet was still a mere fledgling, fans of the bizarre and the overlooked expressed themselves not on the screen but on the page.

(NOTE: In case you missed it, the first part of my Cult Movies coverage is right here.) 

Cult Movies magazine, No. 11 (1994):

A continuing examination

"Valda Hansen: Farewell to the White Ghost" (pgs. 54-55)

Valda Hansen in Night of the Ghouls.

Actress Valda Hansen (1932-1993) was the blonde bombshell who vampily portrayed the con artist known as the White Ghost in Ed Wood's Night of the Ghouls in 1959. After years removed from the public spotlight, Valda briefly resurfaced in the 1990s to reminisce fondly about Eddie in Nightmare of Ecstasy and the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood. She died of cancer at the age of 60 in July 1993, a year before this issue was released. Her death, in fact, had already merited mention in Cult Movies #8. "Farewell to the White Ghost" is a fond goodbye to the departed starlet, written by Cult Movies publisher Buddy Barnett, based on an interview with Hansen by Cult Movies editor-in-chief Mike Copner.

Valda Hansen is one of those intriguing peripheral figures in the Wood story, a very sexy actress who might have been a big star had she gotten a few lucky breaks. Drew Friedman was sufficiently interested in Hansen to devote one of his Ed Wood trading cards to her. "Farewell to the White Ghost" helps to flesh her out a little more. Ed first discovered Valda when she was a teenage stage actress. It was he who suggested she peroxide her naturally-tawny hair in order to look older.

Personally, I think it's noteworthy that Eddie's other great loves, Dolores Fuller and Kathy Wood, were also blondes. Hansen's promising '50s career as a studio contract player, unfortunately, was derailed by her scandalous romance with George White, a film editor many years her senior. After White's death, Hansen left showbiz for other pursuits. It was a "torrid affair" with B-movie mainstay Tony Cardoza, himself a supporting player in Night of the Ghouls, which brought her back to motion pictures in the 1970s with such credits as Wham! Bam! Thank You, Spaceman! (1975). She speaks with kindness and generosity about both Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi, though she does relate the canard that Lugosi drank formaldehyde. (This is an urban myth that wound up in the Ed Wood screenplay.)

Of Ed Wood, who clearly had a crush on her, Valda says:

Ed was very metaphysical.  I don't care about all this stuff about him being the world's worst director, who cares, but he was a very metaphysical person. He used to call me late into the night, he always called me lover. He'd say, "Lover, only you understand what I'm going through tonight, only you. My soul is in torment. Do you understand, lover?" He was always a little drunk at the time. But, I understood him. He used to talk about death and his feelings about death. He used to reminisce about Bela Lugosi and missed opportunities of [Ed's] career. But, he was very metaphysical and believed strongly in life after death. I believe he's still with us, I've sensed his presence many times.

An actor: Bela Lugosi.

"The Road to Las Vegas: Bela Lugosi in American Theatre" (pgs. 56-65)

Bela Lugosi may have spent much of his career in a coffin, but the man was definitely born in a trunk, to use a hoary old showbiz expression. This eye-opening historical/critical article by author Frank J. Dello Stritto is easily the lengthiest, most complex, and best-researched piece in all of Cult Movies #11. It's an incredible work of pop cultural scholarship, one that covers over three decades of Lugosi's life in fairly minute detail and offers great insight into a misunderstood figure.

Dello Stritto painstakingly analyzes Lugosi's theatrical career one show at a time, starting with The Red Poppy, which lasted a mere ten days in Greenwich Village in December 1922, and ending with Devil's Paradise, a Los Angeles production that ran for two days in June 1956, only two months before Lugosi's death.

In between these two flops, Bela appeared everywhere from Broadway to summer stock and saw his career ebb and flow like the tide. Dracula was the actor's most famous role, and he played it many times in many venues of varying respectability, including a 1927-1928 Broadway run that Dello Stritto suggests may not have been a runaway success.

This, however, was merely one facet of the actor's surprisingly diverse, genre-hopping career. By methodically following Lugosi from show to show, the author traces the Hungarian emigre's crazily up-and-down life in the States, including the rise and fall of his 20-year marriage to Lillian Lugosi.

There were triumphs along the way, as in 1943, when a 60-year-old Lugosi successfully took over for professional rival Boris Karloff in Arsenic and Old Lace and made the role his own. But there were humiliations, too, as in the poverty row "fright night" shows Lugosi consented to do in the early 1950s. Critics were by turns amused, bemused, impressed, and distressed by Bela Lugosi, who never shook his Hungarian accent and who had to resort to some degree of phonetic memorization of his lines, especially in the early days.

I don't know if Dello Stritto realized this Lugosi-centric piece would end up in an issue ostensibly devoted to Edward D. Wood, Jr., but Eddie is a memorable supporting character in "The Road to Las Vegas." In fact, the author goes as far as making this bold statement, which I will quote verbatim:

"Edward D. Wood, Jr. -- sometimes sports promoter, sometime manufacturer of 3-D Christmas cards, director, producer and writer of unforgettably bad films, and now a cult figure in his own right -- is the pivotal figure in Lugosi's last years. Questionable as his cinematic talents may have been, he did succeed in getting Lugosi work when no one else either could or would." 

Dello Stritto says that Wood was "the guiding hand" in Lugosi's "moving" and "much-needed" public appearance in San Bernadino, CA on New Year's Eve, 1953, during which the actor made a heartfelt, impromptu speech to his assembled fans. The article divides Lugosi's life into different eras, and Dello Stritto identifies the late 1940s and early 1950s as a time of "Lugosimania," when the actor's presence alone created "spontaneous mass hysteria." This, says the author, was the period when Lugosi met and began working with "a new generation of young filmmakers," including Eddie.

Comedian Sparky Kaye's grave.

For Wood fans, the main point of interest in "The Road to Las Vegas" is the section dealing specifically with The Bela Lugosi Revue, a comedic Vegas stage show allegedly written by Ed Wood and performed over the course of two months in the winter of 1954 at a venue called The Silver Slipper. Ever the trouper, the aging Hungarian thespian pushed himself to do three shows a day in Vegas for seven consecutive weeks.

Meanwhile, Wood and his then-partner Alex Gordon tried to drum up more work for Bela: perhaps a radio show or comic book and certainly more film roles. Lugosi made it through the grueling run of the Dracula-spoofing revue like a champ, but the hoped-for job offers did not materialize. Bela's only film work after that was Wood and Gordon's own production, Bride of the Monster.

Dello Stritto helpfully includes, as a sidebar, Variety's entire (positive) assessment of The Bela Lugosi Revue, dated March 1, 1954. From this, we get a much clearer view of what the show must have been like. Though Lugosi was obviously the star attraction, the hour-long show featured a cast of skilled comedians, including Sparky Kaye and Hank Henry, as well as the talents of stripper Terre Sheehan, who "emerges from a large champagne glass of bubbles" at one point in the proceedings. The Bela Lugosi Revue also included a parody of Jack Webb's Dragnet, which is interesting to learn because I've often stated that Dragnet was a huge influence on Ed Wood's movies. Variety even praises Bela Lugosi's ad libbing skills, disproving a line Martin Landau says in Ed Wood as Lugosi: "I never said I could ad lib!" According to Variety, he could.

