Ed Wood Box [6 Disc]

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 6
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Black and White
• Features:
  • [None specified]

AWARDS

• Telluride Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 1994

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Dolores Fuller - Marilyn Gregor
       Bela Lugosi - Scientist
       Bela Lugosi - The Ghoul Man
       Kenne Duncan - Dr. Vlad Acula
       Mona McKinnon - Paula Trent
       Lyle Talbot - Inspector Johns
       Daniel Davis [Edward D. Wood, Jr.] - Glen/Glenda
       Duke Moore - Lieutenant Dan Bradford
       Herbert Rawlinson - Doctor Gregor
       Gregory Walcott - Jeff Trent
       Dolores Fuller - Barbara
       Tor Johnson - Lobo
       Steve Reeves - Lieutentant Bob Lawrence
       Lyle Talbot - Police Inspector Warren
       Valda Hansen - The White Ghost
       Tommy Haynes - Alan/Ann
       Clancy Malone
       Carl Anthony - Patrolman Larry
       Criswell - Himself
       Dolores Fuller
       Tor Johnson - Police Inspector Clay
       Maila "Vampira" Nurmi - Vampire Girl

• Director:

  Brett Thompson, Edward D. Wood, Jr.

• Producer:

  Crawford John Thomas, Brett Thompson, George Weiss, Edward D. Wood, Jr.

• Screenwriter:

  Alex Gordon, Brett Thompson, Edward D. Wood, Jr.

• Cinematographer:

  David Miller, William C. Thompson

• Composer (Music Score):

  Bruce Campbell, Wolfgang Droysen, Trevor Duncan, Franz Mahl, Van Phillips, Steve Race, Ward Sills, James Stevens, Gilbert Vinter, Gordon Zahler

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Gordon Zahler

• Songwriter:

  Louis Febre

• Editor:

  Charles Clement, Igo Kantor, Bud Schelling, Brett Thompson, Edward D. Wood, Jr.

• Associate Producer:

  Anthony Cardoza, Paul Marco

REVIEWS:

• In 1953, George Jorgensen had an operation to become Christine Jorgenson, in what would become the first largely publicized sex-change operation. This sensational story in the headlines interested producer George Weiss, which made it possible for the little-known director Edward D. Wood Jr. to make his first feature. As a married heterosexual and practicing cross-dresser, Wood wanted to make an intensely personal film dealing with tolerance for his lifestyle, starring himself in a cashmere sweater. For very little money and a shooting schedule of less than two weeks, Glen or Glenda? was hardly seen by anyone outside the budding exploitation circuit at the time of its release. Using a construction of flashbacks as told through rambling pseudoscience, the movie feels like an educational film strip, albeit a poorly constructed and incomprehensible one. A showcase of Wood's infamous ineptitude, the personal stories of two transvestites are spoken with ridiculous dialogue, terrible acting, and interspersed with irrelevant stock footage. Every so often, a drug-addicted Bela Lugosi would appear with some strange and pointless narration. For all the fun to be had by the silly inconsistencies, Glen or Glenda? is also increasingly dull. It may be memorable as one of worst movies ever made, but its content is not very exciting compared to the horror and sci-fi travesties of Wood's later work. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
• Plan 9 From Outer Space has been unjustly deemed the worst movie of all time. It's true that cardboard gravestones are knocked over, that scenes change from day to night at a moment's notice, and that half of Bela Lugosi's scenes are shot with a taller stand-in who has trouble keeping his vampire's cape on his shoulders. But technical gaffes like these are shared by a number of low-budget sci-fi films with plots that equal the absurdity of this epic's tale of extraterrestrial grave robbers. What distinguishes Plan 9 from less interesting failures is the bizarre but sincerely overwrought screenplay from now-famous director Edward D. Wood Jr. As in his other works (such as the autobiographical Glen Or Glenda? and Bride of the Monster), Wood's words expressed far more of his interior obsessions, beliefs, and philosophies than any other hack churning out similar kiddie spook shows. It's clumsy poetry to be sure, but Wood loved the movies and tried to speak through them. An alien invader's soliloquy on the stupidity of modern man comes off like a strange man on the bus, demanding to tell you what's wrong with the world. Most of Wood's films have this strangely direct feel to them, but Plan 9 From Outer Space is definitely the tightest synthesis of the man's personal idiosyncrasies and his deep desire to tell a story that everyone would love. As a result, it's proven itself to be immensely popular, a rare combination of accessibility and outsider vision that unfortunately never paid off within Edward D. Wood Jr.'s lifetime. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
• Jail Bait was Edward D. Wood Jr.'s first attempt at making a mainstream movie. Previously, he'd directed, written, and starred in Glen or Glenda, a very personal film about transvestism that was made for the exploitation film circuit. Jail Bait, however, was a crime film, really a film noir, made for Howco, a low-budget production company that specialized in genre entertainment and distributed its films to drive-ins and cheap but respectable neighborhood theaters. Co-written with Alex Gordon, Jail Bait follows the path of conventional crime movies, telling a cautionary tale about the privileged son (Clancey Malone) of a successful surgeon (Herbert Rawlinson, in a part intended for Bela Lugosi), who comes to no good end when he takes up with a professional hood (Timothy Farrell) in his quest for kicks. The plot up to that point isn't too different from that of the 1944 East Side Kids drama Million Dollar Kid, except that it's also presented partly as a police procedural. Wood was evidently intent on emulating the style and approach of Dragnet, which was then the hottest thing on television, although Jail Bait, thanks to Wood's strange direction, more resembles the radio version (then again, even the television version of Dragnet in those days strongly resembled its radio version). The focus is just as much on the two police detectives (portrayed by Lyle Talbot and Steve Reeves) as it is on the doomed Don Gregor or his family. Another bizarre element is the dialogue, both as written and as handled under Wood's direction. In between the police jargon and the tough-guy talk is very strangely written and paced developmental dialogue, especially between Rawlinson and Dolores Fuller (Wood's paramour at that time), playing his daughter, who sound like they're rehearsing a radio drama (and like they need a lot of work). It's when Rawlinson, portraying a gifted veteran surgeon, utters lines admitting that he finds plastic surgery "very complicated" that modern audiences start to laugh. Then there are scenes like the one where Don Gregor's corpse, left standing upright behind a curtain, tumbles out in front of his father without making enough noise to alert anyone in the next room. (Come to think of it, the idea of a day-old corpse left standing upright, perfectly still and without starting to smell of decay in a kitchen, is pretty funny too.) Those elements, plus the facial reconstruction surgery that Dr. Gregor improvises in a living room, would be enough to make Jail Bait worthwhile viewing for connoisseurs of the odd and unusual in filmmaking. But Wood also had the goal of emulating the zither score from The Third Man and the mood that it created, even though his movie is set in southern California and not Vienna. He couldn't find a zither player (or else couldn't afford to hire Ruth Welcome, who was certainly around at that time), so he reused Hoyt Curtin's guitar score from Howco's Mesa of Lost Women; thus, Jail Bait has this dramatic Spanish-style guitar, embellished with piano for the dramatic moments, noodling underneath its action and dialogue. That track, plus the presence of an embarrassing (but accurate) black-face comedy number set at the theater that's to be robbed, firmly place this movie in the main body of Wood's work, if not as well developed as it would later become in its mistakes and errors in judgement. It's not prime Edward D. Wood material -- as he gained experience and confidence, he grew bolder and began reaching beyond his grasp, making bigger and more interesting mistakes -- but, like watching a car that's starting to veer onto the shoulders of a highway at a medium speed, one can see here where Wood and his career were going. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

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