Subject: REVIEW: ED WOOD

From: [email-masked] (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 13:12:55 GMT

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				  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
					[email-masked]