Ed Wood's ANGORA FEVER: "The Last Void" (1971)

No, this is not Nick Offerman. It's Rickey Torius.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).

An issue of Ecstasy.

The story: "The Last Void," originally published in Ecstasy, vol. 3, no. 1, March/April 1971.

Synopsis: Hired killer Rickey Torius staggers out dazedly into traffic, oblivious to the cars on the road. How did he come to this sorry state? Well, some time earlier, he'd gone into a local dive called the Ten High Bar. There, he'd met Lila Sanders, a beautiful "broad" with red hair and blue eyes. He was immediately impressed with Lila's appearance, physique, and intellect. He and Lila hit it off, and he took her back to his place for a one night stand that turned into a long weekend. But Rickey realized too late that his initial meeting with Lila had been no chance encounter. The daughter of one of his former victims, she had been waiting for him.

Wood trademarks: Story about a hitman and a woman who sleeps with him while planning to kill him (literally the same thing happened in "The Hazards of the Game"); the word "fluff" (one of Ed's favorites, cf. "Calamity Jane Loves Hosenose Kate Loves Cattle Anne," "Craps," etc.); cocktail bar (cf. The Cocktail Hostesses).

Excerpt: "Damn if she wasn’t an expert at everything she did. The way she had so swiftly slipped out of her dress… then the removing of his pants. It was like no effort at all was being displayed. It was like everything just came natural as the normal course of events. Then they had their first affair by candle light on Rickey’s soft bed. It was all that he hoped for."

Reflections: Was Ed Wood a misogynist? That's a question for readers to ponder once they've read the stories in Angora Fever for themselves. Eddie himself was a habitual cross-dresser who fetishized women's bodies as well as their clothing, but his male characters in these stories seem to have nothing but bad luck with members of the opposite sex. I haven't been keeping count, but Eddie uses the word "bitch" and "broad" a lot to refer to his female characters, including Lila Sanders. Theoretically, the reader should be on Lila's side here, since she's avenging the death of her father, but we really only get Rickey's side of the story. ("Witches like that could make any man go off his rocker.")

In Charles Schulz's comic strip Peanuts, Linus Van Pelt once declared, "I love mankind... it's people I can't stand." There's something similar going on with Ed Wood, I think. He loves femininity... it's women he can't stand. Edde rhapsodizes over women's hair, clothing, underwear, breasts, etc., etc. But he seemingly has no patience for their minds, their behavior, or their personalities, at least not in these stories. It's becoming clearer to me that Ed Wood was using his fiction to work through a lot of longstanding issues.

Incidentally, I don't normally comment on the artwork that accompanies these stories, since it wasn't done by Ed Wood and doesn't appear in Angora Fever anyway. But I'll make an exception in this case. "The Last Void" is accompanied by sketches of two characters, one male and one female, apparently to represent Rickey and Lila. Rickey appears to be a slightly bloated man with a droopy, walrus-like mustache. He looks like an early '70s version of actor Nick Offerman.

The sunny-faced woman, though, looked eerily familiar to me. A little photo research confirmed it: she's actress-model Susan Bernard, the hapless ingenue of Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) and Playboy's Miss December 1966. Those doe eyes of hers are unmistakable

(left) illustration from "The Last Void"; (right) Susan Bernard.

Next: "Super Who?" (1972)

Ed Wood's ANGORA FEVER: "A Taste for Blood" (1972)

Blood, booze, and naked gals: The Ed Wood holy trinity.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).

The story: "A Taste for Blood," originally published in Orgy, vol. 5,  no. 1, January/February 1972.

Synopsis: Mobster Tom Duke is in bed with high-priced call girl Shirley after several rounds of intense lovemaking. Tom wants to bring Shirley into the organization, making her a private girl for the syndicate. She's interested, both because of the money and because she has a "taste for blood." Being in the mob gets her one step closer to professional killing. Tom starts to have reservations about Shirley, thinking she might be too dangerous, and his worst fears about her are soon confirmed.

