Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 208: A look back at the year in Ed Wood

There was a lot of Ed Wood in 2024. Too much, perhaps?

In the career-spanning book Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play (1995), author Ben Watson astutely observes that "1984 was a bamboozling year for Zappa consumers: The Perfect Stranger, Francesco, the triple-box Thing-Fish and then, as if that was not enough, a full-scale double rock album of new tunes, Them Or Us." 

Ed Wood consumers could relate, as 2024 was a bamboozling year for them too. This was the 100th anniversary of Eddie's birth in Poughkeepsie, NY, and it seemed to inspire a torrent of releases and rereleases. Fans could barely keep up. And by "fans," I mean me.

Ed Wood's Saving Grace

Let's first talk about the books. God, there were so many! For quite a while, Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) stood alone as the only full-length book about Edward D. Wood, Jr. Now, Woodology is practically a literary subgenre unto itself. This year gave us a few more entries.

• Bob Blackburn released Kathy Wood and I: How I Fell Down the Ed Wood, Jr. Rabbit Hole (BearManor Media), an affectionate, meandering memoir in which he describes his unlikely friendship with Eddie's loyal widow during the final years of her life. My review is here.

• Meanwhile, Angel Scott released the highly unusual Drown the Devil: A Spiritual Biography of Ed Wood (BearManor Media), a religious-minded volume that I will review in the near future on this blog. 

• Kurt McCoy edited a colorful anthology of Wood-inspired short stories entitled Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press). I reviewed all the pieces in this collection individually, one story at a time over the course of two months. This was probably my biggest Wood-related project of 2024.

• Dennis Smithers, Jr. oversaw a new edition of Ed's long-lost 1975 novel Saving Grace. The late Greg Javer and I discussed this incredibly intriguing book on a podcast in 2021.

• Will Sloan announced his upcoming book Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA (OR Books), due in June 2025. It promises to be a wide-ranging critical study that includes Ed's movies as well as his novels and other written works.

• I should also mention Fred Olen Ray's wonderfully goofy horror novel Deep Red (Retromedia Press), based on an unproduced screenplay Fred cowrote with a drunken, dying Eddie in the late 1970s. Fred's book came out in 2023, but I didn't find out about it until 2024. 

Ed Wood fans, you have your reading list for the next six months. Or more. You'd think that would have been enough for me, but this was also the year that I purchased a stack of vintage Ed Wood paperbacks from a seller on Facebook.

Has Flame of Islam been found?

And that's not even half the story! There were some significant home video releases in 2024 as well, all of them on Blu-ray. I guess the era of affordable, accessible DVDs has ended. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted. Here are the titles I added to my collection within the last 12 months.

• In May 2024, a specialty label called Gold Ninja Video, which bills itself as the "Criterion of Public Domain Bargain Bins," released a two-disc limited edition of Ed Wood's Revenge of the Dead (1959). This is a movie we already know well under the rerelease title Night of the Ghouls but this edition includes the original credits, plus a slew of supplements and commentary tracks. Also included in this set are transfers of Jail Bait (1954), Final Curtain (1957), and (if you go snooping) The Sinister Urge (1960). There are also numerous extras related to actor Paul Marco, who portrays Kelton in the film, as the folks at Gold Ninja are big fans of his. Unfortunately, this seems to have vanished from the market shortly after its release. If you don't already own it, good luck finding it on auction sites.

• Arguably the biggest Ed Wood home release of the year was Severin's Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood. This is a three-disc set containing new—and, in some cases, drastically improved—scans of Necromania (1971), The Only House in Town (1970), The Young Marrieds (1972), and Shotgun Wedding (1963), plus some of Ed's adult loops from the 1970s. Again, there are numerous commentary tracks, some featuring the late, great Greg Javer, plus various featurettes. This is arguably the most ambitious Ed Wood home video release since Big Box of Wood (2011). I only regret that Greg passed away so shortly after its release and that we couldn't go through the contents of this set together. Unlike Revenge of the Dead, this collection is still available.

• Just this week, I received a disc from BayView Entertainment and The 3D Film Archive containing a new transfer of Arch Oboler's forgotten feature Domo Arigato (1973), which I'd describe as a cross between a romantic drama and a travelogue of Japan. The dramatic parts are middling at best, while the travelogue parts are often spectacular, making excellent use of the 3D "Space Vision" gimmick. My interest in this particular disc is that it also contains a short film alleged to be Ed Wood's long-lost Flame of Islam under the title Cleopatra Follies (1953). It's extremely tame burlesque footage, including rather listless performances by Paula French and Shirley "The Pussycat Girl" Hayes, but the 3D effects are again quite impressive. Eddie's involvement was supposedly limited to writing the (sparse) voiceover narration.

