'I didn't set you up in all this luxury just to have you walk out on me.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World
‘I hope I’m happy to know you’
What sentence do you least want to hear from your plastic surgeon?
‘Plastic surgery at times seems to me to be very, very complicated’
This is Jail bait, and before you get excited...
‘You know that gun is jail bait’
no young girls here. Try our review of Satan’s cheerleaders
'Just the way he looks at me, I feel sop dirty.'
This is the story of a doctor’s son gone off the rails
‘How can a great doctor have such a jerk for a son?’
Who steals his father’s gun
Is he feeling for the gun? If you can’t see it, it’s probably not there.
‘Maybe you’re right’
The young man kills a security guard at a theatre
although he may just be trying to put this show out of business.
'I'm making a picture called the lion tamer.'
'The lion tamer? There is one kind of lion I don't mess with.'
'What kind then?'
'A dandylion'
He is then killed by his partner.
‘I don’t like dead men cluttering up my place’
On the face of it this is below average film noir,
not the sort of thing Dark Corners usually covers and we wouldn’t except for one thing,
Yes, we’re back with Edward D Wood jr.
‘What are you guys picking on me for?’
But this time there’s no aliens or mad scientists, no Bela Lugosi or Tor Johnson, not even Criswell
‘What do you want me to repeat myself all night’
This is just a film noir and, from every objective standpoint,
it’s nowhere near as bad as Wood’s better known films
‘I just can’t make up my mind to believe it’
and yet I’d rather watch them.
‘I don’t quite understand’
One thing we’ve always said about Ed Wood: he may be bad, but he’s never boring
‘Sounds like a man I’d like to meet’
Jail bait is boring
'Shut up you!'
and bad. Just not as bad as the bad films but being boring makes it worse, despite not being as bad.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’
No, I probably could have expressed that better
‘He’s got a tough thankless job on his hands’
The plot here is actually quite good.
‘You’re gonna give me a completely new face.’
the problems is that everything that in the first 45 minutes feels like it should have happened in the first 15
‘Well that’ll be established later’
Then the movie ends.
'Thank goodness, I couldn’t take much more of that’
The plastic surgery twist, reminiscent of John Woo’s Face/Off, is clever
‘It’s foolproof’
but incredibly predictable
‘I never thought it’d lead to this’
and to be honest doesn’t make a lot of sense.
'Yeah, maybe you're right.'
Course I’m bloody right.
'Shut up you.'
never the less, this is probably Wood’s best made film;
'Not bad for night's work eh?'
obviously it’s cheap.
‘Cheap, cheap?'
but the amusingly pretentious dialogue is kept to a minimum
‘Destiny is a strange and mysterious thing my dear Inspector’
the only major continuity error is the scar on this man’s forehead moving
Better wash that off and start over.
And the only hilariously bad moment is the discovery of a corpse that’s held up by a load-bearing curtain.
Even Wood using his grocery delivery boy to play the lead isn’t a complete disaster.
‘I don’t know why I joined you’
But dammit all, that’s why we watched!
‘You hit the solution right on the head’
This is like a Michael Bay film without explosions,
a Peter Jackson film without digital effects,
a Quentin Tarantino film without Samuel L. Jackson saying "motherfucker"
They may not make the films any better but take them out and seriously, what’s left?
‘I guess you’re right’
We’ve seen lots of Ed Wood films that are bad, but this one is bad
‘Go ahead and say it but change the words this time, the old record’s getting a bit worn.’
Maybe we should try using a different word?
'Shut up!'
Thanks for watching
This is Ed Wood's best, but least entertaining film, would you rather be mediocre and boring
or out right bad and legendary? Let us know in the comments below.
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