We officially close out Monster Month with a bang as we bravely enter into Ed Wood territory again. C’mon, we survived The Violent Years. Over the wall, boys! Do you wanna live forever!?

Due to a violent thunderstorm, two hunters stuck out at Lake Marsh quickly conclude that they need to find some shelter -- and fast. These recent, biblical deluges plaguing the area don’t seem natural, and to top it off, the local newspapers have been filled with stories about a monster roaming the woods around Lake Marsh devouring some ten missing persons. Their best bet to keep dry would be the old abandoned Willow place; but (dahn-dahn-DAHN!) this is where the monster has been rumored to hang out. But the intense lightning makes them look past the monster stories, and they're a little surprised to see that the lights are on at the old house -- allegedly abandoned for over fifteen years. When they knock, a wizened old man (Bela Lugosi) answers the door. The old crank won't let them in, and when one raises a gun to force their way in, the old crank calls for some back-up. Answering the call, from out of the rain, tromps the gargantuan Lobo (Tor Johnson).

Which is really amazing because this is one of three instances in the film where the 350 lbs. wrestler manages to sneak up and get the drop on somebody -- defying all laws of physical science.

Thinking Lobo is the monster, the hunters run away. Laughing sinisterly, the old man promises that someday they might meet a real monster. Sending Lobo after them, he ducks back into the house and flips a switch, opening a trapdoor that leads to a secret lab where he dons his lab coat and checks in on his other pet -- a rubber octopus prop, stored in an adjoining chamber. (More on the octopus’s origins later.) A few more switches are flipped, flooding the chamber, and then some octopus footage swims off.

As the two hunters make their way along the lake, trying to put as much distance between themselves and Lobo as they can, the octopus stock-footage attacks -- and one of the hunters trips and falls into the water, right into the waiting arms of the rubber octopus prop. (Okay, I think we’re supposed to think the octopus grabbed him.) While he rolls around and gets tangled up in the tentacles, his partner empties his 30/30 into it, but Lobo sneaks up behind and knocks him out. (That’s twice!) Hauling the shooter away, he leaves the other man to be tentacled to death.

When the hunter wakes up, he finds himself in the old man’s lab, strapped to an operating table, with an ominous electronic contraption aimed right at his head. As the old man introduces himself as Dr. Eric Vornoff, he tinkers with the knobs and diodes, causing lights to flash and sparks to fly, and promises that very soon the hunter will be mutated into a superman -- or wind up dead, like all the others. He throws the switch with highest of hopes, but the experiment goes wrong and the test subject dies. (Darn it. Forgot to carry the two in the latest calculations. Oh, well. What are you going to do.) Lobo consoles the doctor after his latest failure -- and we figure this is what really happened to all those people who've gone missing around Lake Marsh.

We flash to several newspaper headlines that state the Lake Monster has claimed two more victims. At police headquarters, Chief Robbins (Harvey B. Dunn) and Lt. Dick Craig (Tony McCoy) discuss the latest case. A grand total of twelve people have now disappeared without a trace in the swamps surrounding Lake Marsh. They also talk about Dick’s fiancé, Janet Lawton -- the newspaper reporter whose writing all the monster stories. Craig thinks that maybe there is something to all this monster talk, since nothing else makes sense, just as Janet (Loretta King) busts her way into the office, past Officer Kelton (Paul Marco), and demands to know if the police still think quicksand or alligators are responsible for all the disappearances. Robbins says they’re still investigating and won’t divulge anything else. When she threatens to go out to the lake herself, Dick threatens to cancel their weddings. (Yeah, like that ever works.)

Seemingly swayed, Janet leaves and goes back to the paper. Her first stop is the morgue, and Tillie (Ann Wilner -- a/k/a the Sorceress of the Pencil. Watch the pencil in her hair. As they change POV shots, it keeps de- and re-materializing out of thin air.), the morgue clerk, points her toward the records on real estate transactions. The old Willow Place sold recently, and Janet digs until she finds out who bought it. As she leaves, she asks Tillie to call Craig, make some excuse for her, and cancel their dinner date. Then, donning her angora beret, Janet jumps in her car and heads out into the swamp.

Back at Police HQ, Craig is called into a meeting with Robbins and a Professor Strowski (George Becwar), who claims to be an expert on monsters. Attracted to the area by all the newspaper reports, Strowski wants to help if he can and they make arrangements for an expedition into the swamp the following morning. After Strowski leaves, Robbins smells something fishy (funny, Tor’s not in the room) and warns Craig to keep an eye on the strange little foreigner.