"Rudolph Grey on Ed Wood" (pgs. 74-77)

Rudolph Grey and Frank Henenlotter

One of the true highlights of Cult Movies #11 is this spirited conversation between Wood biographer Rudolph Grey and cult filmmaker Frank Henenlotter, the man behind such demented horror comedies as Basket Case and Frankenhooker. What fuels the discussion is the fact that both men are unabashed Ed Wood fans who are quite familiar with the most obscure titles in Wood's patchwork filmography. As such, they largely forego talking about such obvious titles as Glenda and Plan 9 and instead dive headfirst into the deep end of the cinematic swimming pool, to coin a phrase.

Besides the Tim Burton film, the big news in Wood-land at the time of this issue was the recent discovery of a semi-complete print of Ed Wood's Necromania, a pornographic feature from 1971. Grey said he had offered a $20,000 reward for the movie, but Henenlotter relates the story of how Necromania really materialized. As it happened, Rudy's book, Nightmare of Ecstasy, was crucial to the film's identification. Henenlotter:

[The film] turned up quite casually. Some guy wanted to sell [Something Weird Video founder] Mike Vraney a bunch of 16mm sex films. Well, Mike didn't want any hard-core so he asked the guy for a list and was trying to weed out the hard-core from the soft. But since there really isn't any reference work for hard-core titles, Mike called me up saying, "Have you heard of any of these?" And we're just racing through the list going, "nope, nope, nope" and then, boom, he says Necromania. And we both just said, "No. Can't be. No way. Better get it!" So he gets the film, puts it on, sees that the head title is missing and calls me up in a panic. "There are no credits! How do I know if it's Necromania?" I say, "Is Rene Bond in it?" He says, "I don't know who she is." I say, "Is Rick Lutze in it?" He says, "I don't know who he is." So I say, "Get Rudolph's book and turn to page 134. There is a picture of Ed Wood on the set." He does and goes nuts, "We got it! We got it!"

The discovery of Necromania seems to have bolstered Grey's spirits. He admits to Henenlotter that his fruitless, decade-long search for the Gothic stag film had depressed him. But the mid-1990s were boom times in the Ed Wood biz, as evidenced by Something Weird's VHS releases of Wood's work, the warm reception of Nightmare of Ecstasy, and the prospect of a Disney-financed Wood biopic. As such, the normally-cagey Grey, whom I've previously described as a cross between Lt. Columbo and Bob Dylan, is unusually effusive, even bubbly.

Since Nightmare is written as an oral history and is built from quotes by Ed Wood's friends and associates, the book doesn't really offer Grey the opportunity to opine about his chosen subject. Here, then, Grey finally gets the chance to speak his mind about Ed Wood's life and work, particularly his late-career, adult-oriented films from the 1960s and 1970s. Some highlights:

• Rudolph Grey's Ed Wood project began life as a fictional screenplay about a filmmaker who turns to pornography. This was to have been dedicated to Ed Wood.

• At the time of this article, Grey was still trying to track down two other Wood-directed films from the same era (June 1971) as Necromania. These are The Young Marrieds and The Only House in Town. [Note: both have since been located.] According to Grey, Young Marrieds and Only House were both produced by a company called Caballero Films at a cost of $5000 apiece and then sold to Stacey Films for distribution. Caballero, Grey says, was "affiliated with Bernie Bloom, Ed Wood's publisher." This jibes with my theory about those films as well, so I was glad to read this.

• Rudolph Grey reads several long excerpts from Ed Wood's novel The Only House, the book upon which (confusingly enough) Necromania  is based. The text is very similar to "Come Inn," a short story I have previously reviewed. The character names (Tania, Madame Heles, Danny, Shirley) are the same in the film, the novel, and the short story.

Ed-sploitation?

• Grey and Henenlotter candidly discuss Ed Wood's appearances in the films of Joe Robertson, namely Love Feast and Mrs. Stone's Thing. Eddie appears in drag and intoxicated in these late-1960s productions. In the former, says Grey, Wood is wearing "the kind of underwear my grandmother used to wear." Both Frank and Rudy say that these movies are fascinating finds but ultimately depressing because Ed doesn't look well in them. "It's almost as if he's being exploited," says Grey.

• One Million AC/DC is brought up, then summarily dismissed. Frank Henenlotter calls it "just a lot of stupid jokes abut grapes and an obvious children's toy they're using as a dinosaur."

• Henenlotter also comments on the indelible theme song from For Love and Money: "so ghastly you just can't get it out of your head."

• As the two men survey the films Ed wrote for director Stephen C. Apostolof in the 1970s, Grey remarks that Fugitive Girls has "an Ed Wood script that seems complete and hasn't been tampered with too much." Other SCA films of the era are also critiqued (The Class Reunion, Drop Out Wife, Snow Bunnies, Beach Bunnies, The Cocktail Hostesses), mostly disparagingly. Apostolof, they both feel, exerted too strong a hand in editing Eddie's screenplays, so Ed's voice can barely be heard in the finished films, apart from a few stray lines. 

• Grey explains his own qualifications for being able to identify genuine Ed Wood-written dialogue. He finds it especially odd that Eddie listed Hot Ice on his writing resume, since he doesn't detect any trace of Wood in the script. (In my Hot Ice review, I found some potentially Wood-ian elements.)

• Both Frank Henenlotter and Rudolph Grey are much happier with the throwback science-fiction film, The Venus Flytrap (erroneously marketed as The Revenge of Dr. X). Grey enthuses that the film exhibits a "crazy logic" which is "definitely Ed Wood." Henenlotter and Grey are both particularly smitten with the lead performance of James Craig as a cantankerous mad scientist.

• The conversation turns next to John Andrews, a crucial Wood associate who died shortly before the publication of Nightmare of Ecstasy. Grey says that Andrews provided many of the best anecdotes in the book and claims that Nightmare "would have been much less than it was" without John's contributions. Apparently, Forrest J. Ackerman had written an article in Cult Movies disparaging the late Mr. Andrews and accusing him of thievery. Rudolph Grey, in response, calls Ackerman's story "cheap and shoddy."

• The article ends with a thoughtful Rudoph Grey discussing his overall impressions of Edward D. Wood, Jr., the man he has spent decades studying. Ed, he says, was an "unconventional" man with "a vast store of experience," including fighting in the Second World War and traveling with a carnival as a half-man, half-woman. So why didn't Eddie succeed in this world? "Nobody took him seriously," Grey laments. "No one recognized that Ed had something to offer."

"Casual Company - Part 2" (pgs. 78-79)

Ed's wartime play.

This particular article was the main reason I decided to buy Cult Movies #11 in the first place, and it turned out to be my main source of frustration with the issue as well. Just to refresh your memory: Casual Company was Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s first-ever novel, which he wrote in 1948 at the age of 24, and it was based on his experiences in the Marines during World War II.

Although unpublished during Wood's lifetime, Casual Company served as the basis for a play that actually was produced at a small theater in Los Angeles in 1948, with Ed both directing and playing the role of "Corporal Anthony." I'm not sure how the manuscript for the ultra-obscure novel survived for half a century, but a copy of it somehow wound up in the possession of the editors of Cult Movies magazine.

