The Way to Start 2022 Right

What better way to kick 2021 to the curb and usher in 2022 than to watch one of my all-time favorite movies--Plan 9 from Outer Space--on Off Beat Cinema on Retro TV? Throw in some tasty food and refreshing beverages and I'd say the party has started.

Shocktober 10/20/21

"The Bats Have left the belltower, the victims have been bled/Red velvet lines the black box, Bela Lugosi's dead."

Bauhaus, "Bela Lugosi's Dead"

It's somewhat difficult after all these years to think of Bela Lugosi as anything other than a caricature of himself--an outlandishly theatrical actor capable of playing only a narrow range of characters in increasingly cheap productions; when your career ends with you playing the lead in an Ed Wood film, you know you've gone beyond rock bottom.

But, as ever, there is more here than meets the eye.

Lugosi, a new graphic novel written and illustrated by Korem Shadmi, attempts to humanize the caricature, starting with arguably his lowest moment: Checking into rehab for morphine addiction in 1955. From there, Shadmi tells Bela's story in a time-shifting narrative; going back and forth from Bela's glory days in Hollywood starring in top-of-the-line productions like Dracula and Murders in the Rue Morgue (both for Universal) to his ignoble final days acting in Ed Wood movies; his last film, the infamous Plan 9 from Outer Space, was completed after Bela's death using a double who looked nothing like Bela.

Shamdi's approach is even-handed--not reveling in Bela's downfall, but not glossing over his career miscues, either. (Turning down the lead in Frankenstein? Not a good idea.)

Lugosi is a perfect read for an autumn afternoon, when the leaves tumble down the streets and the shadows are especially long.

Also? Today is Bela Lugosi's birthday. So raise a glass of plasma to our favorite vampire.

Review: Orgy of the Dead (1966)

In the 1960s, nudie movies became quite the rage, with directors like Russ Meyer and Doris Wishman taking standard Hollywood plots and using them as frameworks for showing models, strippers and, on occasion, porn stars in the buff. (This trend has carried forth into the present day, when such soft-core efforts go straight to either cable or DVD.) A few directors even tried their hands at nudie horror films--which brings us to Orgy of the Dead.

While most of the nudie movies from that era have drifted off into obscurity, Orgy of the Dead has become something of a cult favorite, mostly because director Stephen Apostoloff (working under the pseudonym A.C. Stevens) was working from a screenplay by the notorious Edward D. Wood Jr., writer/director of such legendary low-budget bombs as Glen or Glenda? and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

By the time Orgy of the Dead was made, though, Wood's film career had taken a precipetous nosedive. He hadn't directed anything in years, was drinking heavily and supported himself and his wife mostly by writing "erotic fiction" for small presses. Wood did continue working on movies, though, mostly writing screenplays and sometimes directing similar soft-core fare (his last film, Necromania, includes hard-core scenes with porn legend Rene Bond). He also served as assistant director on Orgy. But this movie wasn't enough to boost his career, nor the careers of anybody else involved.

Why? Because it sucks. And not in a good way, either.

The plot is minimal: a writer and his girlfriend wind up in a cemetery, where the lord of the undead (played by Criswell, who wears a cape and has a lot of trouble reading his cue cards because the fog machines are on high) and his breasty associate, Ghoulina (Fawn Silver--do you think that's really her name?), make the couple suffer "the tortures of the damned," which seem to consist of watching exotic dancers come out and strip amongst the tombstones.

These strip acts take up much of the rest of the movie, with Criswell and Silver chiming in with comments on the performances from time to time. There are also a mummy and a werewolf on hand for no clear reason other than to crack lame jokes and make us really miss Lon Chaney Jr.

The strippers are all reasonably cute--I especially liked the leggy redhead, but that's just me--but their acts are ultimately dull and repetitive, and by the time the "twist ending" comes around, interest has long since been lost. There isn't even enough of Wood's standard bad dialogue to keep the viewer awake and appalled. (The screenplay must have been about five pages long.)

So if you're a real devotee of Ed Wood's work and feel that your life would be incomplete without having seen Orgy of the Dead, have at it, by all means. But don't expect anything as incompetent--or, consequently, as interesting--as Wood's more infamous cinematic atrocities.

The greatest sin of Orgy of the Dead is that it's not just bad--it's boring. And that truly makes it a "torture of the damned."

Review: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957/59)

Friends and acquaintances often ask me, "What's your favorite movie?" I don't just have one, because I'm way too greedy to limit my love to just one film--I have a whole list. Some of the titles are obvious classics, like Citizen Kane or City Lights. Some are more modern critical hits, like Pulp Fiction. Still others are foreign landmarks, like Pandora's Box or Ran.

Buy whenever I get to Plan 9 from Outer Space, the listener invariably stops me and says," Wait, wait, wait...have you lost your damn mind? You can't be serious."

But I am. Plan 9 from Outer Space is one of my all-time favorite movies. And I'm not the least ashamed to admit it.

