Brilliant, funny, and a homage to the past!

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 1999)

Ed Wood is one of those rare films that grows on you with each respective viewing, and since I fell in love with it the first time I saw it...it still gets better and better. Who would have thought the career of one Edward D. Wood Jr. would become a household word practically? I never would have believed it...but its true. The director of such films as Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster, and his infamous Plan Nine From Outer Space is big business and world famous. If you don't believe me, just look in any horror magazine or cult publication. Why? Give the credit to this film, Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and other actors, one oscar winner named Martin Landau, and one fantastically funny, sensitive and nostalgic script. This movie has it all and it is a non-stop look at the movie business for the independent film-maker in the fifties who just happened to like dressing up as a woman and befriended interesting individuals like a man who wanted a sex change operation, a wrestler-turned-actor, a phony larger-than-life psychic, and of course one man named Bela Lugosi, forgotten by Hollywood but not gone. Tim Burton wisely chose to do this film in glorious black and white, and the photography, lighting, and shading are first-rate. The script bends the truth quite often about Wood and his cast of irregulars, but then again this is a film meant to entertain not instruct. Bela, as far as horror icon Forry Ackerman knows...and who alive would know better...never swore so much as even saying a damn. But Landau is so convincing as the aged Bela...rejected by Holloywood and lost to poverty and obscurity..that his performance has resurrected interest in Lugosi and his films, and for one time brought him more popularity than his horror crony Karloff. This film is an experience and if you haven't see it...do so. It is really as good as every one says.