Ed Wood (1994/Tim Burton) Review 10/26/19
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| Poster for the Film. (Image Courtesy of Amazon.com and Touchstone Pictures). |
Edward D. Wood, Jr. has quite a reputation in Hollywood, just not a good one. In fact, not only has he directed some of the worst films of all time, including his magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space, but he also acted like a total eccentric behind the scenes. This behavior even resulted in him directing in drag! So, it makes perfect sense that eccentric director Tim Burton would adapt a film depicting his own bizarre hero.
His life story is superbly summed in the 1994 film Ed
Wood, starring Johnny Depp as you-know-who, and centers on him, Bela Lugosi
(played by Martin Landau), and a filmmaking crew consisting of total
screwballs, as they struggle through the troubled production of each film, and
as they deal through the aftermaths of their failure.
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| From Left to Right: Vampira (Marie), Martin Landau (Lugosi), Criswell (Jones), Kathy O'Hara (Arquette), The Animal (Johnson), and Ed Wood (Depp) on their way to the Bride of the Monster (1995) screening. (Image Courtesy of thefilmexperience.net). |
The way the film tells the story is very unique, especially for a film that was released back in 1994. The fact that it was filmed in black-and-white, the spooky depiction of Landau’s portrayal as Lugosi, who is best known for playing Dracula in the Universal horror film of the same name, and even its cinematography all pay homage, not only to the black-and-white horror films of the time period the film was set in, the 1950’s, but also films of that decade in general.
Both the film’s comedy and its drama are mixed very
well, given the film’s campy tone. In fact, the tone itself causes the more
dramatic scenes to not take themselves too seriously. Heck, when Lugosi is in
rehab, he is immediately taken out by Wood, who tricks him into thinking that
he is getting better, even though the reason why he is taken OUT of rehab is
because the doctors can’t afford him to keep him IN it. I personally find these
scenes exemplary in combining the silly with the dramatic.
The way the film satirizes the state of the film
industry of the time seems to so be accurate, as studios seem to change titles
of movies and even flat out reject some. It almost seems as if it predicted the
CURRENT state of the film industry…Oh, wait…it basically DID! How ironic!
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| Wood (Depp) scares trick-or-treaters while Landau (Lugosi) observes. (Image Courtesy of pinterest.com). |
The actor’s performances match their characters
perfectly. Depp is perfectly eccentric when he plays Ed Wood, who, as I
described earlier, is also eccentric. Martin Landau is very creepy when he
plays Bela Lugosi, which makes sense because he did INDEED play Dracula! Heck,
even the actors that I didn’t even mention, like Jeffrey Jones, who previously
worked with Tim Burton in “Beetlejuice”, plays a very fitting Criswell (He’s
the narrator of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”).
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| Wood (Depp) directs Landau (Lugosi) for a scene from Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). (Image Courtesy of youtube.com). |
Tim Burton’s directing is something you would expect from him back during 1994. The film’s campy tone, its creepy visual designs, and even its silly jokes, are basically evidence that this is one of his career highlights. Nowadays, he either makes a creepy reimagining of something that already exists (Alice in Wonderland is a big example of this), or a clone of a 2003 film he directed, Big Fish (both Big Eyes and, to a lesser extent, Dumbo, are both examples of this, even though the latter is also a reimagining of a pre-existing work), so films like Ed Wood and even The Nightmare Before Christmas, which he produced, are rare these days, making both films very unique experiences.
Overall, I enjoyed this movie, camp included. If you
are a fan of Tim Burton, or a film buff in general, then this is the one for
you.
In conclusion, I give this film a 9.5/10!
The End!
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