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Lost Ed Wood Film Unearthed

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the b-movie-bliss dept.

BayBlade writes "It seems a lost Ed Wood film, Necromania was recovered recently, and can now be ordered on DVD. Reuters goes into more depth."

12 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Picasso? by fembots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Considered the worst film maker of all time, Ed Wood

    I guess as soon as we start watching the movie, we will know if it's a genuine Ed Wood masterpiece :)

    But like Picasso's (note I'm not really comparing Plabo to Ed) paintings, sometimes it takes a different era to appreciate them, especially when the person's dead.

    --
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    1. Re:Picasso? by TrentL · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But like Picasso's (note I'm not really comparing Plabo to Ed) paintings, sometimes it takes a different era to appreciate them, especially when the person's dead.

      Picasso was famous when he was alive.

      My problem with the Ed Wood criticism is that he is so *NOT* the worst filmmaker of all time. His movies are watchable. They induce an emotion (usually laughter), and therefor they are art. Campy art, but art. "Worst filmmaker" should be a title reserved for directors who make truly boring, un-interesting films.

    2. Re:Picasso? by colmore · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It depends on what you mean by bad. Ed's movies are technically worse than just about any director you will ever find who tried to make freature films.

      Sure I'd take one of Ed's movies over say... Pearl Harbor any day. But that's because Pearl Harbor wasn't bad, it was mediocre. But Pearl Harbor was much closer to what you'd be taught how to do in film school.

      Ed's movies are amazing. It's like a kid who gets a 0 on the SAT. There's one of two things going on there. Either he knows what he's doing and making mistakes on purpose, or he's misreading the test in some fundamental way, and has no clue what's going on. Ed was either in on the joke, or he was not just inept, but posessed a fundamental misunderstanding of what movies are supposed to be.

      The first option seems more likely, but watch a few of his films and you start to wonder.

      If you watch 70s horror movies, or schlock kung fu action movies, or Troma, or other B movies that know that they're B movies, you don't see what you see in an Ed Wood film. Modern directors study old B movies for inspiration, just look at Tarantino. B movies have bad actors reading bad lines and working with shitty special effects on no budget, but they're at least filmed proficiently, given their resources. Watch most B movies and you're generally watching an OK filming of a bad movie. Ed Wood not only has bad actors, bad writing, bad effects, and no budget, he also has TERRIBLE pacing, camerawork thats so bad its uncomfortable, long silent pauses, and many many other unnerving problems. He gets so many things wrong it boggles the mind.

      They're more than so bad they're good. They're so bad they're past good and enter the territory of the head-scratchingly bizarre.

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    3. Re:Picasso? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "Worst filmmaker" should be a title reserved for directors who make truly boring, un-interesting films

      I have a candidate: George W. Lucas!

      I know I will be moderated down here, but starting as an AC at 0 I can not fall too much deeper...

    4. Re:Picasso? by eviltypeguy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Obviously you've never seen Cave Dwellers or Eeegah :)

    5. Re:Picasso? by SWTP_OS9 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or the last Star Trek film?

  2. I'm sure it's the pinnacle of the art by delirium+of+disorder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but plan9 will always have a warm place in the hearts of geeks.

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    ------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
  3. The affirming thing about Ed Wood.... by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    is that no matter what..he made the movies. Obviously during his time he was a positively horrible producer but he lived his dream.....

    People keep saying his "masterpiece" was Plan 9 but you REALLY should see Glen or Glenda? if for nothing else the mixture of Bela Lugosi and a buffalo stampede.

  4. Re:How is this possible? by pokka · · Score: 1, Insightful

    oh, nevermind. I didn't see the "1999" part :)

  5. Re:This has got to be the worst film ever by Fnkmaster · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But is it Phantom Menace bad?

  6. Unearthed, or downloaded? by Mr.+Cancelled · · Score: 3, Insightful

    On a hunch, I popped open a copy of eMule and typed "Necromania" in a search (actually, I'm lazy... I copied & pasted it from the story using my mouse, but I digress...)

    The results were for 100+ sources for "Necromania (E D Wood Jr 1971) VHS-Rip by Davide-466.avi". I'm not saying anyone's lying, or that the copy on emule is even the same thing (we all know it probably is, but whatever...), but the story seems to indicate that this guy went through a lot of time and effort to locate "the" copy. And I quote...

    Rudolph Grey, author of a biography of the director, and a fellow Ed Wood enthusiast, movie distributor Alexander Kogan, unearthed "Necromania" in a warehouse in Los Angeles after more than 15 years of detective work.

    I'm guessing the guy coulda saved a lotta time if he'd just looked on a p2p service. While it's probably not as nice as the master he found hopfully is, it doesn't appear that this movie was ever truly lost, as the article leads you to believe.

  7. Rock Over London by M.+Baranczak · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Your sig is strangely appropriate. Ed Wood and Wesley Willis were kindred spirits in a lot of ways. A lot of artists like to adopt the "outsider" pose - these two guys were outsiders in every possible way, and they weren't even trying.