There is nothing like bad press

Rating: 7/10 (5 October 2015)

How can one make a film about the worst ever director in Hollywood? Not a loser really since he managed to do a few things in B movies though from what we see we could think his films are a lot more advanced in the alphabet. But certainly not the winner he wanted to be or become and he never became for sure. That will lead him into alcoholism to forget or go on dreaming, just like Bela Lugosi got into drug addiction to be able to sleep at night.
The film has some qualities but they are ruined most of the time by the fact the whole thing is too long. The few interesting things are the fact that the film is in black and white. Just like great films of an older period and of Orson Welles actually impersonated in the film. That's a good idea and it is rather well done including night scenes which were necessarily a problem.
The way the whole film industry is based on words that mean nothing is really nastily true and even the one who wanted to go to Mexico to become a lady did not. What you say never means anything and the director is nothing but a nice little small barking dog on the short leash of the producers and the producers provide the money, the little amount of money. So you do what they say. If there is a profit they will get it, not you, young dummy.
Those films are so mediocre when they are not bad that I wonder how they can find an audience and make a profit. The point is that they do both. So they must satisfy the deeper desires and impulses of that audience, and many of these people are not children, especially since many of these B movies are slightly restricted at least to younger children. I recently covered a very good film by Tim Burton, "The Nightmare before Christmas," and someone told me that it is funny to have Christmas attacked by Halloween and that Halloween is all fun and joy for children, young people and even older people though these do not go around knocking on doors.
I sure believe some Halloween fun is good now and then, provided you are in a reasonable team because it might be cruel if not criminal to frighten an old person with a pacemaker. But Tim Burton is obviously fascinated by death, here Bela Lugosi who dies on location and is buried who knows and cares where; by marginal people who are breaking all kinds of norms and taboos like transvestites in the 1960s or so. And anyway you have to be morbid, and even a morbid masochist, to be a B movie director since you know it is mediocre and not good at all and that you won't make a name with them and you won't get much money out of them. It is true today you can make more with DVDs and the Internet, provided you are not looted, pirated, hijacked, in other words raided freely since the freedom of the Internet is considered to be cost-free by some.
This film though is sad because Tim Burton could do better. Yet it brought Johnny Depp out and enabled him to make a name and a career, or rather it enabled him to survive for a while and to show his art, and his art is great. The art of the others is more moderate. I guess Johnny Depp must be nostalgic about the good old days when he was able to play foolish tricks to everyone on screen.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU