Tag Archives: Ed Wood Jr

The Bride and the Beast – new RiffTrax VOD!

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[adrotate banner=”1″]Gorilla costumes and an Ed Wood script, The Bride and the Beast is the new RiffTrax VOD, and it has everything we love about jungle adventures. Stock footage, white people, gorillas representing forbidden interracial sexual lust, and sets that are made out of cardboard and repeatedly bumped into by the actors. Expect the RiffTrax crew to have a field day with this one! The lead woman is revealed to have been a gorilla queen in her prior life, which leads to consequences that will never be the same. Or something. The 1950s were ripe with past lives stuff thanks to the Bridey Murphy thing. For a cool breakdown of The Bride and the Beast, check out this DVD Savant review!

Order it at RiffTrax.com!

We’ve seen so many big screen weddings that they’ve begun to feel a touch cliched. Yes yes, the handsome husband sweeps the beautiful bride off her feet. Blah blah, he carries her over the threshold. Yada yada yada, he takes her down to the basement to meet the gorilla named Spanky that he keeps in a cage down there that he had never mentioned owning until that very moment. Etc etc, the chimp escapes and attacks the bride, triggering a relapse to a previous life when she lived as a gorilla herself, interrupted only when the husband guns Spanky down in cold blood. And then they return three of the extra fondue pots they got as wedding gifts.

This is the plot of The Bride and the Beast as written by one Ed Wood. This time around, instead of balling it up in Albuquerque, our characters go on on a honeymoon in Africa. You might think that since a main character has revealed that she was a gorilla in a previous life, this might affect the plot in some way. At least they spend the majority of the movie around gorillas in some capacity. Clearly you have never seen an Ed Wood movie before. No my friend, the plot revolves around deadly tigers, which we think were the alien’s Plan 10. The tigers are played by Fake Bela Lugosi.

The Bride and the Beast is full of bad gorilla suits, absurd stock footage, and last minute realizations that “Oh yeah, this was supposed to be about gorillas, wasn’t it?” Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this RiffTrax of The Bride and the Beast.

Bride and the Beast Rifftrax

The Revenge of Dr. X (Review)

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The Revenge of Dr. X

aka The Double Garden aka The Venus Flytrap

1970
Directed by Kenneth G. Crane
Written by Edward D. Wood Jr.

Ed Wood Jr. strikes again! One of his most creative scripts, due to the uniqueness of the monster, not the plot, which is just a Frankenstein rehash sans the hash. At this time Ed Wood was writing for films both insane and perverse (see the review of One Million AC/DC for more of his nutty writing) as he was unable to direct anymore films. Ed Wood loved filmmaking, even though he was terrible at it. That alone makes him stand out above the rest of the current crop of dime store directors, many lack the passion Ed Wood put into each and every movie he made. Even films involving a Venus Flytrap Man still had the traditional Ed Wood dialogue and wonky spirit that made his films cult classics decades later. Yes, a Venus Flytrap Man is created in this film, who predictably runs amok and eats people until destroyed. It is a take on the old Frankenstein story, except with plants and made in Japan. Produced with Toei, the film company probably best known here for the Gamera films and the Super Sentai series (the shows Power Rangers are based on.) The original opening credits have been lost on the public domain releases, mistakenly replaced with a revamped title sequence for The Mad Doctor of Blood Island. Thus we don’t even know any of the actors’ names! Luckily, James Craig is pretty well known, and people have figured out another actor and the director and writer. However, some of the other cast is totally left out in the dark. Part of the problem is they are most likely Japanese actors, and as I am not too familiar with Toei’s film library, I wouldn’t even know where to begin trying to track them down. We are going through Ultra Q and may hit another Japanese series soon in addition to movies, so maybe she’ll show up. Until then, I guess Noriko will have to remain anonymous for now.

The script for this film was originally written in the 1950’s, but dusted off and revamped to be sold during the period when Ed Wood was putting out pulp novels filled with sex and sleaze to make ends meet. Director Kenneth G. Crane had helmed a few prior B movies, including the US portions of Abominable Snowman as well as The Manster and Monster from Green Hell. He never directed again after this film. Lots of padding to fill up the film is Crane’s trademark. As for the cast, ROLL CALL!!!


