Nobody will ever notice that. Filmmaking is not about the
tiny details. It's about the big picture.
Edward D. Wood Jr
Like many other young film nerds, I gobbled up the Medved’s Golden
Turkey Awards book when it was first published in 1980. It was part of a shift
in film appreciation triggered by the availability of VHS, Betamax and Video
2000 machines that provided a means of distribution for the first time outside
of cinemas, TV and actual celluloid. The UK music press had already provided me
with a grounding in “cult” cinema and a generation of musicians who looked back
to the media we grew up with and that we missed. Anyone born after 1980 would
probably take it for granted that we can access any old trash somehow, but at
the time this was almost privileged information, available only to those
willing to physically search it out driven by a need to know.
The ”so bad it’s good” trend was only of fleeting interest for
soon the mainstream got wind of things and drove introverted, inverted cultural
snobs so far the other way that we’d find the good in anything and, why not?
Nobody sets out to deliberately make bad films, least of all Ed Wood and others
who cared deeply about making entertainment about their special interests be they
angora sweaters or Bela Lugosi. It’s easy to mock Medveds, but thank you for
your service, you started an industry and sparked cultural rubbernecking that
has grown and grown including Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic, books and continued
fascination.
Now it's 2026 and the British Film Institute are issuing two
of Ed Wood’s films and you have to feel that, at last, this is recognised as “so
Ed it’s good”. We have a restored versions of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
along with Bride of the Monster (1955) - both newly remastered using 4K
scans - and it’s time to celebrate Wood’s possibly foolhardy and definitely fearless
attempts to entertain us.
Plan 9 is everything you’ve heard about and more and yet one
of the main issues the Medved’s raised about Wood’s supposedly scrappy mise-en-scène
is fixed by making the film available in the correct aspect ratio making the
various scripts, pillows and non-dramatic props invisible as designed.
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| Lugosi in uniform, 1914 |
This leaves just the variable performance of the actors and
script to deal with along with a plot that seems to have a life of its own in
terms of fitting in science fiction, horror and light relief. There is also the
Bela Lugosi “problem” as the actor had sadly passed away before filming leaving
his friend to incorporate what scenes he could from an unfinished project,
possibly The Ghoul Goes West? Wood had tried to help Lugosi after discovering
his health issues and his dire financial straits. He tried to generate money through
these films to help and whilst that was less than successful a visit to the
sanitorium from a certain Frank Sinatra with a cheque for $1,000 was a pleasant
surprise*. So, Ed did good.
Lugosi is most famous for playing Dracula in Tod Browning’s
1931 film and whilst he may have got typecast there was so much more to this
former officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, who acted from 1902 on the stage
and, after the war, made 14 silent films in Weimar Germany before emigrating to
America and working on Broadway and in a number of films including The
Silent Command (1923) and The Midnight Girl (1925) in which he cuts
a very dashing figure, six feet one inch tall and looking down on the rest of
the cast. This imposing physicality served him well both o stage where he
played Dracula over a thousand times (he claimed) and then in the film. The
downside of success was typecasting and as the thirties wore on he struggled to
get roles outside of his genre despite the odd big-ticket/small role appearance
in Lubitsch’s Ninotchka (1939) with Greta Garbo.
His health was impacted by old war wounds and he became
addicted to a variety of pain killers and his career went in every decreasing
circles of horror with the odd comedy like the improbable British film, (Old)
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1953). So, Ed Wood’s offers were most
welcome when the director began offering him roles such as the anonymous and
rather bizarre narrator in Glen or Glenda (1953) and a generic mad
scientist in Bride of the Monster (1955). This latter film had a big budget
by Wood’s standards, some $70,000 with which to make a mad scientist tale all
based in a mysterious old building with a basement lab for experimental attempts
to change men into supermen.
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| Loretta King, Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson |
Dr. Eric Vornoff is that excited scientist and his motivation
is not only to prove everybody wrong, especially those in the old country but
also to create a super army of atomic-powered soldiers with which to achieve global
dominance. It begins on a dark and stormy night as two regular Joes ask for
shelter from the storm and end up being the victim of Dr Eric’s pet octopus in
the swamp and then death by unsuccessful atomic experiment.
In the local town there have been newspaper reports of a
monster dwelling in the swamp and who has now accounted for over a dozen
disappearances. Leave it to intrepid journo, Janet Lawton (Loretta King) to
lead the investigation and her lacklustre fiancé Lt. Dick Craig (Tony McCoy)
who looks as unsure of what he let alone she is going to do next. His
easy-going boss, Captain Robbins (Harvey B. Dunn) is far more assured,
especially as he has a budgie on his shoulder for most to the film.
Throw in the mighty Tor Johnson as Lobo, the Doctor’s
henchman with the power of ten and the heart of considerably more, and you have
all the ingredients for a fun yarn one that certainly repays a replay with the new
commentary from the BFI’s dynamic duo of William Fowler and Vic Pratt.
