Edward D. Wood Jr. was the legendary ultra-low-budget writer, producer, director, and actor who made such 1950s cult movies as his autobiographical story of transvestism, Glen or Glenda, and his science-fictioner Plan 9 from Outer Space, with a Cadillac hubcap for its flying saucer. Ignored in their time, derided today by white-bread reviewers who delight in calling Wood the world’s worst director, these films are beloved by audiences, and the celebrity which eluded Wood in his lifetime has embraced him in death. (He died a penniless alcoholic in 1978 at the age of 54.) In 1992, Rudolph Grey published Nightmare of Ecstasy, a superb biography of Wood, and the incredible facts of his life and career became a must-read for anyone interested in the extremes of the Hollywood dream. That book has provided the basis for the inevitable biopic – and just as inevitably, the film Ed Wood never manages to be as compelling as the man’s true life story or as intriguing as his films.
The charm of Ed Wood’s movies lies in their sincerity, their ingeniousness in the face of no money, and their weird casts: Bela Lugosi, forgotten by Hollywood, battling poverty and drug addiction; 350-pound Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson; television horror hostess Vampira; transsexual wannabe Bunny Breckinridge; phony prognosticator Criswell. But when you spend $18 million re-creating these films and their milieu, charm is the first casualty. Something grotesque, even decadent, clings to such an enterprise, and on one level Ed Wood is just another instance of yuppie retro trash, along with The Flintstones or The Little Rascals.
To its credit, the film mostly avoids the presumption of slumming, and goes easy on the “world’s worst” silliness. Then again, having Problem Child and Problem Child 2 for prior credits, screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski can’t look down on anyone else’s work. Cinematographer Stefan Czapsky delivers a handsome black-and-white that’s also, when necessary, true to the look of Wood’s films. Howard Shore’s score is a delight, a true homage to such hothouse movie composers as Les Baxter (and to the musical strains of Wood’s Glen or Glenda). Director Tim Burton plainly relished this project, but his film is overlong, thinly written, and wildly uneven in its casting.
Martin Landau faced a quandary with the role of so indelible an actor as Bela Lugosi. Taken on its own, his portrayal of a veteran actor at the end of his rope is moving and nuanced; but if you start to think about the real Lugosi, there’s simply no correlation. Landau is most effective in simpler moments, such as his late-night shoot with a rubber octopus for Wood’s Bride of the Monster, or in Ed and Bela’s exchange of gratitude and affection the next morning. Sarah Jessica Parker is effective if strident as Dolores Fuller, but communicates none of that performer’s memorable non-style in her acting scenes. The semi-carny stentorian tones of Criswell also elude Jeffrey Jones. Bill Murray is funny, but as Bill Murray doing Bill Murray shtick, not as the real Bunny Breckinridge was funny in Plan 9. More successful are Lisa Marie, who brings the right frosty aura to Vampira; Juliet Landau as the non-liquid-drinking Loretta King; and George “The Animal” Steele, who was born to play Tor Johnson (that’s meant as a compliment). Vincent D’Onofrio looks uncannily like Orson Welles, and the scene of Welles meeting Wood is funny and touching, if a bit preachy – at last one of the film’s many, many fabrications has paid off.
The biggest drawback, alas, is Johnny Depp as Wood. Depp starts out as the natural, appealing performer he’s always been, but by the time Ed has met Lugosi, he has given himself over to mugging and grimacing and overplaying his dialogue – he’s like Jon Lovitz as the Ham Ack-torr on a “Saturday Night Live” rerun. The real Ed Wood wasn’t like that; and if this affected foolishness was Depp and Burton’s way of bringing out what Depp has described as an “Andy Hardy” quality to Ed, then they should have watched some Andy Hardy films, because Mickey Rooney wasn’t like that either. Depp’s tiresome, silly interpretation eventually proves fatal: Ed is surrounded by oddballs, and so the film desperately needs a real person at its center, regardless of how so-called eccentric he may be. But when Johnny Depp comes off as phony and mannered alongside the acting of George “The Animal” Steele, you know something has gone terribly wrong.
(This review first appeared in The Film Journal, October-November 1994.)
Link to:
Film: Reviews: Contents
For more on Edward D. Wood Jr., see:
Film Dreams: Edward D. Wood Jr.
Film Essay: The Case of Ed Wood
Film Essay: Cult Films
Film Essay: Erotic Films
Film Review: I Woke Up Early The Day I Died
And be sure to read Rudolph Grey’s book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr.
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 