For some crazy reason, I had the impression that the entirety of the novel was included in Cult Movies #11. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, Cult Movies chose to serialize the novel, and the magazine's eleventh issue merely contained the second installment of that series: two densely-packed, eye-straining pages of text, presented in what looks like a six-point font and divided into three columns per page.

This layout, coupled with the cheap quality of the paper, makes the experience of reading the article more like that of browsing through a telephone directory in search of an honest-looking plumber. According to The Hunt for Edward D. Wood, Jr., the first excerpt from Casual Company appeared in the magazine's tenth issue in June 1993. I do not know if any further installments appeared in the magazine. Perhaps some collectors can enlighten me on this topic.

I was doubly disappointed here: first to realize that the entirety of the novel was not included in this issue of the magazine and then to find out that I wouldn't even be reading the beginning of the novel but would be joining the story already in progress. (On the letters page, a Cult Movies reader even says that the idea of serializing the novel in this fashion is impractical. I definitely agree.) But since I had already purchased Cult Movies #11 and was still very interested in Casual Company, I read "Part 2" anyway and decided to glean what I could from it.

Tim Burton's Ed Wood, with a screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, memorably depicts the Casual Company play as being a very earnest and preachy affair set on a grim-looking battlefield. This is understandable, since Eddie claimed to have seen combat in WW2 and even claimed to have survived torture at the hands of the Japanese. But Eddie was also a whiz-bang clerical worker, famed for his typing skills. And when a program for Casual Company recently resurfaced in the infamous Ed Wood auction of 2015, the play was described as "a farce in three acts" and had lots of jokey, pun-filled character names in its cast list.

True to form, this excerpt from the Casual Company novel reveals itself as a very mild office comedy with no combat action whatsoever and barely any conflict at all. It could easily be a episode of Gomer Pyle, USMC or Major Dad, but it's like one of those shows on Quaaludes.

Think Gomer Pyle, USMC on heavy sedatives.

The story -- at least the section of it I read -- is not set in the European or Pacific Theaters at all. Instead, Casual Company takes place stateside, on a Marine base eighty miles outside of Los Angeles. The activity centers around the office of Casual Company, an outfit that exists to process the medical records of hospitalized Marines. A fleeting reference to Marines becoming "wheel chair cases" is the only hint that there are young men being injured and killed abroad.

Instead, the focus of Casual Company is on three happy-go-lucky reservists, Elbo, Jim, and Jerry, who have been pressed into service as file clerks. Their lackadaisical attitude towards their work is what gives the Casual Company its name, and the three men are constantly at odds with their commanding officers: dimwitted Captain Roberts, a would-be rabbit hunter who can't seem to hit anything, and the cantankerous First Sergeant Daniel "Hashmark" O'Hare, who is also known as Top. (It took me several readings to figure out that "Hashmark" and Top are the same guy, by the way. Ed Wood does not make this clear.) Top resents having to deal with these reservists, and the feeling is definitely mutual.

The most major event that occurs in the otherwise snoozy "Part 2" is that Jim receives a personal phone call during work hours from Nadine, a girl he is dating, and Top chews him out for it, only to then receive a nagging phone call from his own wife, who wants Top to pick up some groceries. It's a standard sitcom comeuppance.

The office atmosphere of Casual Company reminded me somewhat of the police stations in Wood's later films, Bride of the Monster and Night of the Ghouls. Wood tells us that one of Jerry's duties is to fetch Captain Roberts' newspaper each day, which is similar to a minor plot point in Bride. And just like the cops in Night, the servicemen in Casual Company are constantly trying to either delegate or shirk various unwanted responsibilities, including the stamping of record books. Ed Wood's eternal muse, booze, makes an early appearance here, too, with Captain Roberts eagerly anticipating an officer's club party "with good scotch and bourbon waiting, for free."

But there are two passages in particular that Wood's fans will want to read. In the first, Top shares some dialogue with a pretty, angora-clad girl at a cigar counter in the Ship's Service.

     The pretty girl in the tight fitting pink Angora sweater set came to him with a smile. "Good morning, First Sergeant," she chirped, cheerily.
     "Yeah!" exclaimed the First Sergeant.
     The girl looked at him closely. "We haven't met before," she informed the man. "But Elbo has told me an awful lot about you. I feel that I know you like a book."
     "I can just imagine what he has told you."
     "Oh, it was all good. Elbo is so wonderful."
     "Elbo, wonderful! This is a new one."
     "Elbo got me my job here. I just started this morning. I like it. Like my new sweater set? Angora ... I just bought it yesterday. I wanted a new sweater set for my new job. So out I went shopping. I saw this angora. It was so soft and cuddly and with this beautiful soft pink color, it is all so feminine. Something new for something new. Isn't that cute? Something new for something new ... I like that."
     "I'm glad you like it."
     "Ohh, I do ... I paid plenty for the sweater set, too."
     Top sighed ... "And I'm glad you like your job, and if you want to continue liking it, I suggest you get me five, fifteen cent cigars."
     The girl let her smile fade. Maybe all those things that Elbo had said about his First Sergeant were true, but even looking closely she didn't see any horns, nor did she see the hole in the man's head.

Apart from the fetishistic attention to the textural qualities (and exorbitant price) of angora rabbit fur, one may note the frequent use of ellipses and the comparison of the First Sergeant to a horned devil or demon. All are trademarks of Ed Wood's writing. Another intriguing, quintessentially Wood-ian quote comes near the end of "Part 2" when Top rants about the reservists, whom he deems less than manly. Were Casual Company more famous, certainly the following line would be among Ed Wood's most famous phrases:

"Ohh, to be with a man's outfit again, and far away from you pantie waist reserves."

I'm not sure if the punning on Wood's part is wholly conscious or intentional, but modern readers will certainly detect some coded messages here to Ed's own, tortured transvestism, which famously caused him anguish during his war years. Also present is Ed's eternal obsession with manliness. Wood himself has been described as "effeminate" by some observers, and his characters frequently brood over their own perceived lack of machismo.

It is interesting to note that self-styled man's man Top is symbolically emasculated by his nagging wife shortly after ranting about "pantie waist reserves," thus calling his own masculinity into question. All in all, even though this book can be classified as mere juvenilia, Ed Wood's Casual Company does show some early promise and still reads fairly well.

The main problem I encountered as a reader is that, about halfway through, the story jumps from one location (the Casual Company office) to another (the Ship's Service) with no transition at all. One second, we're with Jim, Jerry, and Elbo, the next with Top and the cigar girl. I have to wonder if Cult Movies ran two separate chapters together with no break. Otherwise, it's the literary equivalent of a jarring and unexplained jump cut.

Cult Movies ad (pg. 88)

This is a one-page ad for back issues of the magazine. What's notable is that Ed Wood's name appears on the covers of issues #7 and #8. The latter promises: "Coffin Joe, Vampira, Ed Wood, Lugosi & More!" Obviously, Eddie was a regular fixture in the pages of Cult Movies. According to Philip R. Frey's invaluable Ed Wood site, Cult Movies #3 (1991) also devoted its cover to Wood with the headline: "Edward D. Wood Jr.: The Story Must Be Told!!!," while the first part of The Casual Company appeared in issue #10 from June 1993.