I'm not arguing that Plan 9 from Outer Space is a good movie. It's not. In fact, it's a very, very bad movie. But it's not the worst movie ever made. There are many more movies made by much more talented directors, writers and actors that have entertained me far less than Plan 9 does. However, since it sprang from the fevered brain of writer/director Edward D. Wood, Jr.--who had already crafted memorable bombs like Glen or Glenda?, a sensitive plea for understanding for transvestites (Wood was one in real life); Jail Bait, a hard-boiled crime thriller; and Bride of the Monster, a science-fiction monster show starring Bela Lugosi and Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson--Plan 9 from Outer Space may well be the most incompetent movie ever made.

The basic idea of the story is a good one: Aliens land in a graveyard and try to take over the world by reanimating the dead and attacking the living. (A similar story was used for the only-marginally-better Invisible Invaders, released the same year as Plan 9, which had been shot a couple of years earlier.) It's the execution, on all levels, that elevates Plan 9 so far above all of the merely mediocre sci-fi/horror movies produced in the 1950s.

This movie goes wrong with the first lines of narration, delivered by faux psychic Criswell: "Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends: Future events such as these will affect you in the future." Much of the dialogue is similarly overblown, with much philosophising about life, death, science, outer space and war. The basic intelligence of human beings is even questioned: "...Because all you of Earth are idiots!" bellows the provacatively named Eros, played by the even more provocatively named Dudley Manlove, at airline pilot Jeff (Gregory Walcott, the only one who gives even the semblance of a professional performance in this movie), who spots a flying saucer while trying to bring his commercial airliner in for a safe landing one morning and subsequently winds up involved in intrigue involving the military, the undead and the extraterrestrial.

One of the undead is The Old Man, "played" by Bela Lugosi in unrelated footage Wood shot just before Lugosi died and repurposed for this movie. It's sad to see the once-great horror icon frail and obviously ill. It's even more sad to see him toddle off screen, grief-stricken (or so narrator Criswell tell us) because of the death of his wife (TV horror hostess Vampira, a.k.a. Maila Nurmi, who refused to speak any dialogue--good for her) and run over by a car (with an obviously fake scream and screeching of tires, and a freeze frame that holds Lugosi's shadow on screen even while the car is supposedly running him down). There are other shots of Lugosi inserted, but much use is made of a supposed "look-alike" stand in (played by Wood's wife's chiropractor)--who doesn't look a thing like Lugosi.

There are bad decisions and inconsistencies everywhere. The funeral for the old man's wife takes place at sundown. When Lugosi walks off, the gravediggers start their work, at which point, Criswell tells us, strange things begin to happen. We immediately cut to Jeff in his airplane (and the most unconvincing cockpit set ever)--at sunrise. And then we cut back to the gravediggers still working. (Did they dig all night?) Shots go from night to day back to night again. The flying saucers are plastic models held up by very visible strings. (They also cast shadows on outer space.) Tor Johnson plays the lead detective investigating the murders of the gravediggers (who get torn up Vampira, even though shots of her are obviously in a studio while shots of them are obviously are on location), but his dialogue is nearly unintelligible due to his thick Swedish accent. In the graveyard, grass is made of paper and tombstones are cardboard (and knocked over easily). Stock footage is used liberally.

I could go on and on, but you get the point: Plan 9 from Outer Space is one lousy movie. Yet every time I see it, I find myself wildly entertained by the whole ungainly mess, and I appreciate all the good movies I've seen that much more. I also appreciate the passion with which Wood approached his "craft." Maybe he wasn't competent as a writer, director or actor, but he got his "vision" up on the silver screen for all to see.

Ed Wood got to live his dreams, such as they were. And how many of us can say that?

Review: Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1960/1964)

Face of the Screaming Werewolf, which stars Lon Chaney Jr. as a mummy who turns into the Wolf Man (trust me, I'll try to explain later), has one of the most convoluted histories--and thus, one of the most confusing plots--I've ever seen.

Apparently, it started out as a south-of-the-border horror comedy called La Casa del Terror, with Mexican comedian Tin Tan as a night watchman in a wax museum. Then American producer/director Jerry Warren bought the rights to it, edited out most of Tin Tan's scenes and shot bridging scenes to explain what was going on. To further confuse matters, Warren also edited in scenes from one of the popular Aztec Mummy movies, perhaps to pad out the film's running time to a full hour.

But wait. It gets worse. In Nightmare of Ecstasy, Rudolph Grey's biography of legendary schlock director Ed Wood, film editor "Lucky" Brown recalls that Wood and cinematographer ÒBig BillÓ Thompson shot some footage of Chaney in full Wolf Man makeup climbing the outside of a building. The idea, apparently, was to raise cash for a film project. That project never came to be--or did it?Face of the Screaming Werewolf has a sequence that exactly matches the footage Brown describes. Did Wood direct parts of La Casa del Terror or sell his Chaney footage to Mexican director Gilberto Martinez Solares? Did Chaney own the footage and give it to the Mexican director? Did Warren stick the footage in? Is it all just an extraordinary coincidence?