Wood trademarks: The name Tom Duke (a seeming nod to Ed's repertory players Tom Keene and Duke Moore from Plan 9 from Outer Space); prostitution (cf. "Private Girl"); post-coital murder (cf. "The Hazards of the Game"); a whole assortment of alcohol, including scotch, gin, and whiskey (Ed was a raging alcoholic and referenced booze in most of his stories); tough, violent women (cf. Devil Girls); "mounds" as slang for breasts (cf. "Taking Off"); character named Shirley (cf. "The Hooker').

Excerpt: “You make a lot of money, but it isn’t enough to keep me in perfume and perfumed soap. I take three baths a day… and in very expensive perfume.”

An influence on Ed?: Damon Runyon

Reflections: I've written before about the influence of Jack Webb on Edward D. Wood, Jr., but I've not yet pointed out the effect that Damon Runyon must have had on Eddie's writing as well. A Kansas native with a convoluted backstory, Runyon (1880-1946) was a newspaper reporter and short story writer famed for his colorful, highly stylized portrayal of New York's underworld characters, including mobsters, gun molls, and racetrack touts. Runyon's stories inspired the long-running 1950 stage musical Guys and Dolls. A heavy drinker like Ed, Runyon was six years dead before that show premiered on Broadway. Not insignificantly, one of Ed's working titles for Orgy of the Dead (1965) was Ghouls and Dolls.

Ed Wood's short stories and novels are often set in the criminal underworld, as are a few of his movies (Jail Bait, The Sinister Urge), but his slang-slinging gangster and prostitute characters seem to have beamed in directly from Runyonland rather than the actual crime world. In fact, I'd say that what Ed Wood has done in these stories is to take what Damon Runyon was doing in his short stories in the 1930s and '40s and add explicit sex and violence to the mix. Imagine if Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson talked about their "stiffening members." That's basically the tone of an Ed Wood story.

In his 54 tumultuous years on this earth, Eddie was never arrested for any crimes that I know of, nor did he ever stand trial. His only officially documented troubles along these lines occurred during his stint in the Marines. According to James Pontolillo's invaluable The Unknown War of Edward D. Wood, Jr. 1942-1946,  Ed Wood "underwent a summary court-martial for being AWOL" in January 1943. He served 15 days imprisonment and paid $20 in fines. Hardly a criminal mastermind.

Meanwhile, Eddie's frequent employer, Pendulum Publishing, had serious business ties to real-life gangster Michael Thevis, but I'm not sure how much personal contact -- if any -- Ed Wood ever had to the mob. A story like "A Taste for Blood" reads like it was written by someone who grew up playing "cops and robbers" in the backyard.

My colleague Greg Dziawer has spent a great deal of time studying the seedier aspects of Ed Wood's bizarre life, and he has an opposing view on the subject:

Ed was not a good guy. An abusive alcoholic. He was, though, very social, a real character around the North and West Hollywood scene for decades, when it was crawling with unsavory, sleazy characters. I doubt Kathy would have cared, even if she knew, what Ed was up to or where he went, as long as the next drink was available. I don't think it all caught up with him until about '76 or '77. Prior to that, he was still out and about and involved in making porn beyond just writing, in some form or fashion. 

And I have to think he got busted, though unrecorded or lost in time, for dressing in drag in public, and certainly public drunkenness and related. Remember the dangerous world of Glen or Glenda [in which cross dressers are routinely arrested]. This persisted, no doubt (and ironically) in [Mayor Sam] Yorty's L.A., despite how progressive history claims the place to be during that era. As for the drinking: how could [Ed] not have spent his fair share of nights in the proverbial drunk tank?

And Eddie was more intimately familiar with actual mobsters than we know. Noel Bloom was partners with Mickey Zaffarano, who was the KINGPIN of porn distribution in the US in the '70s.

Though he's keeping the details to himself for now, Greg opines that he's heard "some wild stories" about Eddie that put his crime fiction into context:

[These anecdotes] paint a portrait of an insane world that Ed HAD to be well and intimately aware of. The stone-cold psycho characters in his stories are [therefore] not all that unrealistic.

