Ed Wood (1994)
Posted on July 18, 2005
Filed Under Comedies, Creepy stuff
Is Ed Wood a horror movie? Strictly speaking, no, but it earns its place in the Black Lagoon through its illuminating and moving depiction of one of the genre’s most notorious - and intriguing - partnerships.
The name Edward D Wood Jr is usually accompanied by the words “world’s worst director”, which makes for a good headline but doesn’t adequately describe why his films are so interesting. His all-time greats, such as Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer Space (which we’ll inevitably cover on this site in the future), show a passion and raw enthusiasm for movie-making that is inversely proportional to his technical or artistic abilities. These are, of course, atrocious films, but not through lack of ambition or vision; unlike Roger Corman, another icon of junk cinema, Wood never felt constrained by what was feasible in terms of the resources or talent he had available to him at the time. Wood had an immense belief in and love of his work and had an eye for the big concept, but lacked the technical discipline or sound judgement to do his ideas justice. His films have a naive charm. The triumph of Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic is that it lets Wood escape with his dignity intact; by having a dream, he stands head and shoulders above the cynical sharks and moneygrabbers who populate Burton’s Hollywood. Johnny Depp’s performance as Wood borders on the child-like in his lack of awareness and blind enthusiasm, and Burton only alludes to the awfulness of Wood’s films obliquely, instead playing the mishaps that plague his career for laughs and presenting the eventual completion of Plan 9 as a triumph against the odds.
The strongest aspect of Wood’s rehabilitation as a sympathetic character is his relationship of Bela Lugosi. Whereas the rest of Hollywood writes him off as a has-been, Ed gives this washed-up, frail old man a second chance at the lasting success that eluded him; he fails in this aim, but Lugosi dies a little happier for having met him. Martin Landau brilliantly conveys the sadness that is self-evident in even a cursory glance at the events of Lugosi’s life; briefly one of the biggest names in cinema, his rather indiscriminate approach to projects - and his catastrophic refusal of the role of Frankenstein - more or less sank him completely and left him a morphine-addicted recluse. It’s the scenes with Depp and Landau together that make this film, and when Wood films his last scene with Lugosi knowing that the end is near, it’s almost unbearably poignant (although predictably, the actual incorporation of this scene into Plan 9 is woeful).
Also worth mentioning is the almost uncanny way Burton captures the look of Wood’s films, both in his spot on recreations of actual scenes and throughout the rest of the movie. The black and white biography helps, but the careful framing and lighting - on a budget Wood could only dream of - is perhaps the ultimate tribute. Ed Wood is moving, funny and above all it makes you want to watch - or re-watch - some of Wood’s films in the light of what you now know. Whilst it’s probably more of back-door entry into the horror canon, it’s also one of the best ‘films about a film’ I’ve ever seen.
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