Inside back cover

We are treated to two more stills ("exclusive first photos") from Ed Wood. The first depicts Lisa Marie as Vampira, hands on hips, standing imperially on the fog-shrouded set of her TV show. The second shows Johnny Depp and Martin Landau as Ed and Bela, watching TV at Bela's home. Below is a darned good approximation of the page. I had to do some searching for a still that showed not only Depp and Landau but the large painting of Bela Lugosi behind them.

Two more publicity stills from Touchstone's Ed Wood with Lisa Marie, Johnny Depp, and Martin Landau.

And that, my friends, is just about all the Ed Wood content you'll find in the eleventh issue of Cult Movies magazine. But even all that is far from everything you'll find in this slim but densely-packed publication. Along with pages and pages and pages of detailed movie and book reviews, there is a lengthy feature story about softcore filmmaker Barry Mahon, plus some Godzilla-related interviews, and even a look at "1937: Hollywood's Year of Tragedy."

In short, this is a goldmine of information about weird, offbeat, and underground motion pictures. One could say that magazines like Cult Movies have been rendered obsolete or redundant by the internet, but I would not agree. This is a professionally-produced piece of work, so it has a sense of authority that may be lacking from amateur fan sites. But it's not a slick, corporate-owned entity either, so it can afford to be more esoteric and niche-specific than most major entertainment websites could ever be today.

The sheer amount of research that has gone into just this one issue boggles my mind, and I don't think all of this stuff has turned up yet online, even twenty years later. Throughout my years as a hardcore movie geek, I've been dimly aware of the importance of magazines like Cult Movies, but I haven't really given them much time or attention until now. Maybe I should have.

Next: Thanks to a generous grant from the Philip R. Frey Foundation, Ed Wood Wednesdays is at last able to return to its original purpose of reviewing actual motion pictures. Can you believe it? I'll be reviewing movies again here! The magnanimous Mr. Frey sent me a whole passel of obscure Wood flicks, ones I'd tried to find without success, and I think it's high time I started digging into them. So that's just what I'll do. Make it back here in two weeks for my long-gestating examination of The Lawless Rider (1954). 

Here, this ought to creep you out nicely

In Soviet Russia, The Great Gatsby reads you in high school! 

Not sure exactly why I did this. Just felt it needed to be done, I guess.

Ed Wood Extra! The arrival of Lots #3028 and #3043

Here I am with my new Ed Wood poster, bathed in the greenish fluorescent glow of my small kitchen.

This poster caused me so much grief.

Chalk up one more thing Ed Wood and I have in common. Eddie suffered for his art. And I, too, have suffered for Ed Wood's art, though not for the reasons you might be imagining.

While making my way through, let's say, the '70s softcore romps Eddie wrote for Steve Apostolof involved a certain amount of tedium, I cannot say that Wood's work has inspired in me the same kind of theatrical agony it seems to have caused other observers. No, my suffering has been of a different stripe.

Since Ed Wood Wednesdays began back in July 2013, I have essentially been an indentured servant to a man who died nearly 40 years ago. In my quest to catalog the life and career of Edward Davis Wood, Jr., I have frequently forsaken such niceties as fresh air, exercise, and sleep. The sun may shine and the birds may chirp, after all, but this DVD of The Undergraduate isn't going to review itself! Like Mark Borchardt said in American Movie: "I have to adhere to this keyboard."

Conservatively, I'd estimate I've put on 15 to 20 pounds in the time I've been writing Ed Wood Wednesdays. I chalk it up to all those hours I've spent hunched over my laptop computer, keeping my energy up with a steady intake of frozen dinners and prepackaged snacks. Hey, Eddie got a little doughy near the end, too. That's yet another thing we have in common, except his weight gain came from booze while mine came from gummi worms and microwaved pizza.

And sometimes, this project has inconvenienced me in such silly ways that all I can do is laugh. Take today, for instance. You'll remember, a few weeks ago, that there was a massive auction of Ed Wood memorabilia. I chickened out on the big ticket items, including a suitcase and two trunks owned by Eddie himself, but I wanted to get something out of the auction so I bid on a few of the smaller items. I wound up winning two of these: a vintage one-sheet poster for Glen or Glenda? under the alternate title I Led 2 Lives (Lot #3028) and a set of eight Mexican lobby cards for Plan 9 from Outer Space (Lot #3043).

Today, they are in my possession at last, and getting them into my apartment was a Sisyphean ordeal. It should have been easy. FedEx was scheduled to deliver them yesterday, but I knew I'd be at work when they arrived so I arranged to have Patricia, the lovely lady who manages the office of the apartment complex where I live, sign for them in my absence. My apartment, I should say, is literally next door to this office. We share a wall.

But you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men. My landlady happened to be dropping by the office when the FedEx guy arrived, and she prevented Patricia from signing for the package, reasoning that if they performed this simple kindness for me, a loyal rent-payer for 12 years, they'd have to do the same for everyone. My landlady, I can say from experience, is not someone with whom you can bargain... or reason.

One of my nifty new lobby cards.

Meanwhile, of course, my package could not be delivered as instructed. So back to the FedEx pickup center it went. Luckily, this is less than a quarter-mile from my home, since I live in a busy commercial district dominated by strip malls, chain stores, and gas stations. The clerk there was only too happy to turn over my Ed Wood poster and lobby cards to me.

But here is where the story turns into a Buster Keaton comedy. RR Auction sent these items in one large, flat cardboard box, and there was no way of fitting this into my cramped 2002 Chevy Cavalier. I tried every configuration I could imagine. Seats all the way forward. Seats all the way back. Passenger seat tilted as flat as it would go. Windows open. Trunk open. Nothing, and I mean nothing, worked.

Here I was, stranded in the FedEx parking lot just a few minutes away from my apartment. I thought of temporarily ditching the car and just walking the damned thing back home. But, again, this is a busy commercial district, and my story was happening during rush hour traffic. How was I ever going to get across those busy, dangerous streets with this ridiculous cardboard box? If I held it in front of me, I couldn't even see the traffic coming.

In desperation, I dragged the package back into the FedEx place and asked if I could just open it there and take the contents out. The lady behind the desk said this was fine, so I borrowed her scissors and cut into the package. And what tumbled out? More styrofoam packing peanuts than I have ever seen in my life. Dozens and dozens of the goddamned things accumulated at my feet. Mortified, I spent a good (read: bad) 10 to 15 minutes crawling around the floor of the FedEx pickup center in a frantic effort to retrieve every last one of those peanuts. The place looked nicer than my apartment, after all, and I didn't want to muck it up.

Eventually, though, I did manage to extract my purchases and get them into my battered, grungy old car. The Glen or Glenda? poster was swaddled in about eight miles of bubble wrap, so it was still quite a large item even outside of its cardboard cocoon. But at least it was now flexible enough to be (barely) wedged into the nearly-nonexistent back seat of my vehicle. I couldn't see a damned thing out the rear window, but then again, I didn't have far to drive. It wasn't 100% safe, but it was safe enough.