Ed Wood's claim that only one of his films made a profit and
author Rudolph Grey** suggests that it may be Bride of the Monster, also
mentioning that Wood had oversold the film and could not reimburse all of the
backers. Be that as it may – and there’s an incredible amount of detail about
both these films – it’s a last coherent hurrah for Bela Lugosi.
One is always considered mad, when one discovers
something which others cannot grasp…
Plan 9 from Outer Space is famously less coherent
and that is not just due to Bela having passed away before filming but also
budget and time pressures that give it a made-up-on-the-hoof feel. You keep on
waiting for things to make sense and for the various clips of Maila Nurmi aka Vampira
as “Vampire Girl” and Bela Lugosi as the “Ghoul Man”, to fit together but only
in Ed Wood’s mind does it completely work. But, and this is the important part,
he gives it his best go!
As with many of his films, this one opens with a portentous
introduction and it’s from the bizarre Criswell aka the Amazing Criswell aka Jeron
Criswell King a psychic who claimed he could foresee the future although his
strike rate was rather lower than Nostradamus. A one-time TV announcer he is
perfect for this gig, insisting that it may all have happened even though we
can see clearly enough what actually happened. Criswell released a record, The
Legendary Criswell Predicts Your Incredible Future (1970), on Horoscope
Records and which is quite hard to find in its original format although it was
re-released on CD (also collectable now).
We find Lugosi’s character mourning the recent death of his wife who we soon see walking undead through the graveyard as mists swirl around her. But that’s not important right now as the Earth is seemingly being visited by flying saucers which the government and the armed forces are trying to keep secret.
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| Vampira... all part of the aliens' plan! |
Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott) and his wife Paula (Mona McKinnon) see these strange visitors as do police patrolmen Larry and Kelton (Carl Anthony and Paul Marco) and army officers Lieutenant John Harper (Duke Moore) and Colonel Tom Edwards (Tom Keene) although no one is keen to admit it at a senior level. Meanwhile the deaths pile up with the mourning Lugosi character dying only to be also resurrected and threatening Paula, albeit using only his hypnotic eyes with his cape pulled over his face (a necessity given Bela’s passing with Tom Mason “playing” him during the film). Soon enough, Inspector Daniel Clay (big Tor Johnson again), has also been slain in the graveyard although, not for long…
Now we meet the aliens who, for budgetary reasons look
pretty human and are Eros (the appropriately named Dudley Manlove) and Tanna (Joanna
Lee) who are on a mission to warn humanity about their development of weapons
of mass destruction which threaten the entire universe… Soon, they reason, man
will move from splitting atoms to splitting sunbeam particles and this would
cause a chain reaction that would take down everything. For some reason,
re-animating dead people is a key part of their plan but, as this results in
stumbling mute ghouls (partly because Vampira refused to speak her lines and,
sorry, Bela was no more…), their role in things is unclear.
One can appreciate the aliens’ concerns but their means of managing
the risks are unclear… and the Amazing Criswell could, frankly, be more
specific in his summing up at the end.
With these films more than almost any other, you really need
ALL of the special features below, especially those included in the limited
edition!
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| People of Earth not really listening as usual... |
Special features
•
Both films remastered by the BFI using 4K scans
from 35mm Fine Grain Duplicating Positives
•
Plan 9 From Outer Space presented in 1.85:1 and
1.37:1 ratios
•
New audio commentary on Plan 9 From Outer
Space by writer Ken Hollings and the BFI’s Vic Pratt
•
Archive audio commentary on Plan 9 From Outer
Space by filmmakers David DeCoteau and Ted Newsom
•
Criswell Predicts 2026 (2026, 11 mins):
Ken Hollings celebrates Wood’s masterwork in this video essay
•
Mark Kermode on Plan 9 (2026, 4 mins):
the critic introduces the film
•
Out of Step: Other Worlds Are Watching Us
(1957, 13 mins): journalist Daniel Farson investigates the British saucer flap
in this ground breaking Rediffusion television show
•
Kadoyng (Ian Shand, 1972, 60 mins): another
space visitor plans to sort out stupid humans in 1970s England, in this fab
Children’s Film Foundation feature
•
All About Ed: Archive interviews with family and
friends (2011, 96 mins total): interviews with Wood’s entourage
•
Bela Lugosi leaves the sanatorium (1955,
5 mins): the master of horror chats to reporters following his rehabilitation
•
New audio commentary on Bride of the Monster
by the BFI’s William Fowler and Vic Pratt
•
Archive audio commentary on Bride of the
Monster by filmmakers David DeCoteau and Ted Newsom
•
White Lite (1968, 3 mins): far-out film homage
to Bride of the Monster by artist Jeff Keen
•
Theatrical trailers
•
Image galleries
•
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated booklet
featuring new writing by Will Sloan, Jaye Hudson, Mark Pilkington, Vic Pratt,
William Fowler, Jane Giles and Jan Manthey
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| "I said FIRST pressing only ya big lunk!" Tor Johnson is cross at missing out... |
* His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra
(1987) Bantam Books, Kitty Kelley
**Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D.
Wood Jr, Rudolph Grey
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| The Medveds gift the Golden Turkey Award... |
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