But whatever the various sources of footage, one thing is clear: Face of the Screaming Werewolf is one fucked-up crazy quilt of a movie.

Doctor Edmund Redding and his two assistants hypnotize a young woman, Ann Taylor, who apparently was an Aztec princess in a previous life. She has a couple of flashbacks, including one really long one with dancing, singing and a sacrifice. A helpful announcer who looks like he's on TV, even though we later hear his voice coming out of a radio, tells us that Taylor, Redding and the other docs are all going to explore a pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Once in the pyramid, the explorers find two mummies: one looks an awful lot like Lon Chaney Jr. (because it is), and the other one is a thinner Aztec mummy who growls like the Frankenstein Monster. Redding throws something at the Aztec mummy and stops him (or at least I assume that's what happens, since the scene abruptly ends there). Both mummies are brought back to America, where the helpful announcer is joined by a helpful scientist, who explains that the Chaney mummy is a "modern man" placed in the pyramid by parties unknown after "exchanging fluids" with the older Aztec mummy in an effort to "simulate" death. (How exactly were these "fluids" exchanged? Do I want to know? And is this supposed to imply that Chaney is playing the same Wolf Man character he played in the old Universal flicks?) The modern mummy is put on public display (the growling Aztec mummy apparently gets locked up for safekeeping). Then thieves kill Redding, steal the Chaney mummy and take him back to their laboratory hidden in a wax museum, where Tin Tan (hey, wasn't he edited out of this mess?) can be spotted snoozing in the background in a couple of shots.

The thieves are doctors of some sort who experiment on Chaney with a huge centrifuge-type thing and electricity, but they can't revive him. (And nobody bothers to explain why they're even trying to.) The three rival docs, led by Professor Janning (who looks a lot like a younger, Mexican Boris Karloff), take a break and go to a cafŽ, where one of them calls another thief (back in the inserted American footage). The thief seems thrilled when he thinks the job involves knocking somebody off, but looks worried when he's told that he'll be stealing the Aztec mummy. (What, he has no problem with murder, but is queasy about stealing someone who's already dead?)

Meanwhile, back at the lab, lightning hits the equipment and revives Chaney. He gets up, goes to the window, looks up at the full moon (my, that storm cleared up quickly)...and turns into the Wolf Man! When the thieving docs return to the wax museum, the Wolf Man kills one of them. And then falls over unconscious. For no fucking reason.

Meanwhile, the hired thug goes off to steal the growling Aztec mummy, only to have said growling Aztec mummy knock him out cold. The mummy then roams the streets until he finds Ann Taylor and carries her off. The hired thug wakes up, gets in his car and accidentally hits the mummy, killing himself, the mummy and Ann Taylor. The next day, we get a smashing closeup of a newspaper headline: "Ann Taylor Dead! Mummy Destroyed!" And then we never hear about Ann Taylor or the Aztec mummy again.

Meanwhile (lots of "meanwhiles" here, aren't there?), back at the lab, the Wolf Man has been loaded onto a table. He wakes up, throttles another doctor and is about to escape when Jennings shines a flashlight in the Wolf Man's eyes and drives him into a cage. (Bet you didn't know werewolves were afraid of flashlights, now did you?) Then Jennings leaves again.

Two cops stop by to investigate the theft of the mummy, but get the door slammed in their faces. Remarkably, the cops just...leave. Later, they talk to the radio scientist, who talks a lot, but explains nothing.

Chaney wakes up in the cage and isn't a werewolf anymore. He gets to utter his one line of dialog--"No!"--before the full moon comes out again and he sprouts fur. He tears the lock off of the cage and escapes again. This time, he roams the streets, runs alongside a highway, grabs a woman and climbs the outside of a building with her on his back. Tin Tan gets up off a table (where he was napping?) and climbs up after the Wolf Man, then gets knocked off the roof of the building and lands safely on the awning below. The Wolf Man runs down the stairs (why'd he bother playing King Kong with the outside of the building anyway?) and lets the girl go. (Or does he? The woman he puts on the sidewalk is dressed differently than the woman he kidnapped.)

Then the Wolf Man runs along the highway again and follows another woman home. This woman looks exactly like the last one he kidnapped (and probably IS the same woman, but incompetent editing clouds the issue) and, after chasing her around the apartment for a few minutes, grabs her and takes her back to the wax museum.

The Wolf man kills the Mexican Karloff look-alike doc and wrestles with Tin Tan. A fire starts in the lab. Tin Tan picks up a torch and beats the Wolf Man with it. And Chaney falls over unconscious. Again. For no fucking reason. And he burns to death. (Who knew werewolves were so flammable?) The cops from the American footage show up, disappointed that instead of finding a monster, all they see is "an ordinary guy." The end.

You know, my head hurts just thinking about this movie. I think I'll go and lie down for a while.