Now, for the penultimate time! Ten years in the development vault! Dripping wet from the subcutaneous epidural labs! Writer-Producer-Director-Hyphenate Andre Perkowski and Terminal Pictures Presents the previously unclaimed, unfulfilled trailer for Edward D. Wood Jr.'s "The Devil Girls"!!! You'll thrill to their prevailing sex urges for lust, dementia and forbidden entertainment!
If there were a DVD Special Edition of the above, the formerly 22-year-old Perkowski would explain in his Writer-Producer-Director-Hyphenate's commentary:
Ed Wood's pulp paperback was shot in a frenzied four and a half days in 1999 on a mix of cheapo DV and film but the original Super-8/16mm film elements lay undeveloped and untransferred for years. Last year they were stitched in along with some more inserts that were shot for this and the "The Vampire's Tomb" to finally bring them in line with what was originally planned for this insane trilogy of exploitation noir based on unproduced Ed Wood Jr. screenplays and fiction... with the great Philip Proctor of the Firesign Theatre graciously throwing in a hypermanic pitch...Proctorlogical narration includes neo-retro-Firesignian constructions such as: "The Poverty Row expressionist epic of the decade! Made! Fogotten! Found and absolved of its sins! An all-out 8mm onslaught of unbearable Super 8 savagery --16 mm pain in the analog underground!"
And, no doubt, the subject of a future Quentin Tarantino HD remake!
1)Harvey Weinstein needs to send a truckload of money to Andre Perkowski posthaste!
2) Does anyone know if Roger Corman and Ed Wood ever teamed up together?
3)Why is Ed Wood still called the worst director of all time? I would take a great piece of trash like Plan 9 over recycled garbage like The Happening (granted an easy target) any day of the week.
2) No, they didn't.
3) You might enjoy "Plan 9" more than "The Happening", but that doesn't make Ed Wood a better director. When you can't get the continuity between night & day even slightly correct, you're a pretty abysmal director. That said ... Al Adamson is easily a far worse director than Ed Wood ever was. Folks say that about Ed because they have heard of him.
3)Granted Ed Wood couldn't get the transition between night and day correct, but look at the sloppy directing and horrible editing in The Happening. As Emerson pointed out on this blog when those construction workers throw themselves off the building in the beginning of the film, Shyamalan doesn't even pan up so we can see how high the building is. How simple a sequence is that to stitch together?
You can make bad films that are entertaining (as Mr. Wood did) and bad films that make you question whether you want to go on watching movies, or living (as Mr. Shyamalan does). I saw a quote somewhere, and I wish I could remember where or who said it: "Roger Corman made lousy movies because he had no budget. If you'd have given Ed Wood a million bucks, he still would've turned out a piece of crap." One wonders how much money you have to give Shyamalan to get a decent picture out of him. And hey, not for nothing, but I'll take Corman's THE UNDEAD over a lot of big-budget horror epics any day...
The Devil Girls"!!! You'll thrill to their prevailing sex urges for lust,
I think that's paraphrasing Gregory Walcott, the pilot in Plan 9 - the quote is in "Nightmare of Ecstasy." To hell with him, Ed made some entertaining movies that will be loved long after Walcott's supposed better movies will be long forgotten. I love this trailer and the even better one for the Vampire's Tomb. Fine Chicago indie filmmaking!
I think Ed Wood had talent and creativity, and even a knack for pacing, which is why the films aren't boring. He just never learned the craft of it very well, and to be fair I don't think he had much opportunity.
The scene in "The Happening" everyone talks about was purposefully shot that way to create a dream like quality.
That being said, in his single takes Ed Wood would leave in stuff that obviously and recognizably to even a child that wasn't of a professional quality, it makes you wonder if he even cared how good his movies were as long as he was making them. A passion with no form. Perhaps he had ADD.
All the pictures I see of Shyamalan on set, he has a lot of focus and form, but he doesn't seem to be enjoying the process in any way and that's starting to show in his films. (Those are the pictures they release to magazines and websites, it's how he wants to be seen.)
As for the trailer. That was awesome when she was lighting the car on fire and it cut to the biggest explosion ever!!!
Christ, Phillip, that passion with no form paragraph is dead on and a big light bulb is going on over my head as I realize it applies to me as well. For proof, the 129 other videos on that youtube channel.
It's not that he didn't notice things were going wrong.
It's that extra takes cost time and money. He was working on insanely short schedules and he had to get things in the can quickly.
Evan: This is exactly the way Johnny Depp portrays him in "Ed Wood," the best movie about the love of making movies since Truffaut's "Day For Night," I'd say. People on the set point out glitches in a take (a wall moving, a cardboard gravestone falling over) and he just says "Oh, nobody will notice! Moving on!"). I'm not a gaffe squadder (what a waste to actually spend the effort looking for continuity errors), but there's a well-known moment in Scorsese's "GoodFellas" where you can see a fake license plate falling off a parked car. I choose to consider it an hommage to Ed Wood.
As much as I adore the film, and generally don't think biopics require accuracy, I think the evidence is that that he wasn't blind to these sorts of things. He just couldn't fix them.
Though I have heard it suggested that even the movie version of Ed Wood is meant just to be putting on a brave face and telling everyone "okay, it'll be perfect, don't worry."
There's a great, grim movie to be made of the second half of Ed Wood's life. The things Burton didn't cover: the porn, the booze, the failed dreams. Somebody could do an amazing job anchoring the feel bad movie of 2014. Phillip Seymour Hoffman (sic?) with a bad dye job and greasy long hair. Or Depp in 20 years with a method dedication to pot bellies. Constantly on the phone trying to start films that were never made, like this one.
Really enjoyed the trailer, Jim. Hope it doesn't take another ten years to see the whole thing, any idea of a release or what? I wonder what Wood would've made of his posthumous anti-celebrity.
I'd chime in on your Dark Knight post but work murdered me tonight. My friends and I argued the whole way back from the movie, each feeling unsatisfied about one element except my cousin who thought we were all mad for not loving it.
I myself have often fancied the idea of making a movie based on Ed Wood's later years.