Once I got back home, I had a devil of a time chasing after all the additional styrofoam peanuts that were falling everywhere. I'm kind of a zealot about littering, especially in my own neighborhood, so I didn't want to just leave a trail of those tell-tale peanuts outside the apartment complex where I live. It was a windy day, though, so this was tricky to say the least. I'm sure I lost a few soldiers today.

And now? Well, now the poster and the lobby cards are safely ensconced in my apartment. And you know what else? They're really lovely. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, but they're lovely nonetheless.

The Glenda poster is larger than I was imagining, the size of a small (admittedly very wide and flat) child, and still a satisfying shade of fire-engine red. Right now, still wrapped in plastic, it's leaning against the wall of my kitchen. I'll probably have it framed soon, but I think the kitchen is a good place for it. Much of Glen or Glenda? takes place in kitchens. Even Lugosi's lab where he creates life is a kind of kitchen. Every morning when I have my bowl of cereal, I can look up at Eddie smooching with Dolores Fuller, forever preserved in their 1953 glory. That's a nice thought.

The lobby cards came in a thick, heavy binder of their own. I might just leave them that way. To be honest, I haven't given much thought to the items themselves. I've barely even looked at 'em. For now, I'm just happy they're home.

POSTSCRIPT: In my Clouseau-esque struggles to get the uncooperative poster and lobby cards into my vehicle on Wednesday, I somehow managed to injure my left leg rather badly. By Thursday, that leg was noticeably bruised and achy, making it difficult to walk. For the last two days, then, I have been limping to and from work. Now that I am at last in repose, attempting to recuperate over the weekend, the medicinal smell of a cheap, over-the-counter topical ointment is stinging my nostrils. So when I say I have suffered for Ed Wood's art, I mean it quite literally.

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.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 58: 'Cult Movies,' No. 11 (1994) [part 1 of 2]

Some of the back issues of Cult Movies, including one about Ed Wood.

"Google is my best friend and my worst enemy. It's fabulous for research, but then it becomes addictive. I'll have a character eating an orange, and next thing I'm Googling types of oranges, I'm visiting chat rooms about oranges, I'm learning the history of the orange."

-Liane Moriarty

There was, believe it or not, a time when the answers to most of life's pressing questions were not a click away. That's an especially sobering thought for me, because I could not possibly write a research-heavy series of articles like Ed Wood Wednesdays without the invaluable aid of the internet.

This blog only exists online; there is no paper equivalent of Dead 2 Rights, apart from the yellow legal pads I've filled up with my notes. (And these get recycled as soon as they're no longer needed.) In fact, this blog started as a spin-off of a podcast, another distinctly 21st-century form of entertainment. 

In short, the internet has allowed me to connect with other Ed Wood fans and pop culture experts and has given me access to all kinds of reviews and news articles I never could have found on my own. And when it comes to acquiring books and DVDs to review for this blog, the vast majority of these have come to me through online vendors, both legit and gray market. 

This is what research used to look like.

But what about the movie fans of previous generations, the ones who had to had to do their research in the days before Google? Well, I've been there, too.

I can recall the Dark Ages -- you may remember them as the 1980s -- when even the most obvious Ed Wood movies, such as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda?, were not available at a second's notice the way they are now. You had to hope a TV station, revival house, or campus cinema would show one of them. Or maybe the local video store would have an actual, physical copy of them on hand.

If the movies themselves were hard to come by, then information about them and the people who made them was even more scarce. You had to rely on the books your local library carried. There were newspaper and magazine articles, too, but these required mastery of such arcane technologies as microfilm and microfiche, not to mention a certain amount of familiarity with the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. That's why video guides like the one put out by Leonard Maltin were such a godsend, even if you didn't agree with the reviews. There, in one convenient place, you could at least find titles, cast lists, names of directors, and other basic release data. It was the nearest thing I had to the Internet Movie Database back when I was in junior high and high school.

Famous Monsters

One aspect of pre-internet movie fandom I've largely been ignoring up to now is the importance of fan magazines. The cult of Ed Wood actually began in the pages of such publications, which served as a precursor to the online message boards of today. Such evergreen titles as Famous Monsters of Filmland, Cinefantastique, Fangoria, and many others have played a vital role in the lives of countless horror, sci-fi, and fantasy film buffs. Along with these major titles, which were widely available at drug stores and bookshops, there were many smaller, more-niche publications, as well as a whole array of homemade, xeroxed 'zines. It just depended on how specialized the publication wanted to be and who its perceived audience was.

Unfortunately, the very existence of actual printed magazines is threatened these days. Sales are down. Printing costs are up. Shelf space is disappearing as book retailers go out of business. And nobody in the "free download" era wants to actually pay for reviews and articles about their favorite movies. That's a shame, because now writers have less incentive to actually produce this kind of material. 

As I've been doing research on the life and career of Edward D. Wood, Jr., I've come across many references to fan magazines. In particular, there were many mentions of one specific issue of one specific magazine. So I did what anyone in 2015 would do: I found it on Amazon. In the interest of science, I wanted to see if there were things about Ed Wood I could find in print that even the internet could not offer.

Which leads me to...

Cult Movies magazine, No. 11 (1994):

A thorough examination

Eddie makes the cover!

Front Cover

The cover, though not glossy, is at least printed on a slightly sturdier type of paper than the magazine's contents. Against a hot pink background, a sepia-tinted portrait of Edward Davis Wood, Jr. is surrounded by stylish black-and-white headshots of (clockwise from upper left) Vampira, Tor Johnson, Bela Lugosi, and Ed Wood in drag. The main headline reads: "So, Just Who the Heck is ED WOOD, Anyway??" Other headlines read: "Vampira Speaks!" "Criswell Predicts!" and "50 Lost Films Found!!" 

The first two are accurate. The issue indeed contains articles about Vampira and Criswell. I'm not sure where the "50 Lost Films" claim originates. It has no counterpart within the body of the magazine. Additionally, a small picture of actor Rondo Hatton, apparently an Alfred E. Neuman-esque mascot figure of sorts to Cult Movies magazine, can be glimpsed in the upper left hand corner.

Inside Front Cover

Two stills from Tim Burton's Ed Wood, similar to the ones in the official script book. The first shows Ed attending the rowdy Bride of the Monster premiere with Bela, Criswell, Vampira, Kathy and Tor in tow. The second shows Ed directing Plan 9, flanked by cast and crew, including Paul Marco and Conrad Brooks in their police uniforms. I've been able to find pretty close approximations of both pictures online.

"Deep Inside Cult Movies" (pg. 4)

Michael Copner

Now we have made our way into the magazine itself. True to fan-mag tradition, Cult Movies is printed on the same kind of cheap, pulpy-feeling paper you'd find in the phone book or old issues of Mad. The typeface tends to be very small, as if the editors are trying to cram in as many words as possible onto each page. The entire magazine is lavishly illustrated with photographs, ads, and posters, but these are all in very grainy black-and-white. In short, the magazine is an eyesore and made me grateful for my Kindle.

But what Cult Movies lacks in style, it more than makes up for in substance. In this friendly little article, for instance, editor-in-chief Michael Copner welcomes readers to the eleventh issue of the magazine and describes what we're about to read and what's been going on in the world of Cult Movies. "I hate to brag," he brags, "but I truly feel blessed that we have the greatest family of writers, artists, and film critics in fandom." 

