Long before there wasTommy Wiseau, the king ofso-bad-it’s-good filmmakingwasEdward D. Wood Jr., aka Ed Wood. Between the 1950s and ’70s, he made a string of low-budget B-movies, particularly in the sci-fi, crime, and horror genres. Although his projects were all critical and commercial disasters, Wood’s work was rediscovered in the 1980s, with several of them becoming cult movies. However, they became famous precisely because they were considered so awful. His status as “The Worst Director of All Time” grew to the point thatTim Burtondirected a fantastic biopic about him starringJohnny Deppin 1994. People continue to enjoy his movies for their awfulness today.
Quentin Tarantinoonce saidthat if you love movies enough you can make a good one. Ed Wood proves this isn’t the case. His affection for the medium is clear to see, but he was never able to translate this into quality cinema. His movies always feature outlandish plots, wooden acting, laughable dialogue, glaring technical errors, and cheap-looking effects. Nevertheless, they have a kind of zany charm, and watching them can be a ton of fun. These are the best of Wood’s bad movies, ranked.
10’Necromania'
Released: 1971
Wood’s filmography includes countless unfinished projects, movies that survive only in fragments, and lost films.Necromania(akaA Tale of Weird Love) was thought to be one of the latter until a copy surfaced in 1992. It’s a bizarre pornographic film with horror elements. The plot centers on a young couple, Danny (Ric Lutze) and Shirley (Rene Bond) who are having trouble in the bedroom. They do what anyone would do in such circumstances: they seek out the assistance of a necromancer.
Danny and Shirley head to a spooky mansion to meet with the famed practitioner of the dark arts, Madame Heles. Instead, they find her strange assistant, Tanya (Marie Arnold), who shows them to their room and introduces them to the bizarre erotic rituals that take place in the house. There is a menacing undercurrent to the place, and Tanya’s motives are far from pure. A bizarre curio,Necromaniais neither steamy nor frightening, but that’s exactly what some viewers like about it.
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9’Crossroads of Laredo'
Released: 1995
Crossroads of Laredo(originally titledStreetsof Laredo) was Wood’s first film project, originally filmed in 1949 but left incomplete andthought lost for years. However, a team of filmmakers eventually found the original footage and “completed” the movie themselves, editing it into some semblance of a watchable form. It’s a silent movie, so they also added a score. The result is only 23 minutes long but, for Wood stans, it’s an intriguing glimpse into his first attempt at movie-making.
The movie is a Western about a murderous gunslinger named Tex (Don Nagel). He robs and kills people for money, seemingly not feeling anything for anyone else. He marries Barbara (Ruth McCabe) but neglects both her and their children. Lem (Duke Moore), another man with feelings for Barbara, reveals Tex’s infidelities and offers to kill him for her. This leads to a showdown on the dusty streets of Laredo, where there can only be one survivor.
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Released: 1953
This Western was intended to be a TV pilot, but the show was never picked up. It starsTom Keene, an actor who had some success in Western B-movies in the 1930s and ’40s but whose career had taken a bit of a dip. He plays the “Tucson Kid”, an insurance investigator who travels from town to town, looking into suspicious insurance claims. He arrives in the town of Crossroads, where local businessman Bart Miller (Lyle Talbot) has put in a claim for his saloon that has burned down.
It is soon revealed that Miller is a slimy character who has orchestrated a number of crimes, including murder. He has a gang of cronies who terrorize the townspeople. Seeking to get rid of the Tucson Kid, Miller frames him for a recent murder, inciting an angry mob to try to lynch him. The Kid must get to the truth in order to clear his name and make it out of Crossroads alive. It makes sense (kind of) but it’s all rather boring, lacking the trademark Ed Wood silliness.
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7’The Sinister Urge'
Released: 1960
“Pornography, a nasty word for a dirty business.“The Sinister Urgeis essentially Wood’s riff onPsycho, which had come out a few months earlier. It’s a crime film set in the world of porn filmmaking. After a young woman is found dead in her underwear, police officers Matt Carson (Kenne Duncan) and Sergeant Randy Stone (James “Duke” Moore) suspect that porn producers may have killed her.
The prime suspect seems to be a psychopathic figure named Dirk (Dino Fantini), who appears to enjoy wielding his trusty knife. From there the narrative lurches between a murder mystery, smut, and condemnation of smut, before finally returning to the murder mystery. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of various films stitched together. The whole thing feels ridiculous, but it’s unclear to what extent Wood is in on the joke. After all, there is someplayful self-awareness here, like when one filmmaker character laments, “At one time I made good movies”.
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6’Take It Out In Trade'
Released: 1970
Take It Out In Tradeis Wood’s take on a pornographic comedy. It revolves around a couple who hire a private detective (Michael Donovan O’Donnell) to track down their missing daughter (Donna Stanley). He finds her at a brothel, where the viewer is introduced to the establishment’s various eccentric characters and their sexual escapades. The most notable of them is the aptly named Sleazy Maisie Rumpledinck (Nona Carver). Wood himself has a supporting role as a transvestite named Alecia.
