Sunday 14 November 2010

And the Dead Shall Inherit the Earth

In the movie 'Ed Wood' (the man voted worst director of all time) Bela Lugosi bemoans latter day monster pics ( the film is set in the 1950's). He says people don't want classic horror films anymore, now all they crave is "giant bugs, giant spiders, giant grasshoppers - who would believe such nonsense". I love the grasshoppers line.
In his view the old Gothic horror pics were much more potent because they were spookier fare, "They had castles, full of moons...and the women prefer the traditional monsters" Ed wonders why and is told, "The pure horror, it both repels and attracts them. Because in their collective unconsciousness, they have the agony of childbirth. The blood. The blood is horror".
The words of Bela Lugosi as imagined in the screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. It's a screenplay that reads beautifully and if you haven't seen the movie go find the DVD - but before you watch it hunt down a copy of Plan 9 from Outer Space, Wood's .45 magnum opus. It puts everything into context and underlines the truth in the Tim Burton film. Plan 9, being an Ed Wood movie, makes no sense - really, you may think you've seen films that made non sense, but believe me this is of a different order. The acting is beyond terrible, the script stinks, and the effects are laughable but what it does have is a kind of ridiculous amateur charm. What's more it got made. Wood had a passion for the movies and tricked and scammed backers to find the money to make them.

I'm not sure he ever realised he was so bad but this was a strange complicated man who, in the mid-fifties, was happy to put his transvestism up there on the screen in another of his pictures, Glen or Glenda. This movie contains two stories, one is of a man struggling to come to terms with his need to dress in women's clothing. The other is a story that swept the nation at the time - a man who had undergone a surgical sex change, Christina Jorgenson.
But woven between these not too disparate tales is an all-seeing puppet master played by Lugosi, pulling the strings of the struggling mortals. Lugosi is barely in the movie but got top billing whilst Ed Wood plays Glen/Glenda.



Lugosi's traditional monsters have come back into fashion, they are now not only on the big screen but the bread and butter of big budget television series. 'True Blood' has humans and vampires ( and various other creatures) living side by side. In the BBC's 'Being Human' vampires, werewolves and ghosts flat share. In The Walking Dead that nice bloke who was Egg in 'This Life' stars as a Deputy Sheriff battling Zombies. In the first two there is definitely a scary/funny dynamic on offer, in the latter Frank Darabont splashes plenty of blood and guts around and goes for all out shock. We're only two episodes into The Walking Dead as I write this so we'll have to see where it goes but the scary/funny route is one that keeps me - and many others - coming back for more. If the blood does it for the ladies, I think the blood and the wisecracks does it for the men.

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