As a result of all these releases, I definitely exceeded my "Ed Wood budget" for 2024. Bob sent me a complimentary copy of Kathy Wood and I, but the other books and discs I got were ones I'd paid for out of my extremely meager salary. Oh well. Who needs such trivialities as food and rent when you can have Necromania on Blu-ray? 

Before 2024 comes to a close, we must remark on the times Eddie made the news this year. As I mentioned earlier, October 10, 2024 would have been Eddie's 100th birthday. This year is also the 30th anniversary of Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994). So, as you might guess, there were screenings of that film as well as Ed's most famous 1950s films in theaters across the country in October, especially in his home state of New York and his adopted home of California. It's wonderful that Ed's birthday happens to fall during "spooky season," as does the birthday of his most famous star, Bela Lugosi.

While I was not able to attend these screenings in person, I did attend one virtually via Zoom and even got to host a Q&A after a screening of Ed Wood in the Poughkeepsie, NY area. Not long afterward, this same town saw fit to designate Ed Wood's childhood home as an official historical site, complete with its own marker. This recognition came about because of the efforts of some high schoolers in the area who cited this very blog as one of their sources! It does my heart good to know that Greg was aware of all this before his passing.

Look, I'd love to say that 2024 was a banner year in Woodology. In a lot of ways, it was—the 100th birthday, the books, the Blu-rays, the historical marker. That was all great, and it's nice that Ed Wood and his career are still generating such interest well into the 21st century. But the death of my friend and colleague Greg Javer, one of the greatest Woodologists I've ever known, casts a pall over the entire year. A lot of the books, articles, and films I reviewed for this series were only available to me because Greg had sent them. Where we go from here, I don't know. I'm still regrouping. We'll figure this out, week by week. In the meantime, I hope you and yours are enjoying the holiday season.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 24: And, unto us, a Superman is born!

Yeah, he has super vision but not in the back of his head!

We all know that Superman is Jesus, right? So much has already been written about the parallels between the Lamb of God and the Man of Steel that I don't really have to rehash it all for you here. Suffice it to say, many people have seen the Superman mythos as a Christian allegory, even though the character's creators (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) were Jewish. I've gotta admit, the theory makes sense. John and Martha Kent, for instance, make pretty plausible stand-ins for Joseph and Mary. Superman even died and came back to life, just like Whatshisname.

Anyway, I couldn't think of a better way of ending this 2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar than a whole bunch of Superman parodies, again mostly drawn from Comics Outta Context. Enjoy and have a lovely holiday season!

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 23: Even more Batman ones

"No jellybeans? But isn't this Easter Island?"

Batman. The Dark Knight. The Caped Crusader. The World's Greatest Detective. Whatever you may call him, he's been appearing in comics since 1939 and has crossed over to every possible medium since then. After so many decades of TV shows, movies, video games, and merchandise, is there anything left to say about this character? Probably not. But that hasn't stopped me from trying. I have a bunch of old, unposted Batman comics and cartoons left over on my computer, so I thought we'd just blitz through all of them in one post.

Ready? Then let's proceed. You wanna get nuts? Come on! Let's get nuts!

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 22: A whole bunch of Nancys

How does Nancy get her hair to do... that?

The beloved Comics Outta Context may be gone forever, but there is still at least one comics account on Twitter that has continued to delight me throughout 2024. Obviously, I'm referring to Nancy Comics by Ernie Bushmiller, maintained by the indispensable Johnny Callicutt. Each day, he will post panels or even full comic strips from the super-long-lived comic strip Nancy. What's great about the account is that it pulls from different eras -- from the early days when the strip was known as Fritzi Ritz and focused on Nancy's adult caretaker to the more recent strips written and drawn by Olivia James. But, as the name indicates, the focus is on Nancy's peak decades when the strip was done by the great Ernie Bushmiller (1905-1982).

The simplicity of Nancy makes it perfect for the kind of parodies I do, so here are a bunch of those all at once.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 21: A Pink Flamingos Christmas!

"It's going to be a lot different with a baby around."

As I've said in the past, I read about Ed Wood's movies long before I ever actually saw any of them. The same is true for John Waters' movies. Thanks to books like Cult Movies (1981) and Midnight Movies (1983), I'd read detailed descriptions of John's work, but the films themselves were difficult to access in suburban mid-Michigan in the 1990s. This was pre-streaming and pre-DVD. The internet was primitive in those days, too, but I eventually found someone in a newsgroup selling crude VHS bootlegs of the Waters movies. They were of abysmal quality, but they were better than nothing.

