Plan 9 was already colorized for DVD a few years ago, and there wasn’t a single complaint about a legendary film being subjected to this much-maligned process. Probably because we all realized Ed simply would have loved the extra attention it gave his magnum opus. According to his biographer, Ed Wood said that while Glen or Glenda? (1953) was his most personal film, Plan 9 was his proudest accomplishment!

Wood’s appeal and fame continues unabated. Yes, he was a trash filmmaker, but he was a trash filmmaker delightfully of his time, simultaneously encased in and fighting against the naiveté of the 1950s. Naturally, that phenomenon is something that cannot be repeated, despite the countless attempts to do so by clueless contemporary indie filmmaker who—incredulously and vainly—seek to imitate Wood’s dated incompetence.

It is Wood’s bio, replete with nostalgia, his zeal, his idiosyncratic stamp, which endears him to us. At his best, Wood’s vibrant personality carries itself into his films, regardless of genre. At his worst (which unfortunately is not his worst) Wood is merely an incompetent commission B-director.  Still, Edward D. Wood, Jr. is our fallible pope of naive surrealism, and his debut on Blu-ray is cause enough to celebrate the Ed Wood in all of us.

Now, let us commence into that glorious future where all Ed Wood films will still be celebrated, in the future. It is safe to say that, in the future, there will always be the aspiring film geek who discovers his patron saint, Eddie, in the future. For you, for me, for those in the future, we now present “THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO EDWARD D. WOOD, JR!”

Jail Bait (1954) begins promisingly. Wood girlfriend Dolores Fuller is at the police station putting up bail for her brother, Don (Clancy Malone). Inspector Johns (dependable Wood extra Lyle Talbot) warns our heroine of the risk she is taking. When Dolores tries to assure the mean authority figure that her baby sibling is trustworthy, we are set-up for Woodian dialogue that could rival the classic exchanges in Casablanca (1942): “Inspector, Don is no criminal.” “He was carrying a gun.” “There are much worse crimes.” “Carrying a gun can be dangerous business.” “So can building a skyscraper!”  Muscle man Steve Reeves is on hand in the small part of Lt. Bob, but he probably would have been more animated as an extra in a George Romero film. This one came on the heels of Ed’s masterpiece, Glen or Glenda, but it lacks that film’s compelling haphazardness. Jail Bait unfortunately descends into standard fare that could have as easily (and as blandly) been directed by Ron Howard.

Bride of the Monster (1955) is Ed’s only film to actually “star” the actor with whom he is most associated, Bela Lugosi. Lugosi is horrifyingly emaciated here but he pulls off one of his best late career performances. He evokes pathos, as opposed to horror. His monologue includes an infamous, telling slip; he is supposed to say “Hunted, despised, living like an animal, I have proven that I’m right!” but the star’s delivery ends with: ” I have proven that I’m alright!” Loretta King plays the buxom, ace reporter as if she has overdosed on one too many Lois Lane magazines. Complimenting her performance are  beautiful z-grade sets, super-alligators in the swamp (?), a Russian spy, and an atomic explosion. All ripe material for colorization, which makes it even cooler. The smitten Dolores Fuller is reduced to a hilarious walk-on (she was supposed to play the lead, but rival Loretta King reputedly paid Wood to play the part).  Tor Johnson is also on hand as the hulking brute Lobo, who is moved by the sight of a pretty girl wearing angora. His reward for a sympathetic libido is a whip cracked on his back! The behind the scene anecdotes about Bride are classic (the octopus was stolen from the leftover sets of a John Wayne movie, Ed’s lackeys forgot to steal the creature’s motor, and the film was financed by Wood’s butcher). Although the film itself is almost as zany as his other two Lugosi features, Bride of the Monster gives one the feeling of striving to be conventional. Thankfully, it doesn’t succeed.

Ed wrote and William Morgan directed The Violent Years (1956). It’s a (sort of) typical 50′s juvenile delinquent film. A spoiled girl joins a gang who get their kicks out of vandalizing! Judge Clary (I. Stanford Jolly) is tired of all these JD types: “It’s always difficult for an old friend to sit in judgment of an old friend, but the law is the law!” Profound words indeed.

 Bride and the Beast (1958) was directed and produced by Adrian Weiss, and written by Wood. Since this is the only film Weiss is credited with directing, it is almost impossible to ascertain how much Wood might have “helped,” but the film does feel entirely Woodian. Charlotte Austin and Lance Fuller are the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Fuller. Mr. Fuller is a big game hunter and he has a gorilla named Spanky. Spanky has some mean blonde-dyed Elvis sideburns and has taken a fancy to the new Mrs. Fuller. Could it be her angora sweater? Or…  You see, gorillas excite Charlotte! And, after a bit of hypnosis, the terrible truth is revealed! Charlotte is the reincarnation of a Queen Gorilla!!! Acting abilities be damned, Charlotte looks great in angora and jungle neglige! And, yes, hints of bestiality abound. The ending has to be one of the most inspired, jaw-dropping endings in celluloid history.

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959): There is little to add to what has already been said. With Glen or Glenda, this stands as one of Ed’s two masterpieces of naïve art. Few films can boast such genuine, dissident style. No wonder the ever-constipated Medved boys were offended. Best line in a film of great lines: “Inspector Clay is dead! Murdered! And somebody’s responsible!” Pay St. Ed the homage due him by watching it with a rambunctious audience. If you haven’t seen it, if you don’t own it, you simply are too uptight. Period.

As Wood’s sequel (of sorts) to both Bride of the Monster (1955)  and Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), Night of the Ghouls (1959) should almost come with a guarantee of bouncing off-the-walls high octane lunacy. Alas, it falls short, and a feeling of fatigue washes over the film. Perhaps Wood was feeling one rejection too many, but Night of the Ghouls is sort of the breaking point for Wood, the film in which he began to lose his mojo. The previous, imaginative level of intense enthusiasm is dissipated and Wood never fully regained it. Perhaps, the death of his one genuine star (Lugosi) yanked away his inspirational rug; and, of course, increasing struggles with alcoholism compounded Wood’s sense of defeat. However, it could also be said that numerous auteur directors have experienced a similar bottoming out and, almost to a man, continued making films regardless, i.e: John Waters after Hairspray;  Tim Burton (ironically) after Ed Wood, the post-80s work of John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper). Criswell returns as our horror host: “For years I have told you the almost unbelievable. Now, I tell you a tale of the threshold people. Once human, now monsters!” B western actor Keene Duncan has the enviable role of fake psychic Dr. Acula (In 1953, Wood had made two western shorts with Keene, Crossroad Avenger and Trick Shooting. Neither are stand-outs and the latter is, disappointingly, exactly what it says it is). Keene is joined by Duke Moore as the tuxedo-wearing Lt. Bradford, and Tor Johnson in his return as a heavily scarred Lobo. Valda Hansen is a new girl for Wood, playing the White Ghost. Among Wood’s actors, Hansen was well-liked and an enthusiastic supporter of the director. Her end was as unfortunate as Wood’s. Predictably, her career never took off and she later developed cancer. Destitute and uninsured, she could not afford pain medication and died in agony. Hurrah for the virtues of Capitalism.

The first victims of the Black Ghost (Jeannie Stevens) are a girl in angora (!) and her boyfriend. Paul Marco’s bumbling Officer Kelton almost spooks himself into a coma as he investigates the weird goings on at the old Willow Lake. “I could, I could, I could get killed out here!” Dr. Acula, with the aid of the White Ghost, is milking gullible patrons out of their money. But, there’s real horror afoot: the Black Ghost. The seance scene has some unintentionally surreal bits, but mostly the movie’s repetitive and flat. It was completed in 1959, but was shelved because Wood could not afford the developing fee. It sat, believed lost, until 1983. It’s not prime Woodian weirdness, but it’s probably essential as a sequel to the two previous films and it does occasionally sparkle: “He remembered the cold, clammy sensation of the railing. Cold, clammy, like the dead!”

The Sinister Urge (1960) begins with a blonde in slip running down a dirt road. She is being chased by an unseen assailant. She finds a phone booth and seems shocked to find it’s a pay phone! Before she can scream “Operator! Operator! Would you help me place this call?” in her best Jim Croce drawl, her assailant catches up to her, knocks her to the ground, and wrestles her dead in the park! She turns out to be one of several recent victims. The police shake their head and smoke their cigarettes:”Just like the others. Pretty kid too! Course she doesn’t look like a kid now. Maybe she grew up in that moment of truth, when she died! Same M.O. Killed the same way! The same everything with one big difference… her name is different!” Turns out, the movie is an exposé of the smut picture racket! Gloria (Jean Fontaine) IS the smut picture racket, and the coppers have confiscated cans and cans of  ”smut, rotten smut!” “You were expecting dancing girls?” “This is no laughing matter!” “I’m sorry. It was in bad taste.” It sure was. Keene Duncan (Dr. Acula himself) as Lt. Carson and Duke Moore as Sgt. Stone head the list of regular Wood non-actors. “You know what pictures like this can cause? Sex scandal headlines!” The gumshoes have their hands chock-full with that bitch Gloria, and you can tell what kind of gal she is: posters of The Violent Years and Jail Bait adorn her walls! The anonymous 50′s rock score accents this purple pleasure, “I’m gonna push that ice cream right down his throat!” This was Wood’s last legitimate (?) film before descending into softcore porn.

