If I may paraphrase a respected Movie Scientist: Ed Wood is a warning. A warning to all of us. When mankind falls into conflict with reality, monstrous films are born. Shambling, pitiful things that beg to be put down harder than Seth Brundle. Wood is also one of the strangest celebrities of the twentieth century. Ignored in his own time, he became famous for the worst reasons two years after his death. In 1980, the right-wing fellow traveler and PBS movie critic Michael Medved named him the Worst Director of All Time, and awarded tonight’s picture the undeserved title of Worst Film Ever Made.

Wood’s generation was one of the first to grow up with the movies. An encounter with Bela Lugosi’s Dracula at age seven permanently warped the Poughkeepsie store clerk’s son, who had a movie camera in hand by the time he left high school. The War put Eddy’s dreams of being the next Orson Welles on hold for four years, but by the end of his life he’d amassed the kind of resume that would shame other, better directors. Even now, at the height of his fame, only a bare handful of his films command any kind of notoriety. Plan 9 has managed the hat trick of surpassing even its siblings and achieving a twisted sort of popularity, something Wood might even enjoy today, wherever he is. With Bela, surely. {More}