It is... Movie Time!
For the past two Saturdays, I've posted about 2 seminal movies from the start of Bela Lugosi's film career.
Today we take a look the end of Bela's journey as a Hollywood movie actor.
By the 1950's, Bela Lugosi was a mere shadow of the person on screen back in 1930. Advancing age, declining health, substance abuse, bad finances and a lack of any kind of respect from the Hollywood studio system found Bela Lugosi at the ultimate nadir of his career and even his life.
Bela Lugosi was desperate for work which led him to work with an equally desperate director.
A man whose ambitions far exceeded his talents and his resources, Ed Wood made the movies on the thinnest of shoe string budgets and was desperate for anyone with any semblance of name recognition to attach to his ramshackle films.
Which brings us to the movie for today's post, from 1955, Bride of the Monster.
Witness Lake Marsh, an overgrown wildland of tangled trees, swampy terrain and muddy paths.
At the center of Lake Marsh is Willows House, rumored to be haunted and long abandoned.
Well, it's not abandoned now.
Within the crumbing walls of Willows House dwells scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff. Accompanied by his hulking man servant Lobo* and a giant squid monster in a tank alongside the house, Vornoff is conducting mysterious experiments with atomic energy to turn humans into super beings.
*Remember what we learned last week: What kind of self respecting mad scientist doesn't have a hulking man servant?
There are now 12 people missing who dared venture into Lake Marsh. That's the sort of thing that could draw all sorts of attention.
Such as...
Reporter Janet Lawton, a tough talking female woman of the opposite sex who is determined to get to the bottom of the story and get the big scoop, you see?
Lieutenant Dick Craig, Janet's fiancé, is a standard issue 1950's film detective with a suit, a hat, a gun and no personality.
Professor Vladimir Strowski, an intellectual from Europe who ventures into Lake Marsh to convince Dr. Vornoff to come back to the old country and do his atomic mojo for the motherland. Vornoff is not moved by this appeal to patriotism for his homeland. Vornoff is doing his thing for his own personal quest for power.
Strowski gets killed by the octopus.
And Janet gets captured by Lobo and Vornoff hypnotizes her to keep her his prisoner.
Here comes...er, what's his name....let me check my notes....DICK! Lt. Dick Craig barrels in to the rescue but gets knocked unconscious by Lobo and chained to a wall in the laboratory.
Because Ed Wood realized the title of the movie is Bride of the Monster, Vornoff has Janet dress in a bridal gown before he subjects her to his atomic energy experiment.
Lobo objects to this course of action, knocks out Vornoff, removes Janet from from the lab table and straps down Vornoff to get zapped by atomic rays.
Janet frees Dan Dennis DICK and he shoots Lobo but there is still danger: the damned atomic experiment actually worked this time, turning Dr. Vornoff in a super powered monster.
Vornoff slowly lurches through several different movies (It's day! It's night! It's day! It's night! It's day! It's night!) while various cops shoot at him. But Super Vornoff mocks you and your puny little pop guns! He is impervious to gunfire.
He is NOT however impervious to a giant boulder that Dave Darnell DICK rolls down a hill from another movie that knocks Vornoff into a pond located in yet a different movie where the octopus is waiting to eat him.
And we've reached the end.
Bride of the Monster was Ed Wood's most expensive movie with a budget of $70,000. Even in terms of 1950's money, that's still a pretty damn cheap movie.
Ed Wood's octopus prop didn't work. So people being eaten by the octopus had to pull the tentacles over themselves while flailing about on the otherwise insert rubbery beast.
I recently rewatched Bride of the Monster but not alone. I was accompanied by Joel Hodgson and his robot pals from an early episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
My first encounter with Bride of the Monster was in the 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards wherein the authors claim that when Vornoff tells Janet that Lobo is "as harmless as a kitten", he says the line as "as harmless as a kitchen", evidence of Lugosi's failing physical health and mental acuity.
Having endured this movie personally, I will tell you that Lugosi clearly says "harmless as a kitten". While Bride of the Monster is burdened with a nonsense plot, absurd dialogue, wooden acting, shaky sets and uncoordinated editing, Bela Lugosi does step up to deliver an intense performance.
Whatever the many, many faults of this movie, by God Bela Lugosi was determed to be a professional and take the damn thing seriously.
Bride of the Monster would be Bela Lugosi's last speaking role in a feature film. He would pass away shortly thereafter but Ed Wood was not going to let a little thing like death stand in the way of Bela's next movie.
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957) used archival silent footage of Lugosi just puttering about this house that Ed Wood stuck into the movie to justify one last movie starring the great Bela Lugosi.
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Tomorrow: Doctor Who Is CLASSIC returns with Jon Pertwee's Doctor returning to Peladon for more monsters and mayhem.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another.
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