As examples, he declares Fred Olen Ray's article about Edward D. Wood, Jr. to be "sensational" and also remarks with considerable pride that cult filmmaker Frank Henenlotter has generously penned two articles for Cult Movies, No. 11, including an interview with Ed Wood biographer Rudolph Grey. (The other is about exploitation filmmaker Barry Mahon and has no direct connection to Wood.) "To my knowledge," writes Copner, "Frank Henenlotter simply does not write material for film magazines." Guess Frank broke his own rule twice in one month. The editor further mentions that "Conrad Brooks returns to our pages" with an article about Criswell.

"A Ghoul Out West: What If Lugosi Were Teamed Up With Today's Imbeciles?" (pg. 22)

A very bizarre little article by Jan Alan Henderson, who says that Cult Movies "originated with the idea that Bela Lugosi lives eternal." Henderson starts out by reviewing two then-recent laserdisc (remember those?) releases of '40s Lugosi films: The Devil Bat (1940) and Scared to Death (1947). Henderson discusses Lugosi's work with such comedy teams as the Ritz Brothers and the East Side Kids and then imagines a scenario teaming up the Hungarian horror legend with '90s cartoon hooligans, Beavis and Butt-head. Hey, I'd be down for that. For Ed Wood fans, the real point of interest is the final paragraph:

PS: New Ed Wood Sighting: After all these exhausting profundities on behalf of Bela, I ran into an old friend of mine from Budget Films and Video, Larry Fine (not of the Three Stooges), who used to deliver films to the late great legend Ed Wood. Larry recently recalled his few encounters with Wood, most of which were with Ed over the phone, when Ed was visiting the twilight vodka zone. Larry also described to me a party, to which he delivered some rental 16mm films to Chez Wood, where Ed was in full drag and asked him to hang out for the show. Larry gracefully declined. Will the Ed Wood wonders never cease? Not likely.

Forrest J. Ackerman

"Uncle Forry: First and Last Fan" (pgs. 26-28)

This is an interview with Famous Monsters of Filmland editor and sci-fi memorabilia collector Forrest J. "Uncle Forry" Ackerman. The article is wide-ranging and career-spanning, but it does briefly touch upon Ackerman's relationship with both Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi. If Rudolph Grey is to be believed, the Wood cult truly began in the pages of Famous Monsters, where Ackerman routinely ran stills from Wood's 1950s films (Bride of the Monster, Plan 9) with mocking captions such as: "One of the unbest movies ever made."

For a period in the 1960s, Ackerman considered himself to be Ed Wood's literary agent. He even penned the introduction to Greenleaf Classic's Orgy of the Dead paperback in 1966. But as this article shows, Ackerman held Wood in contempt and found it beneath his dignity to work with him. This issue of Cult Movies was released in anticipation of Tim Burton's Ed Wood, and Ackerman makes a few whiny comments about the film's script, specifically its portrayal of a foul-mouthed Bela Lugosi and other purported inaccuracies:

Forry: I don't know as I ever... one thing I object to about the movie made about [Bela] is that I don't think I even heard him use "hell" or "damn." 

CM: Do you plan to see the Burton film? 

Forry: Oh, I'll have to see it, yes, but if it's anything like the original script, I know I'm going to be very disappointed, because they've taken all kinds of liberties. For instance, I was at the premiere showing of Plan 9 from Outer Space, out at 48th and Vermont at a little theater that doesn't exist anymore. But I think they have it taking place at the Pantages or the Orpheum or some far more grandiose opening than ever happened. And I was surprised that I was not contacted in the earliest stages of it, because after all I was Ed Wood's literary -- or perhaps we should say illiterary -- agent. 

CM: How did you first meet Wood? 

Forry: How did I first meet Ed Wood, you know, I think you'd have to give me hypnotic regression. I really pull a blank on that. 

With statements like those quoted above, Mr. Ackerman inadvertently revealed precisely why he was not asked to be a consultant on Ed Wood. His total lack of affection for Ed is plain to see. Left undiscussed here is Ackerman's problematic relationship with Maila "Vampira" Nurmi. According to W. Scott Poole's recent biography Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror, Ackerman first promoted then distanced himself from Nurmi. He later based the character of Vampirella on her without giving her a cut of the profits. Frankly, Forrest J. Ackerman has never been a figure who has greatly interested me, despite the role he played in the Ed Wood saga.

"Edward D. Wood, Jr. Interview by Fred Olen Ray 1978" (pgs. 30-32)

Fred Olen Ray

This is one of the most exciting finds in the entire issue, even though its author seems slightly unenthusiastic or even apologetic about the material he's presenting. Back in 1978, low-budget independent filmmaker Fred Olen Ray, then a mere 23-year-old novice, gave Ed Wood a much-needed $500 payment to write the screenplay for a proposed feature horror-comedy film called Beach Blanket Bloodbath. Unfortunately, Wood died in December of that year before completing the script.

During the course of their brief, thwarted professional relationship, Fred Olen Ray had the presence of mind to interview the ailing director, whom he remembers as "easygoing and gregarious." Ray states that "nothing new is presented here" and that "some of his answers appear to be fanciful to say the least." I disagree with the former, at least. Anyway, here are some of Eddie's most interesting quotes from the interview:

• "I sold my first story called The Sunset Murders when I was twelve years old to Street & Smith... It went on from there... I've had 131 novels published and more than 1000 short stories and articles published in the last 15 years."

• "Alex Gordon and I had an apartment together. He knew Lugosi. I didn't. Lugosi turned me down at first [for Glen or Glenda?], but Lillian, his wife at the time, turned him on to it. I paid him $1000 a day... He needed the money."

• "You've seen [Bride of the Monster]... Lugosi was right for it! Yes, he was one of my dearest friends. I practically lived with him! I paid him more for Bride of the Monster than he got for Dracula. Sure, he needed the money, but don't we all?"

• "Bride cost $89,000, Plan 9 was $82,000, Revenge of the Dead [aka Night of the Ghouls]... $52,000. Other than that I can't seem to remember."

• "Lugosi was ill and needed some cash. I gave him $1000 and we shot in a cemetery that was being evacuated. I wrote [Plan 9] around the scene. Too bad my camera man used bad film... which he did!"

• [when asked whether any of Lugosi's footage in Plan 9 is repeated] "I have never duplicated a scene!"

• "The Ghoul Goes West I wrote and still own. It's a great one."

Wake of the Red Witch

Much of the interview does rehash stories that have been told over and over again in other books and articles. Eddie talks about using the octopus from John Wayne's Wake of the Red Witch and having to manually work the creature's legs. He never says, though, that he stole this prop. He also retells the anecdote about being baptized, along with Tor Johnson and Vampira, to get the money to make Plan 9, and he mentions using chiropractor Thomas R. Mason as Lugosi's stand-in in that film. These are the "greatest hits" of the Wood legend, so that's probably why Fred Olen Ray felt the interview had nothing new to say.

