Ed Wood (1994)

"Nobody cares! These movies are terrible!"

That Tim Burton would make a biopic of Ed Wood is delicious. That it should be so bloody good is even more so. Monochrome, stylised and deeply evocative of both 1950s Hollywood and the schlock genres, this is a well-structured, good-natured and fun look at one of Hollywood’s more eccentric “talents” with an extraordinary performance of Johnny Depp at the centre of it all.

The opening titles, with the parade of ‘50s genre tropes and the glorious theremins, are wonderful, and set the mood perfectly. Then we move to setting up who Ed is, his transvestism, and the story of Glen or Glenda, complete with lots of 1950s trans people including the aristocratic but delightfully camp “Bunny” Breckinridge, played to perfection by Bill Murray. We then follow Ed’s, er, career right through to Plan 9 from Outer Space and see him happily married to a fellow geek- and then we stop, before we get any hint of his decline, alcoholism and early death.

Instead we see the tragedy of the great Bela Lugosi’s final years, forgotten by Hollywood to the point of appearing in Ed’s films, alone, homesick for a Hungary to which he can never return, behind an Iron Curtain. Martin Landau plays him with skill and much pathos, but also not without humour (“Karloff does not deserve to smell my shit!”).

We also see Juliet Landau (nepotism; fun for all the family), bizarrely using her native accent, and a superb cameo by Vincent D’Onofrio as the great Orson Welles. But this film belongs to Depp, and to Burton, who has conjured up perhaps his finest cinematic world.