ED WOOD (1994)

Director: Tim Burton

Writers: Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski, based on Rudolph Grey’s book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Producers: Denise Di Novi, Tim Burton

Cast: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Bill Murray, George “The Animal” Steele, Lisa Marie, Mike Starr, Max Casella, Brent Hinckley, Juliet Landau, Ned Bellamy, Stanley DeSantis, Rance Howard, Korla Pandit, Vincent D’Onofrio, Maurice LaMarche (uncredited as voice of Orson Welles), Norman Alden, Clive Rosengren, G.D. Spradlin, Gregory Walcott, Conrad Brooks

In 1950s Hollywood, aspiring filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Johnny Depp), chances to meet faded film star Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau). The two soon become friends. The eager-to-work Lugosi agrees to star in Wood’s very personal film project, and that helps to convince exploitation film producer George Weiss (Mike Starr) to finance Wood’s semi-autobiographical transvestite story Glen or Glenda (1953). Before long, Ed Wood has acquired a group of eccentric characters to work on his strange films.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The ’80s excess of mainstream Hollywood films striving for blockbuster status with massive budgets and over-the-top action and effects resulted in a numbing wave of glossy mediocrity. The true film fan was ready for something original and sincere. Apparently, a number of young filmmakers were as well. There were some very interesting and unique films boosting the indie-film trend in the ’90s. Perhaps the time was right for a movie about a notorious cult film director. Although a guy who worked for Disney and had already made some very successful films was hardly a struggling indie-auteur, Tim Burton strove for his own style and directed an absolutely unique film with Ed Wood. This strange, funny, and heartfelt biopic is one of the finest films of the ’90s. 

Ed Wood is about the naïve optimism required to pursue one’s dreams. Even with few resources and a lack of objectivity to realize one’s own shortcomings, a person through sheer perseverance can create something that is a unique and sincere form of expression. That expression’s faults and merits are for others to judge.

For the Ed Wood fan or detractor, it is fun to see the obsessive attention to detail in the reenactments of various scenes from Ed Wood’s films and the behind-the-scenes shenanigans during those productions. The truth of some of these incidents is suspect. As many of those actually involved in Wood’s films have stated, the more coarse behavior of some of the people in Wood’s group as depicted in this film was exaggerated or invented for dramatic and comedic purposes. No one has ever confirmed that Bela Lugosi used the profanity that he is shown to resort to in Ed Wood. Lugosi’s hatred of his horror film rival Boris Karloff is also created to motivate some of his amusing outbursts in the film. Ed Wood’s supportive, one-time girlfriend Dolores Fuller has refuted her shrewish portrayal by Sarah Jessica Parker. These are some of the contrivances used to create both an absurd and tragic edge to the story that pays homage to the lasting, quirky mystique of the Ed Wood career. Tim Burton is not making a documentary but a tragicomedy in the never-never land of 1950s Hollywood.

Johnny Depp captures the cockeyed idealism and enthusiasm of this story’s misfit hero perfectly. His Ed Wood is both determined and inept. He is so driven or insecure that he can’t take the time to realize his production’s shortcomings and figure out how to salvage them. He just forges blindly ahead with faith that somehow things will turn out great.

The touching, tragic, and funny character of Bela Lugosi is brilliantly portrayed by Martin Landau. Again, many of the particulars about some of Lugosi’s antics are fabricated for this film, but the sentiment behind them and the concerns his character has seem genuine.

The film is loaded with other great performers portraying the members in Ed Wood’s filmmaking fringe. Sarah Jessica Parker as Ed’s increasingly frustrated girlfriend Dolores Fuller, professional wrestler George “The Animal” Steele as professional wrestler Tor “Super Swedish Angel” Johnson, Bill Murray as drag queen John “Bunny” Breckinridge, Jeffrey Jones as television psychic Criswell, Lisa Marie as TV horror film hostess Maila “Vampira” Nurmi, and Patricia Arquette as Ed’s tolerant new girlfriend Kathy O’Hara are just some of the characters that make the world of Ed Wood so fascinating.

Tim Burton’s penchant for viewing stories through a prism of playfully weird visuals is indulged as soon as the film begins. His opening scene immediately breaks the fourth wall in much the same way as two of Ed Wood’s films did. Jeffrey Jones’ Criswell character addresses the audience with a variation on the introductory monologues Criswell gave in Wood’s films Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and Night of the Ghouls (1959). This is performed in a setting like the old Willows house of Wood’s Bride of the Monster (1955). After this Criswell intro, we are treated to the film’s credits sequence exhibiting iconic images from Wood’s films as they would have been portrayed if the hapless director had access to a large budget and ’90s film technology. This sequence immediately establishes a sense of reverence for the weird visions in Ed Wood’s film canon.

Of special note is the terrific score by Howard Shore. His music perfectly compliments the era of the ’50s and captures the kitsch and sentiment of Ed Wood’s films.

The fate of Tim Burton’s finest film is as frustrating and surprising as that of its cult filmmaker hero. The Ed Wood film was a box office failure, yet it won two Oscars (Martin Landau for Best Supporting Actor and Rick Baker for Best Makeup) and has gone on to become a cult film itself. That is both ironic and fitting for a film based on the life of “the world’s worst director.”