The article concludes with what Ray calls "a bibliographic listing of Edward Wood's feature film credits," including both titles and distributors. Eddie apparently presented this list to Fred when he hired on to write Beach Blanket Bloodbath for Firebird International. Ray makes sure to point out that the titles on the list were "compiled in this order by EDW himself." He also says, "You'll notice RKO listed as the releasing company for Bride of the Monster and Plan 9! If this is true, it's certainly news to me." Without further ado, here's the list as it appears in Cult Movies:

Orgy of the Dead (S.C.A. Distributors)

Shotgun Wedding (Allied Artists)

Escape from Time (Martha C. Brown)

Gun Runners (Don Davis)

Bride and the Beast (Allied Artists)

Portraits in Terror (MacLachlen Bros. Inc.)

The Violent Years (Headliner Prods.)

The Lawless Rider (United Artists)

Flame of Islam (Screen Classics)

White Flash (J.C. Prods.)

The Atomic Monster (Real-Art)

Glen or Glenda (Screen Classics)

Hell Born (Screen Classics)

Jail Bait (Howco Int.)

Bride of the Monster (RKO)

Plan 9 from Outer Space (RKO)

The Sinister Urge (Headline Prods.)

Revenge of the Dead (Atomic Prods.)

The Photographer (Joe Robertson Prods.)

Misty (Joe Robertson Prods.)

Operation Redlight (Joe Robertson Prods.)

One Million AC/DC (Ed DePriest Prods.)

Talk Sexy Y'All (Petroff Prods.)

Bed Time Talk (Pete Perry Prods.)

Love Feast (Capricorn Industries)

Take It Out in Trade (Ashdown-Gonzales, Inc.)

Necromania (Cinema Classics)

The Only House (Cinema Classics)

The Snow Bunnies (SCA Prods.)

Class Reunion (SCA Prods.)

The Hostesses (SCA Prods.)

Dropout Wife (SCA Prods.)

Fugitive Girls (SCA Prods.)

The Beach Bunnies (SCA Prods.)

Hot Ice (SCA Prods.)

The Wicked West (Capricorn Industries)

The Venus Fly Trap (Japan)

The Lure (Japan)

Las Vegas Cheat (ghost writer) (Betty Woods)

The Frank Leahy Legend (Scotty Williams Ent.)

The Naked Bowl (ghost writer) (Jeff MacRay Prods.)

Okay, okay. Setting the production and distribution companies aside for a moment, let's break this list of titles down into some basic categories. The first, I'm glad to say, is by far the largest.

Films I've reviewed under the titles listed here: Orgy of the Dead; Shotgun Wedding; Bride and the Beast; The Violent Years; Glen or Glenda?; Jail Bait; Bride of the Monster; Plan 9 from Outer Space; The Sinister Urge; One Million AC/DC; Love Feast; Take It Out in Trade; Necromania; The Snow Bunnies; Class Reunion; Drop Out Wife; Fugitive Girls; The Beach Bunnies; Hot Ice*; and The Venus Flytrap.

* Interesting that Ed Wood includes Hot Ice on his resume. Stephen C. Apostolof claimed that Ed had nothing to do with the writing of this movie, even though he's listed as an assistant director.

Films I've reviewed under alternate titles: Portraits in Terror (as Final Curtain); The Atomic Monster* (as Bride of the Monster), Revenge of the Dead (as Night of the Ghouls); The Photographer (as Love Feast); Misty (as Nympho Cycler); Talk Sexy Y'All (as Shotgun Wedding); and The Hostesses (as The Cocktail Hostesses).

* Universal's Man-Made Monster (1941) was re-released in 1953 as The Atomic Monster by Realart Pictures, the distributor listed above. But Eddie had no involvement with this production whatsoever, as it was made six years before he came to Hollywood.

The Frank Leahy Legend

Films I might have reviewed under alternate titles: Since Pete Perry's name is attached to it, Bed Time Talk might be Revenge of the Virgins. And The Lure might well be Venus Flytrap under another name. Who can say?

Films I've identified but not yet reviewed: I'm in the process of securing prints for The Only House and The Lawless Rider. Both will (eventually) be reviewed here.

Films that were not completed or that have been lost: Hellborn was abandoned and its footage edited into The Sinister Urge. And in a previous article in this series, Douglas North schooled us all on The Flame of Islam. Sadly, though I've reviewed other films by Don Davis and Joe Robertson respectively, Gun Runners and Operation Redlight have yet to surface.

Films that remain total mysteries: (only five titles) Escape from Time; The Wicked West; Las Vegas Cheat; The Frank Leahy Legend; and The Naked Bowl. The only print references to Martha C. Brown's Escape from Time are in books about Ed Wood. Same goes for Capricorn's The Wicked West. Las Vegas Cheat and The Naked Bowl don't even make it that far. As for Frank Leahy (1908-1973), he was an American football player and Hall of Fame coach at Notre Dame. The year after he died, an unauthorized biography called The Frank Leahy Legend by Bernard J. Williams and Leslie O. Read appeared on the market. Ed might have turned this paperback into a feature film script.

Something Weird Video ad (pg. 33)

SWV's edition of Necromania

Something Weird Video seems to have been the principal sponsor of Cult Movies, and in the early 1990s, they were also one of the main distributors of Ed Wood's work on VHS. This is a full-page ad for SWV's Wood tapes, including Jailbait, The Violent Years, Bride of the Monster, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Night of the Ghouls, and  The Love Feast (aka The Photographer). "They continue to entertain and baffle anyone who actually takes the time to watch them!" says Something Weird's tuxedo-clad cartoon mascot. The main feature, however, is a "special edition" of Necromania, which had only recently been rediscovered in a semi-complete 16mm print. Frank Henenlotter himself offers his breathless description of the film:

Those who know Ed Wood from such eccentric epics as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda are in for a shock 'cause Necromania isn't quite like any other Ed Wood film. Perhaps the rarest and most sought after of Wood's "lost" features, Necromania is a crazy mix of sex and spookiness as a dimwitted couple, in need of sexual therapy, enter Madam Heles' presumably haunted house and find cheap sets, wacky dialogue, and a naked gal in Criswell's coffin! 

Hosted by yours truly, who also discusses the film with Ed Wood biographer Rudolph Grey. Plus, as an added bonus, a special abbreviated version of Love Feast featuring one of Wood's rare starring roles, in which Ed plays a horny photographer trapped in a perpetual orgy who is also made to wear a dog collar and nightie while licking the boots of his female captor. 

Nobody made 'em like Ed Wood made 'em.

A complete print of Necromania would not emerge for ten more years, so SWV's piecemeal version was definitive for a whole decade.

"The Vampira Chronicles" (pgs. 34-36)

The Divine Miss N

In the mid-1990s, the reclusive and eccentric Maila Nurmi started to reemerge from several decades in the shadows, largely spurred by the production of Ed Wood, in which she was portrayed by Lisa Marie, and an attendant renewal of interest in her strange career. In Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror, W. Scott Poole describes how a series of fans temporarily befriended the always-reticent Nurmi in her later years, largely so they could ask her questions about Ed Wood and James Dean. (She and Dean were briefly an item until, by most accounts, he rejected her.)