Island of Lost Souls deviates from the original story (which, predictably, prompted H.G. Wells to voice his disapproval), but the film is simply told.  Like 1932′s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Island  is a pre-Hayes code film, and it shows.  Of course, both films were taken from  literary sources, and that too is apparent.  Lost Souls‘ literacy is due to screenwriter Philip Wylie, who also adapted Wells for James Whale‘s The Invisible Man (1933).  The inimitable Charles Laughton, one of the great classic screen actors, plays Dr. Moreua with a classicist’s relish.  Laughton is one of the major reasons for this film’s success, and as director Kenton shows atypical subtlety. These factors, combined with well-crafted sets and make-up, add up to a striking milieu.

Island is almost an old-dark-house genre film, except that the stranded visitor, Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) ends up in a sort of kinky, contemporary Eden.  God is present in the symbolic persona of Dr. Moreau and although he is the antagonist, he is a three-dimensional one.  He is intelligent, crafty, and that naughty twinkle in the divine eye is ever present.  God is creating again, although this time he’s attempting to correct his previous mistake by making man from the image of Eden’s animals.  Eve (a Wylie addition) appears in the exotic Lota (Kathleen Burke, who notably showed up in the following year’s pre-Code Murders in the Zoo).  Lota, AKA Panther Girl, alternately projects innocence and unbridled sexuality, and she is utilized by Moreau to usher forth a new Adamic age, with Parker as the new Adam.  Of course, in every Eden there’s a rotten apple or two, and here it’s Parker’s abroad girlfriend (Leila Hyams, from Freaks) and the Beast Men, Moreau’s ungrateful children who hold a grudge against their creator for little things like torture, brutality, and vivisection.  The Beast Men are led by the Sayer of the Law (Bela Lugosi, who is well-directed). The Sayer calls the creator out for hypocrisy and original sin.  The Beast Men are well sketched here, which is a sharp contrast to the mere animalistic portraits drawn in subsequent versions.  The finale is natural jolt, so much so that no other celluloid interpretation of the tale can match it.  This lucidly told imaginative spin on Dr. Frankenstein’s Eden still holds up remarkably well.

As for the Criterion treatment, most welcome authoritative commentary is given by historians Gregory Mank and David J. Skall, along with filmmaker Richard Stanley (the original director of the 1997 version, who was replaced by John Frankenheimer).  Stanley offers entertaining, honest insight.  A little less welcome are reflections by John Landis and Devo.  Production stills and the theatrical trailer are excellent supplements.  This is a superb release that is essential for classic film lovers.

In 1929, director Tod Browning, shopping around for the lead of the film version of Dracula, cast Lugosi as a vampire-like inspector in The Thirteenth Chair (1929).  Although Lugosi was not a great actor in the conventional sense, he did have an undeniably magnetic screen presence, and he brought an air of European mystery to the most rudimentary melodramas.  Browning capitalized on this as few directors could and it worked, leading to Lugosi landing the career-making role of Bram Stoker’s Count in Browning’s 1931 film, Dracula.  The 49 year old Lugosi was perfect for the part.  His idiosyncratic mannerisms, unique mangling of the English language (which, despite rumor, he did not deliver phonetically), and otherworldly persona made for a compelling figure, a point made all the more obvious when compared to Carlos Villarias’ laughable performance in the Spanish language version of Dracula (shot at the same time on the same sets as Browning’s classic).  Years later, Lugosi bitterly complained about the typecasting which resulted from the film, but realistically, Dracula was the best thing that happened to the actor.  With his limited acting skills and heavy accent, Lugosi never could have been successful  in the romantic matinee roles he desired.

If Lugosi had been shrewder, he would have wisely seized the niche left void by the untimely passing of Lon Chaney.  Instead, the success of Dracula quickly went to his head.  Lugosi was aloof and let it be known that he preferred Hungarian company to Hollywood types, making him unpopular with studio executives.  Lugosi did not help matters with his prima donna complaints during screen tests for Frankenstein (1931) which certainly contributed to his being booted off the project.  Karloff was cast in the role, and Lugosi’s brief few months reign as horror king was history.  Rather than starring in Frankenstein, Lugosi’s next part was a mere red herring in the Charlie Chan entry The Black Camel (1931).  This film was once considered lost, but a print was recently discovered; which, understandably, failed to make entertainment tonight headlines.  Lugosi curiously followed this with Broadminded (1931), a sophomoric comedy with Joe E. Brown and the doomed Thelma Todd.

Reeling from his many missteps during the Frankenstein debacle, Lugosi turned nothing down and threw himself into a number of films in 1932.  Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) was Lugosi’s next horror role, directed Robert Florey, who had been the original choice to helm Frankenstein.  From the evidence of this film, we can be grateful that both Florey and Lugosi were sacked.  While Florey does a decent imitation of German Expressionism, Murders still feels like imitation.  Lugosi, again, has charisma, but not enough to carry the film, which is badly written and awkwardly directed.  Lackluster box office and reviews prevented Lugosi from obtaining the contract with Universal Pictures that he desperately needed.

Lugosi free-lanced at the Fox studio to film Chandu the Magician (1932), which was based off a popular radio serial.  Chandu contains one of Lugosi’s most animated performances as Roxor the magician.  He bounces off the screen, spewing slime, and plays havoc with his line deliveries.  Unfortunately, this William Cameron Menzies-helmed film was directed without inspiration and featured an equally uninspired lead performance by Edmund Lowe.

White Zombie (1932) is a compelling fairy tale of a film filled with static dread.  It was directed by the Halperin Brothers, and, reportedly, anonymously co-directed by Lugosi.  Although that rumor has never been officially confirmed, it may be more than mere rumor, since none of the Halperin Brothers’ remaining films have near the flavor of White Zombie. Lugosi’s role as Murder Legendre ranks among his very best in this, Hollywood’s first zombie film (the zombies here are a much different breed than contemporary, post-Romero zombies).

Lugosi had another red herring role in The Death Kiss (1932).  Stylishly directed by Edwin L. Marin from a witty script, the film did little to help Lugosi’s career or fortune.  Island of Lost Souls (1932), directed by Erle C. Kenton, starred Charles Laughton.  Despite being heavily buried under overdone make-up, Lugosi gave a brief but highly effective performance as the Sayer of  the Law.  This film has justifiably become a cult favorite, resulting in its upcoming Criterion Release in 2011.

1933 found Lugosi in his first serial: The Whispering Shadow.  It is an endlessly creaky chapter-play with Lugosi continuing his unwise descent down the path of playing the diversionary suspect.  If the James Whale/Boris Karloff feature The Old Dark House (1932) is the best in this genre, then Night of Terror (1933) is the worst.  Within two short years, Lugosi was already parodying his Dracula image in a live action Betty Boop short called “My Silent Love” (1933), featuring Bonnie Poe as Betty.  Lugosi’s vampire makes a surprise appearance at the end, sensually grabbing the buxom Bonnie and leering into her cleavage, “Betty, you have Booped your last Boop.”  Next came an offbeat role in the cult favorite International House (1933).  This bizarre big screen radio entertainment starred the inimitable W.C. Fields, the equally inimitable Cab Calloway (singing ‘Reefer Man’), the infamous Peggy Hopkins Joyce, George Burns, Rudy Vallee and Lugosi.  Supposedly directed by A. Edward Sutherland (more likely directed by Fields himself), House delightfully defies adequate description.

In 1934 Lugosi returned to Universal for his first teaming with Karloff in Edgar G.Ulmer‘s flawed masterpiece, The Black Cat.  Lugosi excelled in the role of the enigmatic protagonist, although Karloff’s performance had the slight edge.  Karloff always retained affection for the film and later gave sincerely felt advice to Lugosi imitators when he suggested they watch his co-star’s delightfully eccentric delivery of the line, “I vill tear the skin from your body, ssssslowly, beet by beet.”  Lugosi also returned to serials, but this time as the lead hero in The Return of Chandu (1934).  He was certainly better cast in the role than Lowe had been in the previous entry, but this “sequel” had a minuscule budget and, surprisingly, Lugosi’s charisma from the previous film was inexplicably toned down.  The Mysterious Mr. Wong (1934) was the first of the poverty row Monogram Pictures films for the actor.  It was the start of an inglorious body of work.  Mysterious Mr. Wong is hopelessly dull, racist pulp with few redeeming qualities.

