JAIL BAIT (1954)

  Ed Wood, after directing GLEN OR GLENDA and before doing BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, would give the world this film-noirish tale of a young man(Clancy Malone) who's led into the criminal underworld. His dad just so happens to be a plastic surgeon that's forced to do some facial reconstruction work to fool the coppers. Complete with stupid twist ending. Steve Reeves would get his start here before going on to become Hercules and other muscular hero-types in a few films. Wood's galpal, Dolores Fuller, returns from GLENDA in an equally clunky role. Despite the not so great acting a good slice of 50s crime melodrama.

This doesn't have anything to do with alluring underage gals so I'm guessing that term meant something else at the time. The posters make it seem that the female characters have much bigger roles than they actually do in the film itself and before viewing this I always thought it was one of those girl-gang epics.

 The VHS I own of this cuts out a blackface sequence for being politically incorrect, which is pretty lame but they did restore a striptease bit which is nice of them.  AKA HIDDEN FACE

REVENGE OF THE VIRGINS (1959)

 A band of cowboys, and one blonde lady, travel into Injun land in a greedy search for gold. They get picked-off one-by-one by an all-female group of topless Indian maidens. Amazingly, since this was released in 1959, we get to see long shots of our redskin-ladies, and their pale-face leader chief-lady, dancing around and letting their bosoms bounce about. That is really just about the only interesting thing about this western, well that and the fact that the screenplay was written by Ed Wood. Kinda dull but watch it if you wanna see one of the first topless-features I can think of.

NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (1959)

                            "Monsters to be pitied, monsters to be despised!" 

 While PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is normally called the worst movie of all time in reality it's not even the worst movie directed by Ed Wood. This one here is worse and way less entertaining. You do get Tor Johnson showing up with a scarred-up face and beating up cops but besides that it's a pretty stupid and dull tale of a fake practitioner of the mystic arts named Dr. Acula who uses a fake ghost-lady to freak people out and rip them off. A real ghost-lady shows up, sadly this role is not played by Vampira, and justice is ultimately served by a ghost-gang which has Criswell among their number. Then all the ghouls turn into skeletons.
 This along with PLAN 9 and BRIDE OF THE MONSTER(1955) is supposed to form some sort of Wood trilogy but I don't think there's really any narrative connection between any of them.

THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1970)

 Filmed in 1966 and released in '70 his might be the worst thing Ed Wood ever had anything to do with. Allegedly Mr. Wood wrote the screenplay for this tale of a Frankenstein-like scientist, who isn't named Dr. X, that goes to Japan to create a Venus flytrap monster who can walk around and eat puppies but I'm not sure if Wood's involvement has been verified or if it's just a popular myth. Either way this does seem like something Wood would have written. This was shot at Toei studios in Japan and the monster suit does look like something you might see in an episode of ULTRAMAN. The film itself moves at a snail's pace and it's a long 95 or so minutes. You do get a hunchback assistant and more importantly topless Japanese diving gals thrown in for no reason at all except for us to ogle.
 Strangely the print with the Dr. X title mistakenly has the credits to MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND for some reason so don't expect John Ashley to show up. This movie has a bunch of AKA's including THE DEVIL GARDEN, THE DOUBLE GARDEN, BODY OF THE PREY, VENUS FLYTRAP and THE REVENGE OF DOCTOR X.
 This has nothing to do with the 30's DOCTOR X movies but I guess they dug the name.

The plant-monster has a snack:


The VHS release of this made it look like you were getting some kind of bloody slasher flick which unfortunately you weren't at all:

THE VIOLENT YEARS (1956)

                    

     
                                     "These aren't kids. These are morons!"

The legendary Ed Wood wrote this tale of an all-girl gang of juvenile delinquents played by 30 year olds. Wood was really ahead of his time in attempting to show debauchery and the corrupt idiocy of youth, unfortunately it was still the 50's and he couldn't really get away with showing all that much. There are still some pretty crazy things going on in this film, cop-killing, a guy who gets raped by the gang, offscreen of course, while his lady-friend is stripped and hog-tied, not to mention the wanton destruction of an innocent classroom. The dialogue, as in all of Woods' epics, is snappy and absurd and we all learn a moral lesson at the end; i.e. go back to church and stop being so liberal with your kids. A great slice of 50's ridiculousness and one of Woods best films.

IT CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD (1982)

Chock full of great B-movie clips from the golden age of trash cinema this is a bad-movie lovers wet dream. If you don't mind the pseudo SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE style skits in between the awesome scenes this is for you. The funniest guys in this are Cheech and Chong. It's too bad that with all the various copyright owners this thing will probably never get a proper DVD release. Look for it on the old VHS or a bootleg DVD or just watch the whole thing on YouTube. Good times, giant monsters, aliens, gorillas and Ed Wood. What more do you want out of one movie?

GLEN OR GLENDA (1953)

Not only directed by but also starring the great Ed Wood as Glen/Glenda the cross-dressing transvestite fellow. This one is up their with PLAN 9 as one of the most entertaining of Woods' picures. It's basically the story of a guy who likes to wear angora sweaters and panties and how he's gonna tell his wife and what she's gonna do about this news. The wraparound features include Bela Lugosi spouting off strange sayings almost poetry-like over scenes of buffalos stampeding and other weird stock footage and a policeman going to a doctor to try and make sense of a tranny who commits suicide because society doesn't understand him. Is it inept filmmaking or is there actually a deeper message about intolerance about fetishes? Maybe a little of both but either way I find it an entertaining diversion and way above most of the standard 1950's cult movies.

One of the greatest monologues in film history?:

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959)

This has got to be the best movie that has been labeled the worst movie of all time. I mean it's not dull like a ton of other worse movies I can think of. The acting might not be great but it's not the worst I've seen. I think this would only be called the worst by someone who hasn't dug very deep into the cinematic muck that's out there. Even if we're just gonna go by the low-budget to call it bad there are a billion shot-on-video pieces of shit that have less of an aesthetic value than this. Features Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson and Vampira. How could you possibly make the worst movie with a cast of that magnitude?  Just for its camp value alone you would have to label this a classic, which also describes most of Ed Wood's other movies.

“You earthlings are stupid, stupid, stupid!”