Writer Robert R. Rees was one such fan. "The Vampira Chronicles" is culled from Rees' "volumes of correspondence" with the one-time horror host. Among many other topics, Nurmi shares her thoughts about Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Ed Wood, and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Those who have seen Maila Nurmi in such films as Flying Saucers Over Hollywood or The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. will know what to expect from an article like this. In her autumn years, Vampira affected an air of nobility and spoke with a quasi-British accent. When she spoke of Ed Wood, it was with an attitude of what I'll call "benign contempt," as if her former employer were merely a pesky little insect she couldn't be bothered to crush. In any event, the lady wasn't afraid to speak her mind, so we have some choice quotes here:

• "Mr. Lugosi was a victim of a hospital induced drug addiction for the last three years of his life only. He was too dignified a person to sink to 'milking' sympathy. And he got no sympathy -- only smears and jeers."

• "I'd say Bela was a victim of Ed Wood, society, and himself."

• "I don't know about early responses to Glen or Glenda, but I guess it was just passed off as a very bad second feature. as were all Ed Wood movies in the '50s. It was autobiographical and poignant. Lugosi had no sense of humor and was overplaying because Wood was milking the early essences of stage acting out of him. Wood doubtless thought he had extracted a fine dramatic performance out of his actor. Bela was too sick to care much one way or the other -- so long as he pleased his boss. All of this is only my considered opinion."

• "Bela was very sick and would craw out of his deathbed, at the last, to tub thump Ed Wood movies, only to be insulted by a public who had been poisoned by a smear campaign."

• "Tor Johnson was a member of Ed Wood's professional entourage, so he worked all pics. Tor was a gentle, kindly man. Some juvenile delinquents tried to overturn our car during a monster personal appearance tour. Tor said (phonetically) 'Pee knudt poys. Khoo hooome.' (He had a Swedish accent.) The boys disbanded under his influence."

• "[Ed Wood] was in fact a transvestite but did not practice it at work except during the filming of Glen or Glenda. [...] See, during Plan 9 (and I worked only one day), he wore men's clothes (like riding britches) and shoes but did use a megaphone. Ed Wood, it seemed to me, was an animal lover and a kind man."

• "[Ed] had no sense of humor and was totally literal and matter-of-fact."

• "The atom bomb had just newly been invented and Oppenheimer was much in the news shortly before Plan 9 was being written (1956) -- so Ed Wood's theories about nukes were logical deductions of a probable future."

• "Other than that 15 minutes before his camera (for which I insisted on playing mute and was paid $200) I did not work for Ed."

Artwork from Bizarre.

Interestingly, Maila Nurmi describes both Lugosi and Wood as being humorless, a claim I would dispute. Bela did comedy many times on stage and in movies, as covered in Jay Alan Henderson's article earlier in this very magazine. Meanwhile, Eddie's sense of fun was fairly legendary, according to those who socialized with him. There are too many stories about Ed being the life of the party or going out of his way to be outrageous for him ever to be considered humorless. He might have taken both Plan 9 and Glenda seriously, but there are examples of intentionally-comedic work in his repertoire as well, both as a writer and as a filmmaker.

"The Vampira Chronicles" also includes another iteration of the oft-repeated incident in which Maila Nurmi flatly turned down an offer to play Madam Heles in Necromania. Laid up in a hospital bed and unable to walk at the time (circa 1971), she had no interest in appearing nude in Ed Wood's Gothic porno film. In this version of the story, it is Wood's associate John Andrews ("one of those beer-boozed alcoholic morons") -- not Eddie himself -- who drunkenly called Ms. Nurmi to make the indecent proposal. "Fer a hunnert apples, baby, an usin' yer name," Andrews is purported to have said. Obviously, Maria Arnold was willing and able to take the small but pivotal role of Madam Heles.

Before we leave this feature, I'd like to present Maila Nurmi's own personal "recipe" for Vampira. It's tempting to say that she's derived solely from Charles Addams' Morticia, but that's an oversimplification. The character of Vampira had a number of "mothers," so to speak, as shown below:

2 oz. Theda Bara (vamp, vamp)

2 oz. Morticia (morbid Victoriana)

3 oz. Norma Desmond (Sunset Boulevard)

4 oz. Tallulah Bankhead (the voice dahling)

2 oz. Marilyn M. (Demons are a ghoul's best friend)

3 oz. Katie Hepburn (Victorian English)

2 oz. Bette Davis (mama, baby)

3 oz. Billie Burke (dilettante insouciance)

3 oz. Marlene D. (singing voice)

8 oz. Bizarre magazine pin-up (an S&M magazine of the day)

(big boobs, waist cincher, mesh hose, high shoes, long nails)

"Criswell Predicts" by Conrad Brooks (pg. 37)

(l to r) Conrad Brooks; Criswell.

The man who turned out to be the last-surviving cast member of Plan 9 from Outer Space pays tribute to one of his fallen comrades in this short-but-sweet retrospective. Conrad "Connie" Brooks, who appeared in every major Ed Wood feature from Glen or Glenda? (1953) to The Sinister Urge (1960), was clearly a key member of the director's inner circle during Wood's golden age. Here, Brooks gives the readers of Cult Movies an overview of the career of prophet, profiteer, and inveterate entertainer Criswell.

The article seems aimed at those who only know Cris from his appearances in Plan 9, Night of the Ghouls, and Orgy of the Dead. Brooks explains: "Criswell's work on the films of Ed Wood was certainly a sideline for the man. I'm sure that Criswell worked with Eddie mostly because they were friends, two unusual Hollywood types." Trying to present a more balanced picture of the prognosticator's great career, the article helpfully describes Cris' work outside of the Wood films, including his books, his newspaper columns, and his numerous appearances on NBC's venerable The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Conrad Brooks devotes the majority of the article (75%, I'd say) to Criswell's infamously inaccurate predictions, culled from his first two books. I already covered a lot of the same territory in a previous Ed Wood Wednesdays article, but it never hurts to revisit this material. Some choice excerpts:

• "I had a vaulting imagination, and my searching wet noodle of a mind was hard to control. I was not interested in the present events, but more interested in how they would turn out."

• "I predict that the present teen age drug problem will end in dire tragedy! The climate changes will make many drug mixtures fatal, and rather than becoming vegetables upon use, the person will be the victim of death!"

• "I predict it will be a very common and inexpensive operation to change a woman into a man with the simple transplant of the sex organ."

• "For we have only a short time left on this world as we know it! On August 18, 1999 -- all will cease. And we will cease with it!!"

Okay, so the world didn't end on August 18, 1999, but Criswell must have been one of the very first celebrities who routinely talked about "climate change." He was not only sure that the climate was changing, he expressed the opinion that mankind was to blame! How's that for seeing into the future?

And that will just about do it for part one of this ludicrous, two-part series about Cult Movies, No. 11 from 1994. As they say in television, "To be continued..." Why two parts? There was simply too much interesting material in this one issue to possibly cover in a single article, so I've decided to break this piece down into two more manageable halves. It was either that, or cover the articles one at a time the way I did with the stories in Blood Splatters Quickly. I figured this was a reasonable compromise. Patience, my pet.

NEXT: Part 2 of this mini-series, featuring "White Ghost" Valda Hansen, Bela Lugosi in Las Vegas, Wood biographer Rudolph Grey, a look at Ed's very first novel, The Casual Company, and so much more! You won't wanna miss it!