Mark of the Vampire (1935) re-teamed Lugosi with Tod Browning, this time at MGM.  An “A” budget and director contributed to Lugosi’s menacing portrayal of a pseudo vampire, all but Dracula in name.  Lugosi next traveled to England to star in Hammer’s first horror film, The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (1935), for which the actor gave a heartfelt performance, although the film itself gives no indication of the studio’s later stylized excellence in the genre.

The Raven (1935) is another “A” budgeted Universal film.  Under the sophomoric direction of Lew Landers, Lugosi again plays with Karloff, but this time Bela was given the considerably larger role.  Lugosi was alternately intense and irritating in his role as an Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed doctor—possibly making this the quintessential summation of Lugosi as a screen actor and personality.  The Raven also poignantly illustrates why Lugosi disconnected, compared to Karloff’s ability to connect.  Lugosi rarely asked for, or received, sympathy.  His villains, such as The Raven‘s Dr. Richard Vollin, are elitists, seeing themselves as superior and god-like.  Karloff, even as the monster of Frankenstein, is almost always inherently human and vulnerable.  Unfortunately, The Raven‘s lewd melodramatics caused an intense backlash against horror films in Great Britain and Lugosi was cruelly made the scapegoat by Universal producers who refused to shoulder the blame.

Murder By Television (1935) should be, by title alone, a ripe candidate for cult status, but it’s merely a messy cure for insomnia.  Universal next gave Lugosi a secondary role in the sci-fi oddity The Invisible Ray (1935).  For once, Lugosi was surprisingly restrained (while Karloff uncharacteristically overloaded on ham).  However, contemporary audiences may be more “frightened” by Lugosi’s racist handling of an African infant than by any “horror” elements in this too subdued film.

The temporary horror ban took its toll on Lugosi.  Two back-to-back serials, Shadow of Chinatown (1936) and S.O.S. Coastguard (1937) barely kept the actor from starving.  Shadow is unbearably tedious.  Although Coastguard had a more tolerable budget, and Lugosi gave an animated, hammy performance, it too is a shoddy bit of entertainment.

Lugosi was off-screen throughout 1938 and the future looked increasingly bleak until a double-bill revival of Dracula and Frankenstein proved to be a shocking success, lifting the horror ban.  Universal lavished the production of The Son Of Frankenstein (1939) with a strong cast and budget.  Lugosi stunned critics and audiences alike with his masterful portrayal of the slow-witted, malevolent Ygor.  Ygor is probably Lugosi’s best screen performance, one which director Rowland V. Lee built up for the actor, much to the studio’s chagrin.  The producers at Universal knew the actor was in a state of desperation and wanted to take advantage of Lugosi’s plight, offering him a small salary for a limited time frame.  Feeling sympathy for Lugosi, Lee re-wrote the actor’s role.  Lugosi’s extended dialogue and screen time kept the actor on set throughout the shoot, giving Lugosi a heftier take home pay and a far more noticeable part.  Along with co-star Lionel Atwill, Lugosi stole the film from Karloff and Basil Rathbone.

Ninotchka (1939) is often cited “proof” of Lugosi’s ability to act in a non-horror role, but his part is barely noticeable in this Greta Garbo film directed by Ernst Lubitsch.  The Phantom Creeps (1939) was Lugosi’s final, and enjoyably silliest, serial, with the actor trying to rule the world together with an aluminum foil robot.  Dark Eyes of London (1939) is an atmospheric Edgar Wallace melodrama, hampered by a noticeably low budget and intrusive comedy relief, but the film received generally good notices and resulted in a contractual offer for a series of films to be shot in England.  Foolishly, Lugosi turned down the offer, preferring instead to return to a Hollywood which didn’t really want him.  Lugosi’s first decade as a “horror star” was his best, although with decidedly mixed results.

Lugosi did some modeling for the part of Satan in the Mussorgsky segment of Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940), but whether or not the actor’s features were actually used has been debated.  Lugosi proved to be an exciting foil for George Sanders’ witty hero in The Saint’s Double Trouble (1940), but Universal ludicrously cast Lugosi against type as a gangster trying to kill Karloff in Black Friday (1940).  The Devil Bat (1940) is an engagingly idiotic PRC film with Lugosi hamming it up as the mad doctor archetype, creating killer bats out of shaving lotion (!)  You’ll Find Out (1940) unforgivably wasted the one-time teaming of Lugosi, Karloff and Peter Lorre by making them secondary to bandleader Kay Kyser!

The Invisible Ghost (1941) may be the best of Lugosi’s Monogram films, which is saying absolutely nothing, even if director Joseph H. Lewis tried desperately to inject a sense of style into the penny dreadful tale.  Lugosi was back playing yet another red herring role as a whiskered gardener in the alleged comedy The Black Cat (1941).  1941 red-herring number two has Lugosi as a magician slumming with the Bowery Boys in Spooks Run Wild (1941).  Lugosi was far better cast in the small but colorful character role of Bela, the Fortune Teller in The Wolf Man (1941).

1942 found Lugosi in a trio of awful Monogram films.  He was a Nazi in Black Dragons, a bride-snatcher in The Corpse Vanishes and a keeper of zombies (sort of) in Bowery At Midnight (1942).  Although Lugosi was back as Ygor in Universal’s The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), the film had a gravely reduced budget and an inferior actor (Lon Chaney, Jr.) as the monster, which affected Lugosi’s fatigued performance.  And yet again, Lugosi the butler didn’t do it in Universal’s Night Monster (1942).

Despite popular belief, the Ed Wood films are not the nadir of Lugosi’s screen career.  That honor may go to Monogram’s Ape Man (1943).  Injected with ape serum, Lugosi hangs out in a corner cage with a guy in a gorilla suit.  He also sports a glued-on beard and scratches his armpit.  It’s an excruciating, cringe-inducing sixty minutes.  Almost as humiliating is Lugosi’s belated turn as the Frankenstein Monster in Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (1943).  Thirteen years after being fired from the part, Lugosi, now past sixty, was far too old for a role he was never right for to begin with.  The actor’s performance, which was already doomed, was made unbelievably worse by moronic studio tampering with the script by hack writer Curt Siodmak.  At the end of the previous Ghost of Frankenstein, the monster was supposed to have Ygor’s voice, since the shepherd’s brain had been transplanted into the monster—incidentally causing blindness.  Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman was indeed filmed this way, but subsequently sabotaged by editors who nonsensically omitted any explanation for the monster’s lack of sight.  Lugosi’s dialogue was also excised and in several scenes the monster can be seen mouthing muted words. Reviewers noticed and panned the film.  Again, incredulously, Bela was blamed.

Lugosi returned to the vampire’s cloak in Columbia’s Return of the Vampire (1944).  While once again Lugosi gave an air of dignity to his undead count, he was unfortunately saddled with a whiny, talking werewolf (!)  Monogram’s Return of the Ape Man (1944) is only slightly better than its predecessor.  This was quickly followed with the (thankfully) final Monogram film, Voodoo Man (1944), but RKO’s Zombies on Broadway (1945) proved that Monogram hardly had the corner on bad filmmaking.

By this time, Lugosi was quite ill, suffering from his addiction to morphine.  He became addicted years before after a doctor subscribed the medicine to him for a back injury caused during a film shoot.  In addition to an expensive drug habit, Lugosi badly managed his money, lavishing his earnings on expensive parties and gatherings with fellow musicians and friends (by most accounts Lugosi was an accomplished musician who performed Hungarian folk music).  Despite, age, bad health, and a dour financial situation, Lugosi gave a beautifully poignant performance as the dim-witted Joseph in Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher (1945).  Lugosi proved he could indeed act, when he was actually being directed.  However, the former Dracula received little notice from critics, who instead fawned solely over Karloff’s star performance.

Scared To Death (1947) is Lugosi’s only color film, and the sole novelty of this immensely embarrassing film is in its discovery that Count Dracula had blue eyes.  Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) returned Lugosi to his Dracula role for the second and last time.  Commentators have stated Lugosi played the role straight, but that is not quite the case.  He plays the part very differently than he did 18 years earlier for Browning.  Lugosi hides his face under his cape and “spooks” the boys.  In several scenes, Lugosi’s gravelly voice almost sounds like Ygor.  While Lugosi’s Dracula here lacks the inert peril that he projected in the 1931 film, Lugosi has fun with the role.  It’s contagious, and we have fun watching him in his real last hurrah.