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One Million AC/DC (Review)

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One Million AC/DC


1969
Starring
Susan Berkely as ???
Gary Ken as ???
Billy Wolf as ???
Sharon Wells as ???
Jack King as ???
Natasha as ???
Directed by Ed De Priest
Written by Ed Wood, Jr!!!! (as Akdon Telmig)

“This film meets requirements set forth in the code of the ADULT FILM PRODUCERS ASSOCIATION.” Too bad it doesn’t meet requirements set forth by GOOD FILMMAKING!

AC/DC is a detestable mess full of repulsive, greasy actors going at it like chimpanzees on Spanish fly. The incomparable One Million AC/DC is on a DVD with The Mighty Gorga, and probably because they both share a common T-Rex puppet used for bad special effects. The puppet, however, is the pinnacle of effects in AC/DC, as opposed to the low point in The Mighty Gorga. They get worse, much worse. The puppet isn’t even used half the time, otherwise it is a static plastic toy tyrannosaurs who moved by a hand just below the fake mountains. Now, bad special effects can be forgiven if there is a good story. There story here is just an excuse to get the cast naked so the audience can get off. Written by Akdon Telmig, who you might know better as Ed Wood, Jr.!!! Yes, after becoming a depressed alcoholic, Ed Wood was forced to write semi-adult films under pseudonyms. Besides this mess, he also wrote the cult classic about a Venus flytrap man The Revenge of Dr. X, which we’ll be reviewing the second we get a hold of a copy. The one redeeming factor on the film’s terrible pun title is you can make jokes about AC/DC songs: “He’s got big balls, And she’s got big balls, But we’ve got the biggest balls of them all” That would get old quick, so we won’t be doing it. The plot is around a tribe of cavepeople, and their sex, orgies, sacrifices, and winemaking. Exciting stuff, and historically accurate, just like the movies The Patriot and Braveheart.

Olaf (???) – Olaf is the hero of this piece, as so far as it has a hero character. Sounding like Peter Graves, Olaf yet retains a Eastern European name despite being one of the few actors without an European accent. He is the man of Marla, and uses the deadly bow and arrow to slay the ferocious T-Rex puppet/toy.
Banger (???) – Banger is the local artist for the tribe, instead of joining in the orgies all he does is just paint pictures, both of orgies and of random other things, including the sisters of fellow tribe members. He’s one of those cavemen stuck in the 1960s. Instead of happy little trees, it’s happy little sleaze. Helps invent the bow and arrow, thanks to drawing it on the wall.
Helga (???) – One day out picking fruit, sweet Helga was captured by The Gorilla, who did her “Gorilla Style” until she couldn’t get enough of his banana. Once you go gorilla you never go back.
The Gorilla (??? in a gorilla suit) – The horniest ape of the Stone Age, The Gorilla can only quench his throbbing thirst for flesh by pinching a local blonde cavegirl and using her for all his crazed apelust needs.
Chief Jabba (???) – I’m not sure the character name for this ode to gluttony, but Chief Jabba fits nicely. The head of our tribe of horny, girl-sacrificing wine drinkers, Chief Jabba doesn’t do much but sit there, look upset, and shout a few words to announce a couple of major scene transitions. Probably ate the original tyrannosaurus special effects, forcing a last minute replacement of a dime store toy.
Marla (???) – Marla is Olaf’s woman, and she no longer wants him to associate with Luga, the evil blonde girl. She forbids Olaf from being with Luga during the Big Orgy. Provides moral support to Olaf in his quest to kill the T-Rex. Luga is less than thrilled with the prospect of losing some man-meat, so they tussle.
The T-Rex (A puppet and a toy) – Last seen in The Mighty Gorga, crappy T-Rex puppet is back, this time to harass some sex-crazed cavepeople! As an added bonus, T-Rex is played in long shots by a immobile toy wiggled by a stagehand. For those of you feeling things couldn’t possibly get worse than the Gorga footage, you are sadly mistaken. T-Rex is killed by Olaf and his bow and arrow.


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