ED WOOD
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Tim Burton's disappointing biopic
of bad filmmaker Wood looks great, but it is a wafer-
thin patchwork of familiar rumors and stories which is,
like the rabid fans of Wood's films just a trifle mean-
spirited in its fun. Martin Landau is good as the dying
Bela Lugosi and gives the film what core it has, but
Depp goes back and forth among the three emotions that
Burton allows him and fails to create a person. Rating:
low +1 (-4 to +4)
Tim Burton has made just about the only biography that could have been made of the film-making career of Ed Wood Jr. since there are so many legends of filmmaker. He has probably correctly assumed people who come to see the film are less interested in delving into the character of the man and more in having and extension of the experience they have laughing at the ineptitude of the films Wood made. Burton has created a stylish film to poke fun at Wood.
When the film opens Wood (played by Johnny Depp) is a handyman at Universal Studios who produces silly, pretentious plays with the Ed Wood touch of ineptitude. But Wood idolizes Orson Welles, who was writing, directing, and acting in his own film at 26. Wood is already 30 and feels the need to be an auteur filmmaker, right now. The problem is that with the exception of producing some really terrible plays he has no experience relevant to making films. However, he has the confidence that he knows everything that he needs to know. A chance meeting with Bela Lugosi give him the edge he needs to get his first film made as well as beginning a friendship that would last the rest of Lugosi's years.
Wood's one flaw time and time again is in assuming he has talent and is creating great art. Of course the films he really does create are notorious for their ineptitude. On a small scale he is not unlike Roger Corman--he will give anyone an opportunity to be in his films without discrimination on the basis of talent. This gets earns him a sort of the following of a coterie of talentless actors who find easy employment with Wood. The list centers on the fading Bela Lugosi but includes Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, fake psychic Criswell, and horror show host Vampira. Unfortunately, with the exception of one marquee reference, the film never mentions Lyle Talbot. Talbot had been in major productions before and after the Wood films he was in as well as being a regular on the TV show "Ozzie and Harriet." It would have been interesting to know more about why he was willing to accept minuscule wages to appear in Wood's productions.
The style of the film is to weave together many of the anecdotes that have appeared elsewhere for years. Many are probably true, others apocryphal. Wood was certainly a transvestite, as shown in ED WOODFR WOOD, and much of what was coherent about GLEN OR GLENDA? was an autobiographical study of a transvestite. Whether or not he would let being a transvestite affect his directing in later films as shown could well be just legend. Wood's friendship and attention did help Lugosi through the aging actor's final years, but whether his relationship was really as close as shown probably depends on to who is telling the story. And certainly the ending of the film is a fantasy in Ed's mind and one wonders how much else is a fantasy in this film. There are obvious anachronisms in the film. The producer of GLEN OR GLENDA? has a stack of film cans behind his desk including one labeled "One-Eyed Samurai." I find this very unlikely for an American film producer in 1952.
Johnny Depp puts a little too much energy into Wood. At least on screen Wood's body language seems to indicate a man a bit more placid and laid back than Depp plays him. Landau's ailing Bela Lugosi really looks very good, a combination of Rick Baker's excellent makeup and Landau's own study of Lugosi's facial expression. Burton is banking on not too many people being able to recall Wood's looks and demeanor, but Lugosi's is too familiar a face too familiar for Burton to take similar liberties.
Story accuracy beyond that point is open to some interpretation. Though the film is based on Rudolph Grey's NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY: THE LIFE AND ART OF EDWARD D. WOOD, JR.," I doubt if it or any other existing piece of research is a serious study of Ed Wood, and perhaps Wood does not deserve a serious study. If the film adaptation is any indication, the book is not always well researched. Lugosi is shown to be lonely and alone, a drug addict for twenty years and not having made a film in the last four. It is true this was a particularly rocky period in Lugosi's life. After DRACULA Lugosi was always the victim of his own poor discretion in the roles he chose and of the narrowness of his acting repertoire. He really as an actor better suited to silent film than sound. There are only so many roles that require his forte, which was looking mysterious. He ended up playing too many red herring butlers in too many cheap horror mysteries. After he played Dracula for the last time on screen in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN he was also the victim of Universal Studio's ingratitude for his previous contributions.
But Lugosi's state was looking up as a look at Lugosi's filmography indicates. And there was a revival in his career--of sorts- --from 1952 to his death in 1956. GLEN OR GLENDA? was actually the second of three films he made in 1952 after OLD MOTHER RILEY MEETS A VAMPIRE and before BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA. After his drug rehabilitation Lugosi also married his fifth wife, a fan as a wife who remained loving and loyal to him until his death. In 1956 he made THE BLACK SLEEP and took some part in the publicity campaigns. It was not even a speaking role but presumably between that and TV appearances he could at least squeak by.
This film opens trying to give the feel of an Ed Wood film but the haunted house we see in the beginning has more the feel of Burton's films with miniatures much like we have seen in Burton fantasy films since "Frankenweenie." On the other hand Burton does a fairly good job of recreating scenes that look much like they did in the original Wood films. Actors do not always look quite like their original counterparts, especially Bill Murray as Bunny Breckenridge, but some scenes do bear an uncanny resemblance to their original film versions. One need look no further than Universal's MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES to realize how much worse the recreations could have been.
If one is really interested in the real behind-the-cameras dirt of popular 1950s entertainment, the current QUIZ SHOW is far better done and more credible. But for a diverting couple of hours, ED WOOD is enjoyable entertainment. I rate it a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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