The Horror Cr(yp)tic: ED WOOD'S LEGACY PART 3

Welcome to another installment into Ed Wood's quirky films. Today, i'll be going over his most famous films, his horror trilogy.

First up is Bride of The Monsterstarring Bela Lugosi as Dr. Eric Vornoff, Tor Johnson as Lobo, and Paul Marco as the fan-favorite Patrolman Kelton.

Originally titled Bride of The Atom, Dr. Vornoff is trying to breed a race of "Atomic Supermen" to conquer the world, with the help of his gargantuan lab assistant Lobo. Kelton and the police try to stop him and Dr. Vornoff sends his giant octopus monster on them, but he himself becomes a victim of his own creations.

There really isn't too much to say about this one. Bela Lugosi does a fantastic job as always, and the introduction of Paul Marco and Tor Johnson is a welcome addition. The first half of the film is really slow, but the end shines with an explosive climax (literally).

Up next is the film that Ed Wood is most famous for, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

Originally titled Graverobbers from Outer Space, Starring Vampira, Tor Johnson, the psychic Criswell, Paul Marco (as Kelton the cop), Lyle Talbot, and "almost starring Bela Lugosi", This movie is highly regarded as the "Worst Movie of All Time". The film is about Aliens trying to conquer Earth by using Plan 9: The Reanimation of Earth's Dead. Zombies and Aliens in the same movie? Awesome!... even though there is only three zombies. They are actually trying to destroy the Earth because the aliens believe we will create a bomb that detonates sunlight, thus destroying the universe.

The most infamous mistake in the film is that because of Bela Lugosi's death in the very early stages of filming, Ed Wood's wife's chiropractor filled in for Lugosi by holding a cape in front of his face(though the guy looks nothing like Lugosi). Scenes alternate between day and night in the same shot, obviously fake flying saucers (with visible strings) appear over pictures of Hollywood, characters knock over pieces of the set, Tor Johnson gets stuck coming out of his grave, and almost none of the lines make any sense ("Remember my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future." "I'm muzzled by army brass!") and dozens of other hilariously inept mistakes plague this film.

It's been called The Worst Movie of All Time, The Greatest of Unintentional Comedies, and The Greatest Cult Film Ever, and while these may be partially true the movie is absolutely entertaining. That, and i've seen movies much worse *coughManosHandsofFatecough*. This movie is Ed Wood's "Citizen Kane", and worthy of all the notoriety it gets.

Finally, we come to Ed Wood's Night Of The Ghouls

originally titled Dr. Acula, the movie stars Ken Duncan, Tor Johnson (once again as Lobo), Valda Hansen, and Paul Marco (as Patrolman Kelton). Filmed in 1959, the movie wasn't released until 1982!

Dr. Acula conducts seances for people to talk to their deceased loved ones, however Acula is a fraud and there are no ghosts at his house (the same building from Bride of The Monster; a wounded Lobo is now Acula's assistant). Kelton the cop is ordered to investigate the goings-on, but is scared because of his experience from Bride of The Monster. To everyone's fright, real ghosts show up and cause chaos for the seance.

This movie is BY FAR Ed Wood's best produced (and surprisingly shot extremely well with tons of great shots) which is a shame as it wasn't released for 3 decades. I've seen this movie parodied countless times, most notably an episode of "Ed, Edd, and Eddy" where they had a fake seance. This movie is pretty entertaining, and a nice ending to Ed Wood's mainstream film career, and after this he made monster nude films and then straight-up porn, but i'll go over more of his life in the next (and final) installment of the Ed Wood Legacy, the Tim Burton-directed biopic "ED WOOD". stay tuned!

Bride of The Monster: 8 out of 10.

Plan 9 From Outer Space: 10 out of 10

Night of The Ghouls 8.5 out of 10