Fascinating stuff.

Next: "The Last Void" (1971)

Ed Wood's ANGORA FEVER: "Blood Drains Easily" (1971)

The artwork promises violence. The story delivers.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).

An issue of Flesh & Fantasy.

The story: "Blood Drains Easily," originally published in Flesh & Fantasy, vol. 5, no. 1. March/April 1971. Credited to "Dick Trent."

Synopsis: A gleefully sadistic serial killer describes the events that led to his downfall. One night, he decided to rob and murder an overweight "faggot" in a purple velvet coat, thinking the man would be wealthy and would be a good screamer. But after a few stab wounds, the man begged for his life and claimed to be the second-in-command of a syndicate. The killer unwisely followed the fat man to a funeral parlor, where he was promptly beaten up by goons. Our unlucky narrator then woke up nude in a torture chamber, strapped into an electric chair. He was periodically zapped with electricity and beaten with whips and chains. He flashed back to his own childhood, when he disfigured a girl's arm and then killed his own mother. The fat man then transferred the narrator to a special table for bloodletting and severed the narrator's penis. And there were worse things to come.

Wood trademarks: Where to even start? Serial killers (cf. "Bums Rush Terror"); maggots ("cf. "Hitchhike to Hell");  expression "scream your bloody head off" (cf. "Scream Your Bloody Head Off"); expression "jollies" (cf. For Love & Money, "Captain Fellatio Hornblower"); "squatty little fat men" (cf. Final Curtain); neck trauma (cf. "Hitchhike to Hell"); epithet "shithead" (cf. Nightmare of Ecstasy); whipping (cf. Orgy of the Dead); funerals and coffins (cf. Necromania, Night of the Ghouls); "the big black" meaning unconsciousness (cf. "Hitchhike to Hell").

Excerpt: "Then they turned on the juice and I was bouncing around in that steel electric chair like a chicken head in hot grease. But they wasn’t out to kill me. Not just then they wasn’t. They were just having a good time with me. But that wasn’t no good time I liked to be having myself."

Reflections: Once more into the Wood vomitorium! Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s short stories typically combine sex and horror in gruesome and unsettling ways, and the violent scenes can be quite graphic and grisly, far beyond anything in his movies. Sometimes, he'll show just a hint of restraint, implying the violence or at least grounding the story in some kind of plausible reality.

But then, there are the times when Ed slips into what I think of as "beast mode." No restraint. No nod to plausibility. And to hell with good taste. "Blood Drains Easily" -- and, yes, the title is similar to that of "Blood Splatters Quickly" -- is Ed Wood in "beast mode." There is no way that our narrator could have survived a tenth of what happens to him here, let alone narrate it calmly after the fact. Are we supposed to understand that this character is narrating from beyond the grave?

Decades before Saw and Hostel, Ed Wood was definitely writing torture porn. The whole point of "Blood Drains Easily" is to have one horrible thing after another happen to the luckless storyteller. The only consolation to the reader is that the main character is a thief and murderer himself, so he deserves everything he's getting. Stephen King did something similar with his 1982 story "Survivor Type." It's a cruel, merciless story, but the narrator is such a heel that you can't really feel that badly for him. In a way, the hateful nature of these characters acts as a kind of anesthetic for the reader. If these guys were nicer, their pain might be unbearable for us to endure.

Next: "A Taste for Blood" (1972)

Ed Wood's ANGORA FEVER: "Bums Rush Terror" (1972)

Another violent tale from Ed Wood.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).

The grim world of Ed Wood.

The story: "Bums Rush Terror," originally published in Horror Sex Tales, an insert in Pendulum's Jumbo Book (1972). Credited to "Ann Gora."

