Prince of Razzie-Calibre Schlock Portrayed in an Ed Wood-ish Style Film; Laundau as Lugosi Steals the Show

Rating: 8/10 (9 July 2011)

The 1950's and 1960's were the Golden Age of sleaze and schlock film, particularly for the drive-in movie-goers who had better things to do than actually watch the movie! And the King of All-Schlock has to be Ed Wood, voted Hollywood's Worst Filmmaker. If you're going to be bad, you might as well be the worst. No one remembers the fifth worst! Wood employed some of the strangest talent for even stranger projects, and the genius of Wood was not the production value but getting the funding! I mean, who in their right mind would fund "Grave Robbers from Space" after having read the script? Conservative Baptists? His one name star, Bela Lugosi, is remembered for being in some of best horror films at the dawn of the talkie age and some of the worst care of Wood.
One thing to keep in mind: Ed Wood was not alone. Aside from some of Wood's more wretched offerings, such as "Glen or Glenda", regarded by some critics as far more unwatchable than "Plan 9 From Outer Space", Hollywood was ripe with many memorable celluloid fiascoes. "Robot Monster", "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", and (my favorite) "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" are all cult classics of bad movie-making remembered for their combination of strangeness, silliness, and unwatchable-ness. None of these were produced by Wood and yet were made during the same era.
The entire era from circa 1950 to 1970 had such nutty movies that if someone wrote a novel about it, no one would believe it! At the top of the heap is the oh-so-memorable "Plan 9 From Outer Space", so ridiculously bad that it invites after-movie conversation much more than many movies being produced today. The bad sets, the bad dialog, the bad acting are still discussed today. No one discusses films which are merely mediocre. With "Plan 9", schlock was elevated into its own category, probably the inspiration behind the "Razzie Award". "Plan 9" is the film by which all other schlock films are judged.
"Ed Wood" with Johnny Depp in the title role chronicles the brief career of the one producer of movies who stands on a pedestal above the rest in the museum of cheesy film production where talent didn't quite get their footprints into the Chinese Theatre. If Barney Fife (the frantic deputy from the Andy Griffith Show) wrote and directed movies, the results might be of the Ed Wood variety. Wood's writing was filled with cliché, incomprehensible story lines, bad characterizations, and even worse stage direction. And yet, among his more memorable "works" (if works they can be called), the dialog is what we remember most. I mean who else but Wood could come up with: " I'll bet my badge that we haven't seen the last of those weirdies." or "They've been like that all down through the ages. Especially in a spot like this." Pure Razzie genius.
Tim Burton's homage to the era of schlock works on every level. Ironically, A-list acting talent plays some of the most borderline "talent" of the era who ended up in Woods' projects basically because they didn't fit in anywhere else. The Amazing Criswell a.k.a. Criswell Predicts (played by Jeffrey Jones) was amazing because he was the one act who could appear on the Johnny Carson Show without having any talent. Vampira, who in real life later sued Elvira, had just been fired from her local television studio. Sarah Jessica Parker (of Sex in the City fame) plays Wood's girlfriend. Johnny Depp, now just about as A-list as they come, plays Wood, and highest honors go to Martin Landau as the aging Bela Lugosi in a tour-de-force performance. Lugosi never could distance himself from Dracula, and Wood was the only filmmaker in town who still appreciated the Hungarian accent and his tuxedo.
Shot in B&W, "Ed Wood" almost feels like a slightly better Ed Wood movie. The film concentrates on three of his most remembered projects, "Glen or Glenda", "Bride of the Monster" (formerly "Bride of the Atom"), and his masterpiece "Plan 9 From Outer Space". There are a few moments of cliché writing which almost seem purposeful, paying homage to the man who wrote the book on cliché. Of course, the irony is that Ed Wood is now remembered as the pioneer of schlock movie. A few production companies do carry on the tradition, such as Troma Entertainment whose offerings have a look and feel in the Ed Wood tradition: over-the-top acting, cliché riddled scripts, and low-budget sets, such as "Surf Nazis Must Die" and "the Toxic Avenger". Many of the offerings of Roger Corman are also in a similar vain. Ed Wood may or may not have been the absolute worst, but he is remembered for living and breathing film, believing his catastrophes were art.