Word: monsters
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Wood Jr. used to be just the old kind of bad. Wood's transvestite tale Glen or Glenda (1953) made a stir with "The Strange Case of a 'Man' Who Changed His Sex!" -- though actually Glen only wanted to change his frocks. But Jail Bait (1954), Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956), Night of the Ghouls (1958) and The Sinister Urge (1961) went right into the commode. "Ed was a loser in my book," says the B-movie mogul Samuel Z. Arkoff. "Fundamentally, there were just too many things deficient...
...work -- to Bela Lugosi's mad monologues in Glen or Glenda ("Bevare of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep!" he intones between stock shots of atom-bomb blasts and buffalo herds. "He eats little boys! Puppy-dog tails! Big fat snails!"); to Bride of the Monster's rubber octopus with a broken tentacle, which Wood stole from Republic Studios; to Lugosi's double in Plan 9, who is a head taller than the star (who died during the filming) and must cover his face with a cape; to the thespian exertions of 400-lb. ex-wrestler...
Wood was, no question, a stupefyingly inept director. But he also had to make his movies in no time (three, maybe six, days) on weeny budgets (Jail Bait cost $22,000). He got Plan 9 financed by some Southern Baptists; he gave leading roles in Bride of the Monster to anyone who would fund the movie. "Eddie paid me off in cash," says actor Lyle Talbot, who was in Plan 9, "and sometimes it was a lot of singles...
...Every summer," says Variety's Fleming, "and every spring and winter, there's a picture that comes out of nowhere and is a monster. Then, after the fact, all the people who were concentrating on sequels and star vehicles say, 'Oh, sure, I knew it was going to be big.' " This summer again, the fortune-tellers are using a rearview mirror instead of a crystal ball. | Everyone can be comforted in his ignorance by screenwriter William Goldman's first rule of Hollywood: Nobody knows anything...
This reporter, mistaken for a member of theHarvard Lampoon, was initially refused entranceinto the area. Actual Lampoon members did not makea stir, although one student did sneak into theaudience wearing a green monster mask...