Synopsis: A nameless young derelict walks the streets of an unidentified but unfriendly city. He hates everyone and everything he sees, and all he cares about is getting some wine. A social worker, Helen Broderick, visits the homeless and gives some of them money, which they immediately use to buy booze. The young derelict plans to rape Helen and steal all the money for himself. He does rape her and ends up slashing her throat, too, but he forgets to take her purse. Later, inspired by a newspaper story about an old lady bum who died with $100,000 in cash pinned to her underwear, he decides to start stalking and killing homeless people so he can take whatever money they have on them. His first few victims yield only a few pennies, but then he encounters a deadly supernatural figure and realizes he's made a fatal mistake.

Wood trademarks: Alleys (cf. "Gore in the Alley"); bums (cf. "Gore in the Alley"); cheap wine (cf. "To Kill a Saturday Night"); liquor stores (cf. "Just One Question"); epithet "shit-head" (frequently used in Ed's own household, cf. Nightmare of Ecstasy); throat slashing (cf. "Hitchhike to Hell"); obsession with underwear (cf. Bloomer Girl); confrontation with Death itself (cf. Final Curtain, "Final Curtain").

Excerpt: "With each drunken stupor came the mania for the next kill and the certainty that some-body’s skivvies were going to be lined with cash. Even the sole of a hole-infected shoe could keep a few hundred dollars. A heel, if the bills were folded right, could hold even more. The mania was upon him with all the force of a tropical storm."

Reflections: Despite all of his financial and career misfortunes, Edward D. Wood, Jr. never actually wound up living on the streets of Los Angeles. But he certainly came close a few times. And during those years when he was bouncing from one residence to the next, he was also dealing with an out-of-control addiction to alcohol that drained whatever meager income he had.

Given all this information, one might think that Eddie would have been sympathetic to the homeless and to alcoholics. But that's not the case. In his stories, Ed has created a harsh, unsympathetic, and pitiless world of cruel, selfish characters who care only about their own disgusting urges. There are no bonds of friendship or trust among the bums in "Bums Rush Terror." They'll turn on each other in an instant, just for some wine or a few coins. The kindness of the social worker is repaid with rape and murder. (The story's most tasteless detail is that Helen Broderick climaxes during her sexual assault.)

But Ed does not aim all his hostility at the down-and-out. No, there are some subtler digs at society at large here as well. The main character feels contempt for the passersby who either ignore him or run from him. And the story points out that the deaths of homeless people are never investigated very thoroughly. "One bum, more or less, meant little to those who could afford a newspaper," Wood writes. So, just like in "Scene of the Crime," we're all to blame for this rotten situation.

Next: "Blood Drains Easily" (1971)

Ed Wood's ANGORA FEVER: "The Hooker" (1972)

Ed Wood returns to one of his favorite professions.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).

An issue of Pussy Willow.

The story: "The Hooker," originally published in Pussy Willow, vol. 4, no. 2, August/September 1972. Credited to "Ann Gora."

Synopsis: Shirley is a virginal 19-year-old who has come from Nebraska to Hollywood in order to make it in showbiz. She's had no luck so far and can't even pay the rent on her crummy apartment. Her lascivious landlord suggests she pay him in sexual favors, but Shirley slaps him and walks away. Suddenly, as she ponders her situation, she feels the urge to masturbate in public and ducks into a gas station lavatory. Once finished, she decides to sell her body on the street for $10 a pop. Her first client is a pleasant looking young man who takes her to a sleazy hotel. After she undresses, the man reveals himself to be a cop. She faints. When Shirley awakens in a jail cell, she is being tended to by an "old butch" who promises to solve all her problems.

Wood trademarks: Naive actress coming to Hollywood (cf. Hollywood Rat Race, The Sinister Urge); character named Shirley (Wood's own drag persona and the name of many of his characters, cf. Necromania, Orgy of the Dead); prostitution (cf. "The Whorehouse Horror"); problems with landlords (an issue in Ed's own life, cf. Ed Wood); "pink clouds" (cf. Devil Girls, Take It Out in Trade); anti-men rant (cf. The Class Reunion, Drop Out Wife); sweaters (cf. Glen or Glenda); predatory lesbian (cf. Fugitive Girls).