In 1949 Lugosi gave an unnoticed performance in “The Cask of Amontillado” segment of the television series Suspense (which recently became available on DVD).  The actor then was unemployed and off-screen for three long years, until he had an offer of rescue from a producer after his London Dracula tour ended with Lugosi out of money and stranded.  Unfortunately, the resulting movie, Mother Riley Meets The Vampire (1952) vies with The Ape Man as Lugosi’s most unbearably agonizing film, despite the fact that Lugosi is surprisingly as animated here as he was in his villainous roles of the 1930s.  In sharp contrast,  Lugosi never looked more tired than he did in the same year’s Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla.  Lugosi is humiliated here, teamed up with a wretched, poverty-row imitation Martin and Lewis.

Better (!) is Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda (1953).  Bela Lugosi, Jr. and others have stated that Ed Wood took advantage of the Lugosi when the star was ill and vulnerable, but it is largely because of Wood’s films that Lugosi’s cult status has escalated over the last fifty years.  To lean on an overused phrase, Wood’s films are indeed “so bad, they’re good.”  Wood’s brand of energetic lunacy was brief, but it shone in the films he did with Lugosi.  The Wood/Lugosi trilogy is a vast improvement over the bulk of the actor’s “so bad, they’re bad” films.  Wood had a film nerd’s love for the faded star and it showed, mixing perfectly with Wood’s naively surreal aesthetic.  Glen or Glenda is the most bizarre and, consequently, the most inspired of the trilogy.  Bride of the Monster (1955) is a somewhat lesser work, although it is the only film of the trilogy to give Lugosi a starring role.  Most of Bride is standard fifties horror.  Lugosi looks terrifyingly emaciated, but his strangely endearing monologue and the beautifully cheesy sets elevate this film above low budget genre films of the era and brand it with Woodian weirdness.

Lugosi’s highly publicized check-in to a drug rehab lead to his being cast in the Black Sleep (1956).  It was Lugosi’s last finished film, featuring an all-star horror cast, but Lugosi was too ill to even speak and he was given the role of a mute butler.  Despite the cast, the film could easily fit in the infamous Monogram oeuvre.

Laid end to end, Lugosi only has a couple of minutes of new film-footage left before his long-awaited death in 1956.  Lugosi was so destitute at the end that Frank Sinatra anonymously paid for his hospital treatment bills.  It has been inaccurately reported that Lugosi himself specified that he be buried in his Dracula cape.  It was actually the idea of his ex-wife and son.  Also legendary is the tale that Vincent Price and Peter Lorre showed up at the funeral.  According to the legend, Lorre, upon seeing Lugosi in the coffin, said, “come Now Bela, quit putting us on” to which Price retorted, “should we stake him just in case?”  Lugosi’s end was an ignoble finale to a career, and life ,filled with extreme highs and extreme pathos.

Wood built his Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) around the brief unused footage of Lugosi as a posthumous valentine to Bela.  Plan 9 is now the stuff of legend.  The making of the film is well documented in Rudolph Grey’s book, “Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Ed Wood, Jr.”  Lugosi’s Monogram pictures could have been directed by any anonymous hack.  There is no doubt that Ed Wood was hack, but he was not anonymous.  His original personality touched every project he worked on.  The same thing could be said be said for Bela Lugosi.  While one often sensed that Karloff thought himself  above the lesser material he appeared in, Lugosi was never guilty of mantling a condescending attitude.  This makes Lugosi’s collaborative body of  work with Ed Wood second only to Lugosi’s earlier collaborations with Tod Browning.

It is natural to root for the underdog, and Lugosi’s cult following has done just that.  Whether Lugosi’s work actually deserves that status is debatable, but Lugosi remains one of the genre’s greatest gods.  Bela need not worry one bit about being usurped by the pimply cast of Twilight (2009).  He will unquestionably remain the ideal of Bram Stoker’s vampire count for many years to come.

In the original play, the character of the inspector had a different name and was played for laughs.  The Thirteenth Chair was an all around testing-the-waters kind of film; a test handling that new invention called sound, which neither Browning nor the production team were comfortably with (all too clearly).  The main test here, however, was for the upcoming role of Dracula, and for that reason Browning grabbed Lugosi, who had made the vampire role a mega hit on the stage circuit.

Lugosi’s make-up, with sharply accented eyebrows, is patterned after the make-up he wore as Dracula in the play version of Bram Stoker’s tale.  His mannerisms are pure vamp, not at all what the role of the inspector originally called for.  His first appearance is shot from the back.  He is in a police station, dressed from head to shoes in white, but when he turns towards the camera, he delivers the lines as only a Transylvanian Count would.  Thankfully, Lugosi is wildly disproportionate to the role and serves as an almost surreal red herring for the film.  This may have been a test project for Browning, but he had to make it interesting for himself, and he did so first with the eccentric casting of the “Living, Hypnotic Corpse” as the inspector.

Lugosi beautifully mangles the English language, as per his norm, but his handling of the foreign tongue is much faster clipped than it would be in the 1931 Dracula, which gives lie to the ridiculously uninformed rumor that he learned his lines phonetically.  Lugosi had lived in the States and performed the part in English for years before the film version, so the actor’s delivery in Dracula was a directorial choice, as Lugosi indicated in interviews.

Lugosi has some wonderful, if eccentric, bits.  In one scene, Madame Rosalie La Grange (Margaret Wycherly) asks Delzante to speak plainly.  The Inspector angrily responds, “Madame, I am ssspeaking purrrfactly klaaare!”  In another bizarrely fascinating scene, the Inspector is eliciting names of suspects from a murder committed during a seance.  One woman tells him, “Helen.”  A few seconds later, a second woman tells him “Helen.”  Lugosi is taken aback and then delivers a priceless spiel, “Halan. I see.  Halan. Halan.  Ssssooo, there are twooo Halans.  Twooo Halans.”  He walks over to the Madame, “Sssooo there were twooo Halans.  An extraaa Halan.  The name you were afraid to speak was Halan. Itsssh tooo Klaaare.”

Browning’s work with Lugosi in the three films they collaborated on traces an interesting arc.  Here, Lugosi’s casting amounts to a deception.  Lugosi as Delzante intentionally throws the film off into bizarrely wayward areas.  In their next film, Dracula (1931), Lugosi often amounts to a parlor trick.  Lugosi as Dracula ascends the stairwell.  Renfield follows and sees, to his astonishment, that the Count has magically “walked” through a cobweb without disturbing  the web itself.  Dracula, like a leering magician, grins diabolically, issuing a disconcerting “come forth.”  The collaboration climaxed in Mark of the Vampire (1935).  In that,  Lugosi is half of the quintessential, crepuscular goth couple (and an incestuous one at that).  However, it is merely an elaborate hoax.  One suspects Mark was Dracula as Browning intended.

The Thirteenth Chair is replete with eccentric, delightfully of its time dialogue:  “So that’s the bee in your bonnet!” says the bland protagonist to his love.  As the doomed Wales, John Davidson is more interesting than the hero.  Davidson competes with Lugosi in undead delivery.  Unfortunately, Davidson gets offed too early in the film, but not before some entertaining eye rolling.  Margaret Wycherly as the honestly fake spiritualist reprises the role she played on Broadway.  Wycherly could be the catalyst for a Browning self-portrait.  She is the grand deceiver who eventually lets the audience in on the deception.  Browning would repeat this theme in his apt curtain call, Miracles For Sale (1939).

Serious awkwardness mars this film, a product of the transition from silent film to the new, imposing medium of sound.  Because of that awkwardness The Thirteenth Chair is not Browning in his best form, but he still manages to make it a curiously personal, queer con.  Two murders, one committed with all the lights out, a phony medium, a series of séances, a mysterious manor, stolen love letters, and potential blackmail all add up to standard Browning fare, with an extra oddity or two: two Helens, that is.

Sometimes the devil wins, and when Thalberg died at the age of 37, Old Nick (Mayer) had no one to rein him in.  MGM, under Mayer, had a notorious  habit of buying out rivals—the original versions of the studio’s watered-down remakes—and then would make every attempt to destroy and/or suppress the superior original.  For instance, they bought out the 1940 British version of Gaslight and unsuccessfully attempted to destroy all the copies just in time for the debut of their inferior 1944 version, starring Charles Boyer.  MGM did destroy many, but not all, copies, and understandably earned the genuine resentment of the British film industry.

MGM did the same to Paramount’s superb, 1931 Academy Award winning Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to make way for their laughably bad 1941 version.  They were successful, or so they thought.  For a number of years, it was believed all copies of the 1931 Hyde had been destroyed and it was therefore a lost film, until, may years later, copies resurfaced—much to MGM’s chagrin.

