Maybe I’m crazier than Bela Lugosi’s mad Dr. Vornoff here, but Edward D. Wood Jr.’s third feature shows him getting a little better at this movie directing thing. The story—in which a female reporter and a cop investigate a series of deaths out in the swamps and discover Lugosi up to atomic shenanigans in a hidden laboratory with Tor Johnson and an octopus—zips along at a steady pace. Also, the camera stays in focus and there are only two or three moments where the cheap sets look like they’re about to collapse in the middle of a scene. These are all steps up for Wood.
So what if Bela’s stand-in for a few shots is about two feet taller than him? Ed Wood only did what he had to do when working with an ill actor.
And so what if the mushroom cloud explosion at the climax makes no spatial sense with the setting? That shot was a demand from one of the investors.
And SO WHAT if Bela’s killer octopus doesn’t actually move when it attacks its victims onscreen? If you can steal a better octopus from a Republic Pictures set (like Wood reportedly did) and animate it on a small budget that’s mostly devoted to keeping Bela Lugosi upright, I’d like to see it.
This is entertaining stuff. Meanwhile, the production itself was so fraught with drama—money problems, actor problems, a dying Lugosi in one of his last performances and conflicting word about Wood’s own sobriety on the set—that it’s a tribute to Wood’s legendary determination that the film got finished at all. Its highlight is Lugosi’s “I have no home” speech, his most quotable moment since the “children of the night” scene in Dracula.