Excerpt: "There were very few people on the street that time of day… but those, especially the men, who passed her couldn’t help but turn their heads. She wore a brassiere which made definite separations of her breasts and the red sweater featured them with exotic overtones… the buttons went directly up the middle and sunk deeply between each of the breasts. It was like accentuating the positive."

Reflections: "Stay home!" That's Ed Wood's oft-repeated advice to wannabe starlets in Hollywood Rat Race (circa 1965) when it comes to moving to Los Angeles. And, once again, Wood gives us a cautionary tale about a young female character who starts out as an untouched ingenue but ends up as a "street mess." By the early 1970s, Eddie himself must have been having second thoughts about his move to L.A. What could his life have been like if he'd stayed in Poughkeepsie? Maybe he would have written for the local newspaper or gotten involved in community theater while holding down a day job at the post office. I don't know that he could've been satisfied with that kind of life.

Wood wrote so many pornographic stories in such a small amount of time that he had to describe the same basic situations—intercourse, stripping, masturbation—over and over again. How do you do that and keep it interesting for yourself, let alone your readers? One strategy might have been experimenting with new vocabulary terms to describe breasts, penises, and vaginas. (How many synonyms for these body parts do you know?) In "The Hooker," Wood's euphemism du jour seems to be "boobies," as in: "Slowly, sexily she thought, she slipped out of the brassiere and her lovely boobies stood out firm and young and ripe." Like "dork," it's such an absurdly unsexy word that it negates any sense of eroticism.

Where Ed often comes to life as a writer is when he describes women's clothing and underwear in loving, sensual detail. In Ed Wood, Mad Genius, Rob Craig accused biographer Rudolph Grey of sensationalizing Eddie's transvestism, but I don't think there's any way of overstating this man's all-consuming obsession with feminine apparel. "The Hooker" is just another vivid example. In the very first sentence, Wood describes Shirley's sweater, pants, and shoes. In a sense, then, he introduces her outfit before he introduces her. That's how much he cares about clothes.

Next: "Bums Rush Terror" (1972)

Ed Wood's ANGORA FEVER: "The Hazards of the Game" (1972)

Getting up close and personal.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).

An issue of Garter Girls.

The story: "The Hazards of the Game," originally published in Garter Girls, vol. 6, no. 1, March/February 1972. Credited to "Dick Trent."

Synopsis: Pete is a contract killer who has been having a torrid love affair with an underwear model named Georgia for the last seven and a half months. She knows all about his line of work and discusses it openly with him after a night of vigorous lovemaking. Pete doesn't seem to mind; he enjoys his job and even admits he occasionally experiences an erection while killing someone. Pete suggests Gloria get into making pornographic films, but she's squeamish about getting a sexually-transmitted disease. Pete counters that STDs are just "hazards of the game" in her job, as bullets are in his. Gloria can tell that Pete is especially keyed up, the way he always is before doing a job, but she's shocked to learn the identity of his next target.

Wood trademarks: Cross-dressing (cf. Glen or Glenda, Love Feast); contract killer (cf. Killer in Drag, Death of a Transvestite); angora and other fur (cf. "Hitchhike to Hell," many other stories); marabou (cf. Bride and the Beast); sheer nylon and lingerie (cf. Glen or Glenda); the color pink (cf. "2 X Double"); "dork" as slang for penis (cf. "To Kill a Saturday Night," "The Autograph," "Come Inn"); booze/whiskey (cf. nearly all of Blood Splatters Quickly).

Excerpt: “Yeah! I can just see us getting married and settling down and having a flock of kids…. What do you do for a living, daddy…? I kill people, young son or daughter… that’s what I do, and I make a lot of money, that’s why you can go to all these fine private schools…. And soon I’ll teach you my business.”