When Tod Browning wanted to remake his London After Midnight as Mark of the Vampire in 1935, MGM did not have to go on a search-and-destroy mission, since they owned the original.  The studio saw no commercial value whatsoever in preserving a silent film, so the original was essentially buried to make way for the new version.  Predictably, it fell into neglect until some thirty years later the only remaining known copy was destroyed in a fire.  It is entirely possible that MGM intentionally destroyed multiple copies of its own film, simply to make competitive room for the remake.  Whether that remake is superior or inferior is pure speculation.

In 2003, Rick Schmidlin of Turner Classic Movies arduously produced a photo still reconstruction of London After Midnight.  It is probably the only version of the film we, and future generations, will ever see.  Even from a stills-only reproduction, it is clear that Midnight is the original American Goth Film.  Chaney’s vampire, partly inspired by Werner Kruass’ Caligari, is a make-up artist’s delight, and an actor’s hell.  Fishing wire looped around his blackened eye sockets, a set of painfully inserted, shark-like teeth producing a hideous grin, a ludicrous wig under a top hat, and white pancake makeup achieved Chaney’s kinky look.  To add to the effect Chaney developed a misshapen, incongruous walk for the character.  To his credit, Chaney’s crepuscular rogue looks as loathsome today as it did over eighty years ago (enough so for Henry Selick to pay the character a homage in The Nightmare Before Christmas).

The film, taken from Browning’s story “The Hypnotist,”  is essentially a drawing room murder mystery, with a detective hiring actors to play vampires in order to smoke out the guilty party through sheer fright.  As with most of Browning films, the plot is painstakingly preposterous, which will alienate contemporary audiences who religiously subscribe to ideas of hyper-realism.  It is the spectral ambiance and erratic characterizations which stamp the film with Browning’s aberrant panache.

Chaney as the vampire and Edna Tichenor as Luna, the Bat Girl are the original creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky duo.  Chaney also plays the second role of the professor Edward C. Burke and in some of the stills he could pass for Ebenezer Scrooge.

Robert Bloch (writer, Psycho-1960) saw London After Midnight in his youth and wrote of a Browning oddity in the film; the sight of armadillos scurrying across the dilapidated castle floor.  It is an image we do not see in the still restoration, but Browning would repeat this surreal bit in both Dracula (1931) and Mark of the Vampire.

The late William K. Everson, a reliable historian, saw both films and claimed that the 1935 remake was considerably superior.  Critics of the period disagree with Everson, holding the 1927 film as the better of the two.  London After Midnight received mixed reviews upon its release in 1927, but the majority of the reviews were positive.  Of all the Browning/Chaney films, Midnight reaped the biggest box office.

In its current state, which is a remarkable, commendable effort on producer Schmidlin’s part, it still is virtually impossible to compare this with the remake.  What is evident is that the earlier film’s production design, set in London as opposed to Prague in the remake, is superior; which is saying a quite bit since Vampire’s design is, in itself,  handsomely mounted.

Midnight also has fewer characters, a more minimal murder plot, is silent (an art form both Browning and Chaney were far more comfortable in) and has Lon Chaney starring, which would seem to add up to a better, overall film.

In 1935, Browning requested to remake Midnight as Mark of the Vampire, starring Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill and Carol Borland.  Browning’s  status at MGM was sensitive at best, even though he was still under Thalberg’s protection.  Neither Mayer nor the studio had forgiven Browning for Freaks (1932) and his salary for Mark was cut to half of its former amount, which he humbly accepted.  Thalberg’s protective umbrella vanished when the producer died prematurely, shortly after the release of Browning’s The Devil Doll (1936).

After that film, Browning sat dormant for two years until he was able to direct Miracles for Sale (1939), an uneven film that featured yet another Browning depiction of below-the-waist mutilation.  It was to be his last.  He was unceremoniously fired by MGM producer Carey Wilson, whose early career Browning had greatly assisted.  So much for loyalty.

For Mark of the Vampire, Browning worked with cinematographer James Wong Howe (who later photographed Citizen Kane-1941).  Howe’s work in the film was praised, but Howe did not care for working with Browning, who he said “did not know one end of the camera from the other” (but, then, neither did Luis Buñuel).  Browning, however, was a hard-driving perfectionist and took great care in the craft and design of the film; the expressionistic, winged descent of Borland is strikingly impressive.

Browning always grumbled about the finished state of his Dracula (1931).  In his original edit, Dracula was ten minutes longer and was even more deliberately paced, with Lugosi’s count almost entirely invisible during the second half, which, according to Browning’s sensibilities, made perfect sense.  The Count, as Browning’s “Living, Hypnotic Corpse” (an act the director played in his carnival circuit days ) pulls a disappearing act.  But, Universal spoiled that by cutting  several scenes and adding close-up shots of the vampire grimacing, much to Browning’s permanent dismay (he refused to ever watch the film again).

Browning got his way regarding the presence of the Count in Vampire.  As in Terence Fisher’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966) the vampire is mute and predominantly an unseen spirit.  Lugosi is even more effective here with his reduced, minimal presence.  He is made up to look like Dracula, but projects increased savagery in his silence, making for a highly effective, grinning demon that differs from Chaney’s look but emulates the former’s pantomime.  Lugosi’s Count Mora also sports an unexplained bullet wound to the temple.

Unfortunately, Browning once again fell prey to unimaginative producers, who butchered Vampire by excising some twenty minutes, which is evident throughout this highly incoherent film.  The result is something akin to a fascinatingly flawed, unintentional surrealist egg.  In the original script, the Count and his daughter were  incestuous lovers who committed suicide with bullets to the head, thereby incurring the curse of the vampire.  Not surprisingly, that part of the story was  cut, but Lugosi’s bleeding temple remained untouched, sans explanation.  Borland is equally impressive.  Her Luna tops the look of Tichenor’s, and her portrayal inspired Charles Addams’ Morticia.

Guy Endore (Werewolf of Paris) wrote the script from Browning’s story.  Mark of the Vampire is saturated with sensational Gothic texture (which includes possums inhabiting the castle).  The visceral editing somehow add to the film’s appeal, even if it is a bit too talkative, bogged down with moments of forced comedy relief and Lionel Barrymore’s on-the-sleeve acting (although sometimes he seems more villainous than the vampires, which is beneficial to the overall milieu).  Vampire adds up to an outrageous, hallucinatory film with genuinely perverse personality and a surreal, ominous style, far more so than the average Universal genre potboilers.

When released, critics generally praised the film, but many complained about the  “trick” ending, which is stupefying since it is hinted at fairly early on.  Plus, it has the same ending and story as Midnight, which was a  huge box office hit only eight years before.  Perhaps critics from the period all suffered from long term memory loss.  The ending actually makes the film, giving a facetious, Addams family-like sheen to the proceeding austerity.

Browning ended his collaboration with Lugosi with this film. Their work together started with The Thirteenth Chair (1929) when the director was scouting around for Dracula (despite rumors, Chaney was not set to be cast as the Count and there is no evidence that he would have been, even if he had lived, although Chaney would have been an obvious choice to consider).

Browning’s long term association with Barrymore would come to an end in the following  year’s The Devil Doll. It was also the beginning of the end for Browning’s unparalleled brand of artistry.

In between these two films Wood made Bride of the Monster (1955) , also starring Lugosi (the only one of the three Wood films in which Lugosi actually ‘starred’), but that film was more of a concession to the genre and lacked the pronounced Woodian weirdness found in either Glen or Glenda or Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Fourteen years after Wood’s cult status rocketed out of the pages of Medved’s book, Tim Burton produced his valentine to Eddie.  Clearly, Ed Wood was as personal a film for Burton as Glen and Plan 9 had been for Wood.  Burton faced immense difficulty in mounting the project and was given what, for him, was a small budget.  Artistically, the endeavor paid off and even did so financially, in time, although it took Touchstone years to realize the film’s cult potential for the DVD market.

In 1994 Tim Burton was the perfect artist to bring Ed’s story to the screen.  Burton, recognizing a fellow auteur and genuine oddball, treated Wood, not with derision, but with the respect he deserved.  Before Ed Wood, Burton, although trained at Disney, was still an outsider with Hollywood backing, which makes him (in that regard) a kindred spirit to Stanley Kubrick.  Burton’s first big budget feature effort had been Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), a zany Caligari-esque journey in craoyla colors.  The success of that film lead to bigger successes. Beetlejuice (1988) and the epic Batman (1989) followed.  Both of those films starred Burton’s greatest collaborator, Michael Keaton.  Edward Sissorhands (1990) was a beautifully elegiac, quirky, flawed film.  It was also Burton’s first film with future collaborator Johnny Depp.  Batman Returns (1992) was a more personal vision of the Dark Knight in which Charles Dickens yuletide season goes straight to a superhero burlesque hell.  That film remains, to this day, the greatest film incarnation of a comic book character.