Today's nativity-themed comic adapts some memorable dialogue from Waters' most famous film, Pink Flamingos (1972). In the film, two lesbians, Merle (Jackie Sidel) and Etta (Pat LeFaiver), buy a baby on the black market from the villainous Marbles (Mink Stole and David Lochary) and name him Noodles. TRIVIA: The purloined baby is portrayed by Max Mueller, the real-life son of Pink Flamingos cast member Cookie Mueller. The baby's name is a punning reference to Mueller's Pasta, famous for its egg noodles.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 20: The biggest traffic ticket I ever got

"I hope nobody notices my missing door!" is a weird thing to say out loud.

Let me tell you about the most expensive traffic ticket I ever received. 

It was the early 2000s and my sister Catherine had just moved to a small town outside Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I live a few hours away in Illinois, and I decided to make the journey to her house for Christmas by car even though I hate to drive and have zero sense of direction. Sure enough, I got badly lost several times on the way but finally arrived in Indiana, shaken but intact. I stayed (in a motel) for a couple days and tried to enjoy the holiday festivities, but I was dreading the trip back.

My fears were justified. When I got back on the highway and had been driving for maybe 30 or 40 minutes, I suddenly realized that it had been a while since I'd seen a posted speed limit sign. I had no idea what the speed limit was, so I just tried to keep pace with traffic. Well, around that time, I noticed a police car nearby and decided to slow down to 55 just to be on the safe side. The officer who ticketed me later said this was my big mistake, the thing that told him I was up to no good. He tailed me for several miles but then pulled off to the side of the highway. I thought he'd given up on me and was relieved. I should not have been.

I kept driving, still going about 55. A few minutes later, this cop came roaring back into traffic with his lights flashing and (to my memory) siren wailing. In my rearview mirror, I could see he was weaving through the cars trying to catch up to somebody. I assumed there was an emergency somewhere. Turns out, the emergency was me. When I pulled over, the police officer stepped out of his vehicle and approached my car, citation book in hand. He seemed to be in a bad mood. I knew I couldn't have been speeding, so what was my big crime? Expired tags.

Now, here is where my version of the story diverges from the cop's version of the story. According to the cop, I knew perfectly well that my tags were expired, and I had sneakily tried to avoid him so he wouldn't notice. He'd known from the start that I was doing something underhanded, but it had taken him a few minutes to figure out exactly what. That's why he'd pulled over the first time. Eventually, he cracked the case: I was a fiendish criminal mastermind who had knowingly tried to drive though the great state of Indiana with Illinois tags that had expired a few weeks previously.

My version of the story was that I'd recently changed apartments and had forgotten to forward my mail to my new place. Therefore, I hadn't gotten a reminder from the state of Illinois that my tags had expired at the end of November. Besides, it's not like I was hurting the state of Indiana. The officer did not believe my story at all and wrote me a substantial ticket, the largest I'd ever received. I was really strapped for cash in those days, so it stung. For the next decade and a half, I vowed never to drive in the state of Indiana again. When I wanted to visit my sister, I did so by Amtrak.

But that's a whole other story.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 19: Meanwhile on 'Three's Company'

She zinged you pretty good there, Stanley.

I was alive for the entire run of Three's Company from 1976 to 1984, but I didn't really watch the show until it was in syndicated reruns. It was one of those sitcoms that would be on every weekday after school. That puts it in the same basic category as The Brady Bunch and Happy Days. I didn't necessarily seek these shows out; I simply watched them because they were on TV. That's how it was in the pre-internet, pre-streaming days. Choice was barely a factor in entertainment. 

Looking back, I wonder what percentage of the jokes on Three's Company went sailing over my head. I'm pretty sure one episode was about a "call girl," and I had no idea what that term meant. I certainly could not have understood the many, many impotence jokes directed at poor, beleaguered Stanley Roper (Norman Fell) by his wife Helen (Audra Lindley). It's possible that Three's Company introduced me to a lot of risque topics.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 207: (Yet) Another Deep Dive into the Huffman Files

Emails! I get emails! I get stacks and stacks of emails!

In these strange, sad weeks following the death of my friend Greg Javer, I've found some comfort in the knowledge that Woodology—the study of Ed Wood's life and career—will carry on without him. It'll carry on without me someday, too. Greg was the most prominent contributor of material to this series, but he was far from the only one. Over the years, people like Bob Blackburn, James Pontolillo, Keith Crocker, W. Paul Apel, and Philip R. Frey have sent films, texts, photos and more my way. I'm grateful to all of you.

One of my more persistent emailers is a true zealot named Rob Huffman. He regularly supplies me with press clippings and other oddities that he's found in his research. Sometimes, I feel a little guilty that I can't always respond to his emails in a timely fashion. There are only so many hours in a day, you know? But I thought that you and I could go through some of Rob's recent finds together. How does that sound?