the man they all laughed at has the last laugh...At Last!!

Rating: Null/10 (1 October 2002)

The simple fact that this movie was even made says more about how much of a "success" Edward D.Wood has become than how "bad" his movies are!I'm not denying that Ed Wood's movies are some of the worst films (of their types!)ever released in the heyday of the 50s second-rate cinema!But the fact that Ed Wood remains so talked about( and biographed and his films reviewed over and over)it shows just how much of an impression he made on the world of filmaking!If over 40 years later his silly,trashy,dirt-cheap,grade-Z movies still sell on video, and play in art houses and college parties, than Ed Wood certainly achieved his impossible dream!! He MUST be looking down from heaven...LAUGHING at the rest of us who will never forget him!! As it stands the movie "Ed Wood" does a pretty good job of capturing the essence of the 1950s Hollywood and it's colony of"fringe dwellers" the wannabes and has-beens and novely acts that Ed Wood managed to attract as features and fixtures in his wild schemes to make his movies!Although the filmakers twist a lot of the facts,they stay close enough to the truth to make it real!And of course the truth was weird enough as it was! Enter the aging and drug-addicted Bela Lugosi-lonely,feeble and unemployed!Believed to be long-dead by Hollywood!And then there's Tor Johnson-the 400lb former wrestler making cheap monster-movies just for fun!And the "amazing" Criswell-long before the "psychic friends network" making bizarre and bogus "predictions" on local variety shows!Ed's girlfriend Dolores Fuller-a struggling,second-rate model who finally leaves Ed for a "normal"life!(she eventually became a successful songwriter!)And the one-time TV horror-hostess Vampira-who finds herself playing the "ghoul woman" after she's broke and blackballed in Hollywood! But the most intriguing character is Ed himself!Played to perfection by Johnny Depp he's ambitious,shrewd,caring,loving,imaginative and totally in love with his own twisted belief that he could be a true Hollywood legend!And despite the fact that he made nothing but laughable trash and lived the rest of his life in alcoholic obscurity and poverty...he succeeded after all!!!