As another storm whips up, Janet makes her way into the swamp where her car promptly blows a tire, careens off the road and wrecks. And when Janet stumbles out of the wreckage, a stock-footage snake menaces her. As she screams, Lobo blunders out of the brush and dispatches the snake. Overwhelmed, Janet faints. Lobo catches her and is quickly infatuated with this thing of beauty -- no, not her, but her angora beret -- and then carries her off to the old house. When Janet comes around, she finds Vornoff watching over her. She wants to leave, but, using his spindly fingers and watery eyes, he puts the hypno-whammy on her and she drops off into a deep sleep.

The next morning, Craig and Lt. Martin (Don Nagel) head into the swamp to look for Strowski -- who skipped out on their meeting, so they figure he went into the swamp by himself. While they complain about the evils that lurk within the swamp, and blame all the recent rain on the atom bomb tests, the search continues until they find Janet’s car. With no sign of the occupant, they decide to double back to the nearest café to see if she went there for help. But Janet isn't there; she’s waking up at the old house. Vornoff has Lobo bring her some food. Scared of Lobo, Vornoff orders him to leave, and whips him away when he disobeys. Telling Janet he found Lobo somewhere in Tibet, she has a lot more questions for him, but these are irrelevant because he has other plans for her. After putting the hypno-whammy on her again, he calls for Lobo and orders him to take the hapless girl to his quarters. (Uh-oh.)

Meanwhile, Strowski has made his way to the house. When Vornoff finds him snooping around, we’re a little surprised that they seem to know each other. The plot thickens as Strowski says he’s been sent by their government to bring Vornoff back home. His theories on atomic mutation have proven true and they want him to come back and build an army of super-mutants for them. Vornoff grows angry; this is the same government that branded him a mad man and ran him out of the country. (We never quite know exactly what government this is, but it isn’t hard to guess.) Announcing that he will perfect his experiments, and he will build the mutant army to conquer the world -- Vornoff admits he does this only for himself! Strowski pulls out a gun, promising to take him back by force, but Lobo sneaks up from behind (that’s three!) and disarms him. While the brute carries the protesting Strowski into the lab, Vornoff opens the chamber and promises him the same fate as the twelve others. After Lobo tosses him on top of the rubber octopus, Strowski screams and rolls around the limp tentacles. They watch him struggle until Vornoff puts him out of his misery by flooding the chamber.

With no sign of Janet anywhere, Craig and Martin check in with Robbins, and he orders them to keep after Strowski while he tries to find the girl. Heading back into the swamp, the detectives find Strowski’s car. Splitting up to cover more ground, Martin takes the squad car and Craig heads into the swamp, on foot, toward the Willow house. Barely getting three steps off the road, Craig falls into some quicksand, and while he struggles, he's assaulted by several stock-footage alligators (and I'm pretty sure one of them was a crocodile). Managing to hold the beasts off with his trusty, snub-nosed eight-shot six-shooter(!), Craig escapes the bog and continues on.

Back in the lab, Vornoff finishes his preparations for another try. Using the hypno-whammy once more, he summons the mesmerized Janet. (Who for some reason is now decked out in a wedding dress.) He orders Lobo to strap her onto the table, but Ro-Man’s Syndrome strikes again and the brute refuses. As Vornoff breaks out the whip to make him obey, Craig makes his way inside the house and stumbles upon the secret passage. Drawing his gun, he heads into the tunnel. Inside the lab, Janet is fully strapped in and Vornoff readies his equipment, promising her, that soon, she will be the Bride of the Atom. (Hey, wasn’t that the film’s original title?) As Janet pleads to be let go, Vornoff laughs until Craig shows up and orders him to do what she says.

Ah, but the nimble Lobo sneaks up behind him (-- Omilord that's the FOURTH time he's managed to sneak up on somebody). After the brute beats the crap out of Craig and chains him to the wall, Vornoff prepares to throw the switch -- but Lobo has now fully succumbed to Ro-Man’s Syndrome, and he turns on Vornoff and knocks him out. (And that one doesn't count, Vornoff saw him coming.) Releasing Janet, who rushes to unchain Craig, Lobo gathers up Vornoff and straps him to the table. Meanwhile, Robbins finally manages to find out where Janet was heading from the obnoxious Tillie, and then rounds up Martin and several other patrolmen and they all head for the Willow house.