Reflections: Ed Wood wrote a lot about prostitutes and hitmen. These are occupations that recur in his fiction, both short-form and long-form, with surprising regularity. In reviewing the stories in Blood Splatters Quickly, I drew a comparison between prostitution and Ed's own writing career. It's not difficult to imagine Ed seeing himself as a literary prostitute of sorts, churning out page after page of sleazy pornographic text just so he could buy booze and pay his rent.

But if Ed was a whore, perhaps he also thought of himself as a contract killer, too. His occupation may not have been overly respectable, but he was good at it. He was a professional who kept getting hired because his bosses knew he got results. He was the right man for the job, in other words. This very story, for instance, was written for a garter-themed magazine, and you'd better believe Ed includes numerous references to garters and stockings here.

Whether you're killing people, selling your body, or writing smut, it's important to enjoy what you're doing so you can take pride in your work. That's a very consistent theme in Wood's fiction. Our main characters in this story both love what they do. Even Sandra, the traumatized streetwalker from "Gore in the Alley," enjoys some aspects of her scandalous profession. Whatever the job is, you make it yours somehow. That's how you get through the day.

It's clear that Ed was thinking about his own writing career when he wrote "The Hazards of the Game." Georgia explicitly compares Pete to a writer and says he should consider that line of work. But Pete says it'd never work. For one thing, he can't type. We all know that wasn't a problem for Ed.

Next: "The Hooker" (1972)

Ed Wood's ANGORA FEVER: "Gore in the Alley" (1972)

Once again, Ed Wood finds inspiration in the gutter.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).

Prowling the lonely streets.

The story: "Gore in the Alley," originally published in the Horror Sex Tales insert of Pendulum's The Jumbo Book (1972). Credited to "Shirlee Lane."

Synopsis: Sandra is a battle-hardened prostitute who walks the streets of an unnamed city filled with porno theaters and strip clubs. She flashes back to a traumatic incident two years ago, when she was left almost naked on the street by a client and then raped by a "scabby" man with syphilis. Now, she stalks the alleys of the city with a four-inch blade, waiting for bums to approach her so she can exact some revenge. One does, and Sandra quickly cuts off his penis and slashes his throat. She has obviously done this before and just as obviously plans to do so again.

Wood trademarks: Alleys (cf. "Hitchhike to Hell"); prostitutes (cf. Orgy of the Dead, "The Whorehouse Horror," "Private Girl"); maggots (cf. "Hitchhike to Hell"); bums (cf. "To Kill a Saturday Night"); blades and slashing (cf. "The Gory Details," "Hitchhike to Hell"); angora sweaters (cf. "Hellfire," "Taking Off," many other stories).

Excerpt: "As she had always done before, she snapped forward and the four inch blade came free into her hand and in the same instant she spun around and what the creep from the shadows was holding in his hand came off from his lower quarters and was held like a bleeding, dead worm in his hand. But that was all he was permitted to see. "

Reflections: If Ed Wood has a particular specialty as a short story writer, it's his ability to convey the mindset of his characters, especially those who are consumed with fear, rage, paranoia, madness, or some combination of those emotions. Some of the stories from Blood Splatters Quickly were written in the first person ("I, Warlock"), but even when his stories are in the third person, Wood makes sure to describe the innermost thoughts and feelings of his main characters. In "Gore in the Alley," for instance, we really get to know Sandra. Whatever we may think of her actions, we understand what motivates and guides her. In story after story, Wood is able to channel violent psychopaths with almost chilling ease.

This aspect of Ed's writing is something rarely seen in his movies. There aren't too many introspective character studies in his film scripts, with the possible exceptions of Glen (played by Wood himself) in Glen or Glenda (1953) and Peggy (Angela Carnon) in Drop Out Wife (1972). It's significant that both of these characters get to narrate parts of their respective movies. With Glen, we're not only treated to his internal monologue, we also get a glimpse at his dreams. The same can't be said of, for instance, Bob (William Bates) in Orgy of the Dead (1965) or Jeff (Gregory Walcott) in Plan 9 from Outer Space. In The Sinister Urge (1960), Dirk (Dino Fantini) is a mad slasher with a psychosexual bent, but we never really get into his headspace.

