The four henchmen of the apocalypse (2/4/96)
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Bride Of The Monster. [Edward D. Wood Jr., 1955.]
In a gloomy dismal swamp in the deep dark woods, in a lonely Gothic mansion over which hovers a perpetual thunderstorm [“Maybe it’s all those atom bomb tests,” somebody suggests helpfully], lives mad scientist Bela Lugosi with his boon companions the mute giant Tor Johnson and a giant octopus. Here he experiments on unwary visitors in his secret laboratory — freezing them in the headlights with his mesmeric influence, strapping them to an operating table, sticking electrodes into their heads, and, by dint of much hurling of switches and twirling of giant radio knobs, trying to turn them into atomic supermen. Unfortunately, this usually results in their being turned into atomic burnt toast instead, but faint heart ne’er won fair maiden Cosmic Truth, let alone world mastery, and the intrepid Lugosi undaunted soldiers on; until, alas, nosy girl reporter Loretta King comes sniffing around, gets her bony ass captured and tossed in the dungeon, and prompts a charge to the rescue by dumbass cop boyfriend Tony McCoy — which, despite his getting bounced around the walls by the gigantic Johnson, necessarily precipitates a chain of events which can only end in general cataclysm and the tragic demise of Lugosi — devoured, I regret to report, by his multitentacled pet.
Wood’s formidable reputation notwithstanding, this picture doesn’t suck: it is quite as good as any other specimen of Bmovie scifi from the drivein era — better photographed, for example, than the equivalent Cormans; and though most of the writing exhibits that tin ear for dialogue for which Ed was famous, Lugosi does get off at least one great speech [meticulously reproduced by Martin Landau in the Tim Burton biopic] which says just about as much about silence, exile, and cunning as you can expect this side of James Joyce.
A certain mystery lingers nonetheless around the setting of the action, which is variously intimated to lie in the Midwest, the Louisiana bayou, and the jungles of the Amazon; and somebody, really, ought to explain what that refrigerator is doing in Lugosi’s laboratory. — When a mad scientist needs a pickmeup, what does he reach for? chilled vodka? cappucino? carrot juice? the blood of teenaged virgins? Enquiring minds want to know.
____________Babes with big lips (1/5/96)