Of course, Ed Wood followed, but something happened to Burton after this film. Mars Attacks (1996) was Burton’s attempt to make an Ed Wood-like film, but he didn’t learn the George Stevens lesson.  Steven had made his Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and it is one the most frustrating misfires in cinema history, featuring a sublime performance from Max Von Sydow as Christ and a damned fine one from the much put upon Charlton Heston as the Baptist.  These performances and the cinematography (Lloyd Griggs and William Mellor) are sabotaged by Stevens decision to insert cameos from a plethora of big named stars, such as John Wayne as a roman soldier.  Stevens defended this marketing decision by claiming that “no one will notice in twenty years.”  It’s been over forty years and it is still a blatantly distracting example in which marketing trumps art.  Burton repeated this mistake, treated Woodian weirdness like the Bible, and it was a major distraction.  Audiences and critics responded coolly.

After that, Burton’s genuine penchant for weirdness was sacrificed for tinseled weirdness, not only apparent in all the films which have followed, but also in his personal and aesthetic preferences.  Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp are hopelessly polished when compared to the likes of genuine, internalized eccentrics such as Paul Reubens, Lisa Marie and Michael Keaton.  Depp’s current, most popular work may well be with Burton, but his best work remains with other directors, such as Jim Jarmusch in Dead Man (1995) and Sally Potter in The Man Who Cried (2000).  Those two directors were able to draw much more wistful, more nuanced, fully fleshed out performances from Depp.  Under Burton, Depp has become far too grandiose and obvious.

This was not yet the case when the two collaborated for Ed Wood. The renegade spirit was still in full force and Burton had the cast, crew and enthusiasm to do it justice.  Much has been written about Martin Landau’s performance, and the accolades are deserving.  Landau had done prior excellent character work in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker (1988) and Woody Allen‘s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), both of which garnered him Academy Award nominations.  Landau would top both of these films, giving the performance of his life, as Lugosi in Ed Wood.  Even the Academy realized it and finally honored Landau’s work.

Bill Murray as Bunny Breckenridge, Patricia Arquette as Kathy Wood, Jeffrey Jones as Criswell, Mike Starr as Georgie Weiss, Lisa Marie as Vampira, George Steele as Tor Johnson, and Juliette Landau as Loretta King are equally superb and followed Burton, Depp and Landau’s lead in giving the freaks full dignity due.  Even the casting of Sarah Jessica Parker works since the actress proved to be just as witless, over-inflated and annoying as her character, Delores Fuller.

The film itself is, naturally, a mix of fact and fiction.  Wisely, Burton does not cover Wood’s films preceeding and following Lugosi, because Ed Wood is about Ed’s relationships with his fellow misfits.  The world they share together is as unique and special to them as the island of misfit toys is to a Charlie in the Box.  Even Parker, as Delores, realizes it and tells Eddie, “This is not the real world. You have surrounded yourself with a gang of misfits and dope addicts.”  She is right, of course and, thankfully, banishes herself from the Woodian universe to forever disappear in that thick as peanut butter fog of deserved suburban obscurity.

Wood and the Plan 9 company did get baptized in a Baptist church to pacify Wood’s religious backers, they did steal the rubber octopus for Bride of the Monster, and they did forget to steal the motor.  However, Ed’s with meeting Orson Welles, his idol, never happened, but it is a hilarious, well done scene.  Unlike the movie, Lugosi’s funeral was actually well attended ( secretly paid for by Frank Sinatra), but these are really inconsequential points.  With Ed Wood, Tim Burton cemented the legend of a fellow misfit and only Burton, in that time and place, could do it.

Half a century has passed since the premiere of Plan 9 From Outer Space and we are still discussing it and its creator.  That is for a reason.  Countless bad movies have come, gone, and remain forgotten.  There is nothing special about a bad movie, unless it is full of personality.  Ed Wood briefly was able to inject himself into a few special films, before he began to drown in his rejection.  With Plan 9 From outer Space and Glen or Glenda, Ed Wood and his art are totally inseparable.  Ed Wood’s films are art.  Attempted descriptions such as “bad”, “good”, ” camp”, “unintentional” are rendered superfluous, and this is how it should be, because Ed Wood forces his audience into a completely subjective experience.  Tim Burton pays Wood the highest compliment by following suit.  Ed Wood Jr. will be remembered long after the successful and bland Ron Howards of this world are forgotten.

Tim Burton will be remembered, as well, for that period—the time of  Burton’s most honest and individual films—in which he still was able to connect with the misfits and had the ability and clout to make Hollywood and audiences connect as well.  Later, he dropped the Ed Wood ball forever.  Tim Burton is no longer a misfit, a renegade spirit, or a visionary.  Today, he would not recognize or bond with Edward D. Wood, Jr.  Ed Wood was Tim Burton’s actual swansong and, although a box office disappointment, it  too will be remembered long after Burton’s “more successful” films  have vanished.  Undoubtedly,  Burton will continue to make a plethora of commercial successes; and even if it seems he shot his final wad with Ed Wood, that is still is far more than many ever get the opportunity to do.

DIRECTED BY: Edgar G. Ulmer

FEATURING: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi

PLOT: A young couple find themselves caught between the machinations of a doctor bent on

revenge and a mad engineer in the latter’s Art Deco mansion, built on the graves of the soldiers he sold out in a World War I battle.

WHY IT’S ON THE BORDERLINE:  The Black Cat has the cadence of a nightmare.  Its shadows haunt the mind long after the DVD clatters out of the tray. Still, as impressive as the movie’s evocation of corruption masked by civility is, it’s highly creepy but only mildly weird; it remains to be seen whether it’s eccentric excellence will overcome it’s somewhat suspect surreality and catapult it onto the List.

COMMENTS:  Today, The Black Cat looks like a cult film.  In the popular memory it’s almost never mentioned alongside the Universal horror classics Frankenstein (1931), Dracula (1932), and The Wolf Man (1941), but “those in the know” sing its praises to the uninitiated: The Black Cat is a forgotten Expressionist classic, too cool for the masses, a film that had to be resurrected from oblivion by the cinematic savants at Cahiers du Cinema who recognized its neglected genius.  Truth be told, however, The Black Cat, which teamed up terror titans Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff for the first time, was a huge box office hit in 1934.  Despite reviews from The New York Times, Variety, and Time that ranged from dismissive to near-scathing, the film was a blockbuster, Universal’s highest-grossing release of the year.  Through modern eyes—with its daring pre-code perversity and its disjointed, dreamlike rhythms—The Black Cat looks like an ahead-of-its-time oddity we assume musty old timers would have misunderstood, but perhaps audiences in 1934 were hipper than we give them credit for.

At the time, the two rising horror stars were the main draw, and they acquit themselves admirably.  Returning to wreak revenge on the man who wronged him after spending 15 years in a WWI prisoner-of-war camp, Lugosi’s Dr. Vitus Werdegast makes an unlikely, suspect hero.  He’s a raw and damaged bundle of obsessions and phobias hidden underneath a suave, aristocratic exterior and filtered through a thick Hungarian accent.  Lugosi has his impressive moments, as when he loses his mind (and, temporarily, his grasp of the English language) in the film’s startling climax, but Karloff outshines him, turning in one of his finest performances as villainous architect Hjalmar Poelzig.  Initially glimpsed as a menacing shadow rising mechanically from his bed, when he steps into the light we see a frowning, grim faced man with a diabolically angular haircut, draped in black robes.  Karloff’s every motion is cold and calculated, detached and almost inhuman: he hangs back, animated only by the occasional spasm of evil (as when he reveals his hidden lust for the heroine by thrusting forth his hand and tightly gripping a nude figurine in the foreground while watching her kiss her husband).

Vitus and Poelzig play a cat-and-mouse game, dramatically demonstrated in an oddly conceived chess match for the soul of the heroine.  The backdrop before which they fence—Poelzig’s gleaming Bauhaus mansion, full of odd angles, deep shadows, and hidden rooms, including one with twisted crosses and jutting angular pillars before which he conducts his rites dedicated to Lucifer—lends their jousting an aura of  strangeness.  Karloff’s haircut is almost an Expressionist set of its own.  There’s no literary connection to Edgar Allan Poe’s psychological horror story “The Black Cat,” but the beautiful, flitting imagery and tone of repressed evil evokes Poe’s opiated style, and there is a literal black cat who pops up inexplicably on occasion, almost as an afterthought, to terrify the phobic Lugosi.

