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.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

"You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!""

Oh my. I watched in goggle-eyed amazement as Teenagers from Outer Space unfolded before me, but Plan 9 from Outer Space is a completely different order of magnitude in its badness. Teenagers from Outer Space had terrible acting and special effects and was generally rubbish, and the plot may have been awful but, well, it had a plot. And it seemed to manage the task of basic storytelling quite well. This film, though… it's hard to find the words. But I'm going to have to because, well, that's sort of the point of these reviews.

Let's start with Bela Lugosi. As everybody knows, the footage of him was shot several years previously before he rather conveniently dies, and had to be padded out with scenes of Ed Wood's wife's chiropodist, who was much, much taller, pretending to be him, rather obviously covering his face. It's worse than it sounds, though. The footage of Lugosi that we get it just the same few scenes repeated, and obviously not shot with this film in mind. The other two zombies (the Inspector and Vampira) walk and act like zombies, with arms outstretched, while Lugosi walks like, well, Dracula. It just looks awful. Especially as the film is padded out with so many scenes of Lugosi walking around looking vaguely menacing.

And then there's the plot, such as it is. The aliens' plans make no sense whatsoever. They're supposed to be incredibly powerful, and far more advanced than ourselves, but they worry about a handful of zombies being spotted, and one of them almost suffers death by zombie because their ray gun thingy fails to work. Also, they foolishly invite a bunch of Earthlings on to their flying saucer for a bit of a chinwag. Duuuuh! And the whole point of their scheme is to somehow stop humanity from developing to the point where they will be able to harness the power of sunlight to make a bomb which with destroy the universe. Or possibly just the Solar System. The script is rather unclear on this point. The alien plan appears to mainly involve shouting insults at these armed and warlike Earthlings and, er, telling them about this weapon they don't want them to develop. Er, good plan.

Yes, that really is it, although there are a lot of shockingly bad scenes of stupid humans talking stupidly to one another while the narrator spouts vaguely melodramatic exposition at us. The narration goes beyond cheesiness into a whole other dimension, but we expect that. Much less expected are Vampira, a sort of proto-Goth in 1959, and the alien "ruler" (and why do all alien planets in 1950s sci-fi B-movies just call their leaders "the ruler?"), played by John Breckinridge, scion of one of America's most aristocratic families and with a deeply Brahmin accent to prove it. He's as camp as a row of tents and, according to Wikipedia, went around being openly as gay as a window in the early decades of the twentieth century, which must have taken guts; he seems to have been quite a character. And aside from Vampira he's the only person in the film with any charisma whatsoever.

The special effects are not bad, considering, although I had to raise an eyebrow at the line which described one as being shaped "like a cigar". Er, no it isn't. And if it was, it wouldn't be a flying saucer, would it? And the Hollywood locations look quite good. But otherwise, well… this is car crash cinema. You feel dirty, voyeuristic and twisted, but you can't take your eyes off the screen.