FILM REVIEWS: Ed Wood

By Kevin Lewis

From Films In Review, vol 46 n 1-2, January/February 1995

A few miles away from where Norma Desmond was writing her comeback movie with Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard, Edward D. Wood, Jr. was using Bela Lugosi to create his "place in the Hollywood sun." Though Billy Wilder created the ultimate movie about broken Hollywood dreams in that fictional drama, director Tim Burton and screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski achieve a worthy companion piece in the real (or should we say reel) life drama Ed Wood.

Like that landmark movie, Ed Wood (a Touchstone release) shows what happens to an icon when nobody wants it anymore, and what an outsider will do to achieve his or her own immortality. Edward D. Wood, Jr. was a striving, artistically ambitious but untalented film and stage director in Los Angeles in the early 1950's. Wood's artistic vision consisted of the rag ends of American post-World War II pop culture. He was a devotee of scifi comic books and horror movies, and was obsessed with women's clothing, especially angora sweaters. In these interests, he almost represents a sexual and cultural pioneer for the '90s, but back in the conformist '50s he was definitely regarded as a fringe lunatic. His linkup with Bela Lugosi, the legendary screen Dracula but by then discarded Hollywood figure, sealed his ticket to the bad cinema pantheon. The drug addict Lugosi, unable to be hired by the major studios, was forced to parade himself in Wood's transvestite and horror nightmares.

Burton, Alexander and Karaszewski, who based their film on Nightmare Of Ecstasy: The Life And Art Of Edward D. Wood, Jr. by Rudolph Grey, have brilliantly re-created a significant but largely undiscussed period in American life. The 1950's are remembered as the time of conformity, but it was also the era when the counterculture movement was emerging (a la Kerouac, Ginsberg, Pollack, Marcuse) and when sexual neurosis was overtaking American society even in the suburbs. The civil and sexual rights movements were in the grassroots stages at this time. Ed Wood is an artistic triumph because it replicates the tone, look and emotions of the cultural players of that time without creating a false hindsight sensibility. The freakish actors in Wood's films all represent forces which are now part of our collective psyche: Vampira, Criswell, Bunny Brecklnridge, Dolores Fuller, and of course Lugosi. The superb black-and-white high contrast cinematography of Stefan Czapasky achieves the look of the documentary and avant garde films of the era.

As Wood, Johnny Depp is magnificent in a role which could be a caricature. He is sly, endearing and an ingenious Horatio Alger folk figure as the director scratching his way along the Hollywood bottom. Wood had no shame in his life and business dealings, and Depp makes Wood a likeable and even sexually fascinating character.

Martin Landau is unforgettable as the down-on-his luck middle European Lugosi and should receive the additional acclaim due this distinguished actor. He creates sympathy for an outcast character in brilliant pantomime scenes with his rich old theatrical voice.

Sarah Jessica Parker as actress Dolores Fuller, the confused girlfriend of Wood, Jeffrey Jones as the TV seer Criswell, Lisa Marie as the pioneer TV horror queen Vampira, Bill Murray as the wannabe woman Bunny Breckinridge and Rosanna Arquette as the gentle, accepting love of Wood's life give notable performances.

Ed Wood is one of the best conceived, most entertaining movies in many a year and should create a cult as potent as Wood's Freudian horrors. Though Wood, a true artistic primitive, was voted the Worst Director of All Time, Tim Burton may become one of our finest.