The Black Cat is full of arresting images: corpses preserved and encased in glass boxes, Lugosi recoiling before the giant shadow of the black cat, Karloff conducting a Black Mass.  The plot, on the other hand, is fragmented; it lurches forward without clear explanation  (the company hardly reacts when Lugosi launches a conveniently placed throwing knife at the pesky feline; the unexplained swoon of a female Satanist allows Lugosi to turn the tables on Karloff).   At one point Poelzig asks Vitus, “of what use are all these melodramatic gestures?,” a question he could well address to the movie itself.  The answer, of course, is to provide pure atmosphere: an atmosphere of psychic repression and elegant perversity, full of hints of necrophilia, sex slavery, incest, mass murder, and other European decadences.  The combination of powerful images and loose narrative connections gives the film a choppy, nightmarish feel that works even better in the memory than it does while you are watching it, and accounts for the weird feeling The Black Cat generates in susceptible viewers.

Director Edgar G. Ulmer apprenticed under F.W. Murnau and worked as an uncredited set designer for Fritz Lang on Metropolis, among other projects.  Set to be a big name helmer after the success of The Black Cat, rumor has it that Ulmer indulged in an affair with the wife of a powerful Universal producer and was exiled to the poverty row studio PRC.  There, he turned out workmanlike B-movies with titles like Girls in Chains and Isle of Forgotten Sins before creating another minor classic, the grimy and effective low-budget noir Detour (1945).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…nutty, nightmarish melange… a crepehanger’s ball.”–Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (retrospective)

For another opinion and further background on the film, see Alfred Eaker’s Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat.

Ulmer’s “complete freedom” came to a screeching halt when universal execs saw the filmed footage and script. Lugosi’s hero rapes the heroine, the heroine occasionally turns into a black cat, and Karloff’s Poelzig is skinned alive and last seen crawling on the floor with his skin hanging from his body as Lugosi’s mad hero laughs hysterically. All of these scenes were cut from the film and, par the course at that time, were destroyed. There are conflicting accounts as to whether the scenes were shot and then burned, or merely scripted and axed.

Regardless, what remains of The Black Cat is a flawed, baroque masterpiece, intoxicating to watch and simultaneously frustrating, especially in light of Ulmer’s original intent. Lugosi’s Hungarian psychiatrist Vitus is traveling by train, and he is on a journey of revenge and retaliation. Vitus meets two newlyweds—American novelist Peter Alison and his wife Joan (played by David Manners and Jaqueline Wells)—who are as bland a 30s couple as one is likely to find. Lugosi sees something in the young woman Joan and touches her hair as she sleeps. The Hays Code be damned, it’s an erotic, sinister, yearning close-up moment, and Lugosi will never look as beautiful again. Vitus is heading towards Fort Marmorus, the scene of a great World War I battle, where he was captured and betrayed by his commander, Poelzig. Amazingly, Vitus has survived 15 years in a Serbian concentration camp, and is now intent on exacting revenge on Poelzig for this and for the additional betrayal of stealing Vitus’ wife and child while he was in prison.

After departing the train, the newlyweds accompany Vitus by car, along with his creepy servant Thamal (played by Harry Cording of many a Sherlock Holmes movie). But, lo and behold, the car crashes in the rain (a badly executed and an unnecessary set-up) and the four are forced to find refuge in an old dark house. Of course, that house is none other than the home of Herr Poelzig, and what a house. Hardly the Gothic ruins of a Carfax Abbey, Poelzig’s abode of the damned home looks like an art deco charnel house, designed by the Constructivists so that guests such as Franz Kafka and Edgar Munch might feel perfectly at home. When the group arrives, drenched at the front door, they are not greeted by Riff-Raff, but instead find themselves face to face with majordomo Egon Brecher (a horror film regular).

Frank-n-Furter does not appear either, but his spirit is there when the majordomo lets his master know, via a beautifully cracking and popping old intercom, that Dr. Werdegast and guests have arrived. Karloff’s Poelzig sits straight up, silhouetted in a canopy bed, like an erect penis, which was certainly intentional and understandable as he was lying next to the sleeping form of the beautiful Lucille Lund (as, you guessed it, Karen Werdegast Poelzig, Karloff’s wife & Lugosi’s daughter).

Karloff’s melodramatic appearance to the group is perfect. His Poelzig looks like he might have been designed by Oskar Schlemmer, with his satanic mane, broad shoulders, and black silk satanic pjs. Ulmer tailored Poelzig after the infamous Satan worshiper Aleister Crowley. When Poelzig meets his guests he arches an eyebrow, extends a gaunt, slithering, Grinch-like hand, smiles, and lisps precise, phony warmth—as he secretly intends for Joan to be his next sacrificial bride to almighty Lucifer. Karloff knows how to use his body to full advantage in The Black Cat. His hand grasps a statue of nude woman as he watches the Alisons kiss. He glides his finger seductively over a chess piece. Vitus knows how to read Poelzig’s body language. Vitus is well aware of his rival’s intent and plans to stop his diabolical scheme, while seemingly admiring Poelzig from afar.

After a bit of cat and mouse foreplay, Lugosi, with a deadly earnest delivery, utters a priceless line in response to Peter’s proclamation that there is a lot of superstitious baloney afoot: “Superstitious, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not.” A little later, Poelzig takes Vitus to the cellar. A black cat appears and Vitus freaks out, crashing through an expressionistic paper sliding door. In the finished film, Vitus’ paranoia of cats is embarrassingly ridiculous. In the original script, that paranoia was coupled with erotic fixation for the black cat. It may not be from Poe, but Edgar would have appreciated the bestiality references. As Poelzig and Vitus ascend up the stairs, it is to a macabre mix of Poelzig’s narration juxtaposed against the Allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (played here in the traditionally slow grand-guignol tempo, rather than as the rhythmic allegretto it was originally intended to be). The Black Cat is filled to the brim with art music. Brahms, Liszt, and Schubert accompany Ludwig on this film journey, and Ulmer probably knew how to juxtapose music better than any director until Kubrick came along.

A chess match (which pre-dates Bergman) between Poelzig and Vitus vying for the fate of Joan begins beautifully but is interrupted by awkward comedy relief from a pair of accident investigating constables. After the constables (thankfully) leave, Peter borrows the phone, only to find it is dead. “Did you hear that Vitus? The phone is dead! Even the phone is dead!,” rolls Poelzig through a delightfully, self-congratulating, menacing grin. We empathize. Oddly, the chess match resumes and goes nowhere, ending with Poelzig’s easy victory almost as quickly as it began. The chess match does reveal the obsessions of very similar characters. Poelzig is well aware that Vitus plans revenge, but he is also aware that Vitus is, potentially, equally perverse: “You better attend the ceremony tonight Vitus. It will interest you.”

Poelzig waxes nostalgic with an occasional trip to the cellar downstairs (complete with trapezoid walls) to visit his murdered, ethereal brides, embalmed in glass coffins. The dead wives include Poelzig’s late wife (also played by Lucille Lund). In a moment of Oedipal envy, we find Poelzig married the mother, killed her, then married the daughter. Tim Burton‘s freakery rings trite and trendy in comparison (the Penguin’s “You’re just jealous because I am a genuine freak and you have to wear a mask!” to fellow freak Batman would apply here, Mr. Burton).

Ulmer’s surreal expressionist Black Cat world is, aptly, a universe which does not and has never existed. In this world, things are only bound to become more perverse. Ulmer does not disappoint. Karen finds out Daddy is still alive. Hubby rapes and kills Karen. Daddy finds his dead baby girl when he attempts to free Joan from being a Satanic sacrifice in a black mass orgy. Vitus finds Poelzig and fights him a beautifully lit struggle of stark, expressionist blacks and whites, shot mostly in close-ups. Vitus’ servant is shot and killed by Poelzig’s servant, but Thamal will not die until he helps his master defeat Poelzig and tie him to the embalming rack. Thamal drops dead. Vitus seems not to care at all. So much for loyalty. Vitus sadistically rips open Poelzig’s shirt and begins to skin him alive (in silhouette): “Did you ever seen an animal skinned, Hjalmer? That’s what I am going to do to you now! Vear the skin from your body, sssslooooowlyyyy, bit by bit.” That dialogue rolls of Bela’s tongue beautifully, insanely. This nightmare evil all ends with a martyred Vitus, mistakenly shot by Peter for, understandably, believing Vitus was having his way with Joan, an explosion which levels the hell house, and a now dead, “rotten” cult. Now, Mr. Alison is free write his new novel, a mystery. Unfortunately, it was Karloff and not Manners that was tortured, Lund raped and killed instead of Wells.

