![]() ![]() In fact in comparison and without hesitation I’d take a Wood film over slick, dull, derivative, crap like, I dunno, Silver Linings Playbook or The Dark Knight Rises or any other box office smash with a $90 million budget made by another cynical director who just wants to dazzle audiences into a stupor and collect a check. At the same time I could point to a hundred directors working today whose films aren’t nearly as inventive, original, heartfelt, driven or simply damned entertaining as Wood’s. It’s “campy.” It’s “cheesy.” It’s “schlock.” It’s “ironic.” Bar none and hands down, it’s the worst movie ever made by man or beast.īut repeating the same dusty appraisal everyone else is using is the easy hipster way out, bullshit spouted by the lazy and ignorant incapable of accepting a film on its own terms without first piling some “ironic” crap on top to feed their desperate desire to feel superior. My friends, can your heart stand the Shocking Fact that maybe Ed Wood wasn’t the worst director who ever lived or Plan 9 the worst film?įor the record, my shelves are lined with the work of the great directors: Welles, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Herzog, Kurosawa, Fellini and in technical terms no, I might not rank Wood among them, but I do have the greatest respect for his twisted vision and love his films the same way I love the films of Tod Browning. We’ve heard it so often we can reduce the film to a string of code words. Oh, there’s Criswell and the stock footage and the burning paper plate and Tor Johnson’s acting and Tor Johnson’s house and the wobbly cardboard headstones and the re-used props and sets and Dolores’ chiropractor who was taller than Lugosi and Vampira’s crazy eyes and the disjointed dialogue and what all hell. Plan 9 was haphazardly constructed around a few, short minutes of test footage Wood shot of Bela Lugosi shortly before Lugosi died. His name has come to be synonymous with inept filmmaking, the worst of the worst. Yes, yes, yes, my friends, we’ve heard all the stories both about Ed Wood and about Plan 9. Wood’s notorious 1959 cult legend Plan 9 From Outer Space. But my friends, just for a moment I think it’s time we paused to take a fresh look back at Edward D. ![]() We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. ![]()
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