One wonders, incidentally, if any readers were actually aroused by Ed Wood's erotic stories. This one appeared in a volume called Horror Sex Tales, and we're given a few sexually explicit passages about Sandra's sessions with clients, as well as numerous updates on the condition of her pubic hair. Was this anyone's idea of a hot read?

Next: "The Hazards of the Game" (1972)

Ed Wood's ANGORA FEVER: "Hitchhike to Hell" (1971)

Don't accept a ride from Harry Vincent, that's for sure.

NOTE: This article begins my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).

Hitchin' a ride.

The story: "Hitchhike to Hell," originally published in One Plus One, vol. 4, no. 1, January/February 1971.

Synopsis: Harry Vincent is a serial killer whose death toll is up to seven. He prefers killing pretty young girls—they scream better—but he'll settle for men, including those he meets in gay bars. He's also obsessed with "wolfmen" and insists the moon is guiding his actions. One night, he kills an old wino he finds in an alley, slicing the poor, bewildered man to pieces with a surgical knife.

Harry decides his next victim must be a young female hitchhiker, since he's convinced those "tramps" are always out to victimize men like him. He sets out on the road, but his car soon breaks down, forcing him to walk back home. Just when it seems like his night is ruined, he himself is offered a ride by a young woman in an angora sweater. But this temptress has plans of her own for Harry.

Wood trademarks: Werewolves (cf. "Howl of the Werewolf," Orgy of the Dead); cocktail bar (The Cocktail Hostesses); maggots (cf. "Scream Your Bloody Head Off," "Hellfire," "I, Warlock," "In the Stony Lonesome," "Into My Grave," "The Whorehouse Horror"); newspapers having "a field day" (cf. Glen or Glenda); angora sweaters (cf. Glenda); winos ("To Kill a Saturday Night").

Excerpt: "He spun around, and after he got out of the headlights he saw her. She was luscious. More than he had hoped for. She was wearing a tight red angora sweater and a matching red miniskirt. She was beautiful and she was blonde. No good girl would stop for a man on the side of the road like that. She had to be one of those kind."

Reflections: Well, here we are again, folks. Five years after the publication of Blood Splatters Quickly: The Collected Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2014), we finally have a second collection of short stories by Ed Wood. As usual, this volume is the passion project of Bob Blackburn, friend of the late Kathy Wood and co-heir to the Wood estate. Bob spends his time and money scouring Ebay for back issues of the magazines—generally pornographic in nature—where Eddie's stories originally appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. And we lucky fans get to enjoy Bob's findings in these lovingly compiled books.

Angora Fever kicks off with a gruesome horror tale from 1971. Readers of Blood Splatters Quickly will find themselves right at home here, because "Hitchhike to Hell" seems like a first cousin to such Wood splatter-fests as "The Gory Details" and "Breasts of the Chicken." The similarity to "Chicken" is especially striking, as a chauvinist sicko again gets his well-deserved comeuppance. However, here is no denying that Wood seems to take gleeful pleasure in describing the man's crimes in nauseating detail. Maybe Eddie was working through some aggression.

It's worth noting that Ed wrote for both gay and straight publications, as well as specialty magazines catering to particular fetishes. This story has a little something for everyone, as Harry kills both gay and straight victims, all while wearing "rubber panties." But there are limits to his depravity. During the scene with the decrepit wino, Ed points out that Harry Vaughn "didn’t have any homosexual inclinations connected to his slasher thoughts at that moment as he had had with the boy those months before."

I guess even homicidal maniacs have some standards.

P.S. This story also offers a snapshot of America's changing views of hitchhiking. The risky practice was beloved by free-living hippies, as documented in the 1969 million seller "Hitchin' a Ride" by Vanity Fare. Ed Wood famously detested the counter-culture, though, and his feelings about the younger generation are clear in this story as he describes them with undisguised contempt. "The dirty ones," he calls them. "Broads" with "bearded boyfriends."

Next: "Gore in the Alley" (1972)