Review of Revenge of the Dead (1959) by Joshua L — 16 Dec 2010

Ed Wood's last theatrical movie clocks in at just over an hour. How is it? Well, it's an Ed Wood movie. If you don't know what that means, why are you reading this? Go watch "Plan 9 from Outer Space" or "Glenn or Glenda" before proceeding further. I can wait.

Dum de dum de dum...

That last line wasn't me singing. That was largely my review. Ed Wood couldn't write or direct his way out a wet napkin, yet there's entertainment to be had here in his failings. Laughs, mainly. For example, the events of this flick are set in motion when an elderly couple shows up at an LA police station after experiencing a "nightmare of horrors!" The poor old woman will "never forget that horrible face and those long fingers!" Then we get the flashback and what, exactly, scared these terrified seniors? Why, a slender, attractive, fairly typical blond woman in a slightly frayed prom gown walking slowly toward their car. THE HORROR... I SHALL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN!

But wait, there's more! We also get Criswell, noted psychic, loon and Wood regular, acting as narrator. He makes everything sound so *serious*. No, that's not the word. He makes everything sound like he's off his rocker. Yeah, that's it. If you listen carefully to Wood's commentary about what "society's greatest horrors" are as spoken by Criswell, which occupy close to ten minutes of stock footage and babbling, you'll soon realize that none of it makes any sense at all. I don't just mean the thinking involved, I mean the actual language being used. Methinks old Ed might have been hitting the bottle a bit while writing the script for this one.

And the story? Well, there's a phony medium -- Dr. Acula -- taking people's money for letting them communicate with their dead husbands and wives. No, really, the guy's name is Dr. Acula. And a cop goes to investigate this... but it turns out that Dr. Acula *isn't* a phony, and the ghosts of all the dead husbands gang up on him and kill him. The End. Oh, yeah, Tor Johnson is also hanging about, though he doesn't do much in this one, and there's some ghostly woman in black lace hanging around outdoors, but she just kind of hovers there and never really does anything.

Like I said, this is an Ed Wood movie... his last one before he stayed drunk all the time and switched from bad horror to bad porn. In a sense, this is Wood's epitaph as a director. It took nearly 25 years from the time this was shot until the film was developed because he'd run out of time and money. All of that's sad, but the flick itself is pure Wood. Watching this is celebrating Wood, not mourning Wood.

Get it? It's a pun. Pretty bad, right? Still better than "Night of the Ghouls." That's what makes it fun!