Ulmer learned his trade under F.W. Marnau and Fritz Lang. It shows. With this single film, even marred by studio tampering, Ulmer can be ranked alongside Whale, Browning and Tourneur as visionary directors within a limited genre. None of the remaining Karloff/Lugosi collaborations hold up as well. Both The Raven (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939) had impressive moments, but both were flawed by pedestrian direction. Only The Body Snatcher (1945) could be counted as a worthy follow-up, but Lugosi, quite on the down slide by then, was reduced to little more than a cameo appearance, albeit a highly effective one.

Ulmer certainly brought his visual flair to many of his projects, but it was rarely enough to save them. Bluebeard (1944), Detour (1945) and Strange Illusion (1946) are rightly considered cult classics, while Strange Woman (1946) has some admirers. For the most part, however, Ulmer got his studio-sponsored toy train set in the career-defining Black Cat. By all accounts, Ulmer had a hell of a lot of fun playing with his train set, and reflected on it proudly, even if it did do him in. But, in the words of Vitus Werdegast, “It’s been a good game.”

The 1941 film has several strikes against it, the first and foremost of which is writer Curt Siodmak, who, frankly, was a hack.  The second is director George Waggner, who wasn’t really a hack but merely a competent, unimaginative commission director with no personal vision.  Finally, there is “star” Lon  Chaney, Jr.  The younger Chaney gets picked on a lot these days and always has.  He deserves it.  He was an idiotic, drunken bully who had an obsessive hang-up about outdoing his father.  Since Lon Sr. probably ranks with Chaplin in the silent acting department, Lon Jr., the pale, watered-down copy, did not have chance.  It’s amazing that Jr. even thought he would be able to compete.  That said, Lon Jr. did have a few good character roles in his career.  Damn few out of literally hundreds of films.  He was quite good as the arthritic sheriff in Fred Zinnemann’s  High Noon, as Big Sam in Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones, as Spurge in Raoul Walsh’s Lion is in the Streets and Bruno in Jack Hill’s cult classic Spider Baby.  Like Bela Lugosi, he was only good when he was actually being “directed.”  Unlike Lugosi, however, Jr.’s signature horror role is not one of his best.  That honor goes to his immortal Lenny in Lewis Milestone’s Of Mice and Men.

Even considering his success with Lenny, Larry Talbot is out of Lon’s range.  Never once does Talbot’s amorous nature register.  Evelyn Anker’s repeated flirtations with the hulking, rubbery Chaney only evoke numbing disbelief.  If Jr. the romantic lead is ludicrous (that side seen at its mustached worst in the execrable Inner Sanctum series), then seeing Lon’s Talbot crying on the bed inspires cringe-inducing embarrassment.  Chaney’s performance as Talbot was marginally better in the mediocre assembly line follow-up Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but the character became increasingly tiresome and repetitive.  Jack Pierce’s make-up for the beast cannot compare to the work he had done in Frankenstein(1931) and The Mummy (1932), either.

Despite all the negatives, there is enjoyment to be had in the 1941 Wolf Man, mainly in overall atmosphere and some of the character performances.  The inimitable Maria Ouspenskia steals every scene she is in and makes the film memorable.  Claude Rains, Warren William and Ralph Bellamy give the film far more class than it deserves.  Finally, there is Bela Lugosi, very good as the doomed, aptly named gypsy, Bela.  Lugosi often excelled in character parts such as this, his performance as Roxor in the otherwise awful Chandu The Magician, as Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (his best role) and Joseph in The Body Snatcher.  These roles are far more memorable than the bulk of his “starring” roles.  Patrick Knowles, however, is stiff as a board, and Ankers’ only descent asset is her lungs.

Even by 1941 standards, The Wolf Man is chock full of logic gaps, narrative loop holes,  and stock cliches. The Wolf Man may not have much in the way of individual personality in the way the best 30′s films had when the witty James Whale, the poetically obsessive Tod Browning, or the delightfully black Edgar G. Ulmer were at the helm, but it is the last time a Universal Horror Film does not seem a “too rushed” assembly line production.  It was all downhill from here; hence the necessity for Val Lewton in the 40′s.  However, that “rushed” quality to come is certainly seen creeping in here.  The forest sets seem artificially planted, the fog machine was in overdrive, and there is a cheesy hallucinatory sequence, complete with the scream queen doing a still-photographed, horror stricken pose.

The 2010 remake does have atmosphere aplenty and, overall, it is an improvement over the original, but not by much.  The biggest surprise is the lackluster performances from the two leads.  Most people count Anthony Hopkins as one of the leading actors from the past twenty years, but he’s clearly just collecting a check here, and it’s certainly not the first time.  It is unfortunate that Hopkins’ attitude of slumming shows, because he could have given as wonderfully nuanced performance as Claude Rains.  More surprising is Benicio Del Toro’s performance.  He  invests little into the role.  He sulks, he broods, he carries angst, but it is pure surface, echoing Chaney’s performance while adding little to it.  He creates no real sympathy, which, at least, Chaney did manage to inspire.

Director Joe Johnston wisely sets the 2010 Wolfman remake as a period piece near the end of the nineteenth century.  This allows for some marvelous Gothic atmosphere and production sets, seeming more Hammer than Universal, which is not a bad thing.  Composer Danny Elfman actually seems to be composing again here, which is an effective, pleasant surprise.  Certainly much time, care, and money went into the remake, so it escapes the “B” quality of the original in production values.  The CGI effects, however, are a mixed bag.  The Wolfman himself seems too sprightly and, despite some terrifying,  gory mayhem, never seems real enough to evoke a threat that we can readily identify with.  For the most part the transformation scenes are well done without being innovative (An American Werewolf in London and The Howling already went there).  The one exception is the  superb transformation in the asylum.

Emily Blunt is a vast improvement over Ankers as the love interest, but the underrated Geraldine Chaplin is given nothing to do with her thankless role, which is a pity.  Despite a few narrative deviations from the original, this remake winds up being more homage than a truly imaginative re-thinking, which adds up to an “A” funded “Back to Gothic” horror with “B” results.  It’s a good”B,” but it could have been the quintessential film for the genre character.  It’s better than the bulk of the rot that has been churned out over the last 20 years in horror film, but it falls short of being the classic it could have been, a bit like its 1941 namesake.

Ed Wood is certainly the auteur saint of naive surrealism. Everything he touched had his indelible stamp of personality all over it. More accurately, everything he touched oozed with Woodianisms.

However, his zany enthusiasm was short-lived. Night of the Ghouls is a depressing example of a very fatigued Ed Wood. Even before that, both Jail Bait and Bride of the Monster seem sub-standard Ed Wood, even if they do bear his mark and are manna for his enthusiasts.

If  Ed was sadly showing early hints of what was to inevitably come in those two films, then he was at his inspired, bouncing off the wall zenith in both Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

It was mix-master forever up his ass, quite dead film critic Michael Medved who unintentionally rose Ed and his magnum opus, Plan 9 From  Outer Space from the shallow grave of obscurity into cult nirvana when he awarded Ed and his film as the worst film and director of all time.

Despite Medved’s smarmy condescension, he should be forever thanked for posthumously catapulting Ed into the spotlight.  Medved’s sole purpose for living was to play John the Baptist announcing Ed’s coming. All the crimes and misdemeanors of criticism that came after are (reluctantly) excused in light of this important moment in history (alas, Leonard Maltin has had no such redeeming moment for his crimes).

Still, Medved was slightly off. It’s Glen or Glenda, Ed’s directorial debut,that deserves the accolades, a mountain of raining ticker tape to propel this little trannie misfit into well deserved fame and fortune. There is much appreciated surreal irony in Medved’s accidental canonization of Saint Ed. It seems equally apt that Tim Burton’s very good, intentional homage, Ed Wood, lost every invested dime. If Burton’s film had been a box office hit, the cult of Ed Wood would have gone the way of all orthodox religions. Thank Ed, this was not to be.

For hardcore surrealists, it’s those unintentionally surreal gold nuggets that are the most valued, and Ed’s  almost indescribable Glen or Glenda is the ark of the covenant for naive surrealism.  There are  several other choice gems: Ed’s own Plan 9 From Outer Space, Phil Tucker’s Robot Monster, the Elvis Presley movies Live a Little, Love a Little ( with the groan-inducing Edge of Reality surreal dream sequence) and Easy Come, Easy Go (frogman Elvis doing yoga-is-as-yoga-does with Elsa Lanchester) , Santa Clause Conquers the Martians, and a legion of not so deserving camp classics, including Manos: Hands of Fate, which is indeed awful, but incredibly dull and does not deserve to be placed in the same category.

There is little point in attempting to describe Ed’s autobiographical opus, Bela Lugosi’s hammy, inexplicable presence, or the pretentious narrative pleas for acceptance.

Glen or Glenda is the  perfect, surreal toast to the Halloween season.