The film is quite muddled and contradictory. For example, there are some scenes that are ahead of their time, like those boldly featuring drag queens and kings. Then you get others that are nothing but retrograde, run-of-the-mill sexploitation. This is emphasized by the unintentionally funny narration. In other words, the film is quintessential Ed Wood.Take It Out in Tradewas unavailable for decades, but a print was finally scanned in 2017 and it even received a Blu-ray release the following year.
5’Night of the Ghouls'
Released: 1984
As with many of Wood’s films,Night of the Ghoulsonly saw release decades after it was made. This time, it was shot in 1958 but only released in 1984 after an Ed Wood fan got hold of it. It’s a horror that unfolds in the same cinematic universe as Wood’s other notable works,Bride of the MonsterandPlan 9 from Outer Space. Duke Moore leads the cast as Lt. Dan Bradford, a cop looking into a series of killings that are related to the supernatural.
His investigation leads him to the house of Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan), who claims to be able to commune with the dead. Bradford believes that he is a fake but, as he spends the evening in the man’s gothic abode, he witnesses strange events that defy belief. Allthe classic horror tropesshow up here: ghosts, seances, tragic backstories, skeletons, and, of course, the reanimated dead. Overall, it may be Wood’s most “normal” and competently made movie, although, for this reason, it is not quite as iconic as his wackier stinkers.
4’Jail Bait'
Released: 1954
Jail Baitis a tragic noir film about Don Gregor (Clancy Malone), the ne’er-do-well son of famous plastic surgeon Dr. Boris Gregor (Herbert Rawlinson). Don associates with gangsters and commits crimes, including robbery, and when we meet him he has just been arrested for unlawful possession of a handgun. He and his criminal pal Vic Brady (Timothy Farrell) hold up a theater at gunpoint, seeking to raid the safe, but they hit a snag: a witness gets away, and she knows what they look like.
Don is wracked by guilt and confesses the crime to his father, who urges him to turn himself in. By contrast, Brady comes up with a plan to resolve this messy situation. He will get plastic surgery to change his appearance so that he is unrecognizable. To this end, he takes Don hostage, telling Boris he will only let him go if the doctor performs the surgery on his face. It all builds up to a suitably cheesy final reveal.
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3’Glen or Glenda'
“YOU ARE SOCIETY — JUDGE YE NOT…”Glen or Glendatells the story of Glen/Glenda (Wood), a transvestite who keeps his cross-dressing a secret, even from his fiancé Barbara (Dolores Fuller). Glen fears social judgment and rejection and grapples with self-acceptance. He undertakes a journey of self-discovery, attempting to both understand himself and be more honest. The whole affair is narrated by horror legendBela Lugosi, who was then in a career slump.
Glen or Glendais the emblematic Ed Wood movie, largely because itis so autobiographical. Wood himself was a cross-dresser and seems to have battled for a long time with accepting his identity. It’s understandable, given the social attitudes of the era. For this reason, some reviewers argue that the film is surprisingly touching, at least in its themes if not its execution. After all, it’s certainly sloppily made, with hammy acting, obvious mistakes (like a shot where Wood can clearly be seen mouthing “Cut!"), and a stream of nonsensical stock footage.
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2’Bride of the Monster'
Released: 1955
Bride of the Monster, an over-the-top sci-fi horror, begins with 12 people having gone missing from a small town. Little do the police know, but they have been either killed or captured by the mad scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff (Bela Lugosi) and his mute, hulking assistant Lobo (Tor Johnson). Reporter Janet Lawton (Loretta King) starts digging into the disappearances, but soon she too is captured, hypnotized, and held prisoner in Vornoff’s lair.
Vornoff intends to use Janet for his scheme to create atomic-powered superhumans. However, his plans are disrupted when visiting professor Strowski (George Becwar), along with police officers Robbins (Harvey B. Dunn) and Craig (Tony McCoy) arrive at the house. Cue a series of madcap antics and exploitation set pieces, including a giant octopus. According to legend, Wood actually stole a mechanical octopus that had been used in another movie, but forgot to steal the motor. This might explain why the octopus attacks here look so goofy.
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1’Plan 9 from Outer Space'
Released: 1957
“Can your heart stand the shocking facts about graverobbers from outer space?“Plan 9 from Outer Spacerepresents the pinnacle of Wood’s anti-genius. It’s intended to be a sci-fi thriller, but it’s an accidental comedy, due to abysmal writing and flimsy special effects. The plot concerns an alien invasion, in which the extraterrestrials want to stop humanity from acquiring a cosmic doomsday weapon. Specifically, they intend to raise hordes of undead to browbeat mankind into bending to their whims.
Here, Wood gleefully mashes together sci-fi and zombie tropes, because why serve up one clichéd storyline when you could have two? In terms of effects, he gives us flying saucers that look like hubcaps or paper plates (though some have claimed they were actually plastic models from a sci-fi toy set). As if this wasn’t enough, he also beats the viewer over the head with narration that sounds like an angry sermon. The result is an unmitigated disasterpiece and one of the defining so-bad-it’s-good movies. Not for nothing,Plan 9 from Outer Spacewent on to become a cult classic.