Back at the lab, Janet frees Dick who tries to stop Lobo from throwing the switch, but is beaten unconscious again. Janet pulls him clear as Vornoff wakes up and pleads with Lobo, but the brute pulls the switch and Vornoff gets a lethal dose of radiation -- or whatever the heck that photo-enlarger aimed at his head does. Outside, as the cops surround the house, Kelton is assigned to guard the front door while Robbins and Martin head inside. Where we find out that Vornoff’s experiment have finally succeeded. Tearing off his restraints off, he goes after Lobo. (Note Vornoff’s platform shoes.) As they fight, Vornoff knocks him into the control panel. Sparks fly as Lobo is electrocuted, and the overload sets the lab on fire. Vornoff snatches Janet and retreats just as Craig wakes up. He barely escapes the flames and gets after them. 

The house must have had a back door, or they somehow got by Kelton -- which probably wasn't all that difficult -- because we next spy Vornoff carrying Janet up a hill with the police in hot pursuit. Another storm whips up and the old Willow place explodes in a lightning strike. Inexplicably, Vornoff sits Janet down and moves on. The cops blast away at him, but the bullets have no effect, and the firefight continues until Craig rolls a big rock on top of Vornoff. Rolling and tumbling down the hill, Vornoff lands in the lake -- right on top of the rubber octopus-prop. While he tangles himself up in the tentacles and thrashes around, the heroes reunite and watch as lightning strikes Vornoff and the rubber octopus-prop, and they both go up in a mushroom cloud-sized explosion.

Bride is his best movie because it is his most coherent movie -- despite its patchwork origins. Wood had been working on several projects with producer Alex Gordon. (The two shared an apartment for a while, until Ed’s alternative lifestyle scared Gordon away.) One of them was a picture vehicle for their mutual friend Bela Lugosi called The Atomic Monster. While trying to get financing for the film, they let several studios read the script. No one seemed all that interested -- but the title wound up on a Lon Chaney film for RealArt Pictures. Feeling swindled, Gordon got his lawyer friend Sam Arkoff on the case and won a small settlement -- and with this twist of fate, Arkoff met Jim Nicholson during this ordeal and American International Pictures was born. For more on that go here. Wood didn’t like Arkoff because he thought he'd swindled him by stealing one of his scripts and turning it into How to Make A Monster. (Actually, that was a Herman Cohen film that AIP only distributed.) The feeling was mutual, however, as Arkoff thought that dealing with Wood on a movie was like "being a street-cleaner following an errant horse."

The film was shot piecemeal, a little at a time, and took almost a year to complete. They’d use up all the money they had, and then the film would go on hiatus until they could find more. Enter the McCoys, son Tony and father Donald, and they financed the rest of the picture. Tony took the lead and assumed a producer’s role -- and I've often wondered if that's why Wood named the meddlesome McCoy's character Dick. (And yes, Donald demanded that the picture end with a big explosion.) There are some conflicting reports that Loretta King got involved and got the lead because she had money. This didn’t make Dolores Fuller, Wood’s girlfriend, very happy. In Wood’s biography, A Nightmare of Ecstasy, King denies the money part and said Wood made it up to appease Fuller. (And yes, King was allergic to liquids and would vomit when she drank them.)

The film also ran into a couple of production snags with the Screen Actors Guild. Not all that pleased with delays between shooting, George Becwar complained to the union, resulting in the production being fined an undisclosed amount. Also, Lugosi wanted a pay raise but there wasn’t any more money, so, claiming bad health, he walked off the set. The SAG president said he couldn’t force Lugosi to work if he was sick. Eventually, Lugosi got his extra money and I’m sure he went straight to the pharmacist. (If you know what I mean, and sadly, I think you do.) The history, gaffs and goofs of this film are legendary and common knowledge thanks to Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. And for the most part, that film was fairly accurate and I highly recommend it, though it was a sugarcoated version of Wood because he had a dark side -- and I’m not talking about him being a transvestite. I’m talking about his massive drinking problem. I find it funny how much of Wood’s fetishes come out in his movies: Angora, transvestites, bondage and booze. (If you notice, there’s always one scene of a drunk stumbling around in one of his films.) If you read all accounts of the making of his films, he was seldom in drag but, by more than one account, he would be in the bag before the days shoot was over. And that is what got him into trouble and ruined his life -- not his alternative lifestyle, and it eventually killed him.

This, technically, was Lugosi’s last role. At the time, he was addicted to several painkillers and drinking formaldehyde -- the only thing that would give him a buzz. The man was in constant pain. His legs were injured while fighting in World War I (and fighting for the other side mind you. He was Hungarian remember). When the trench he was in took a shell hit, it collapsed, burying him, and damaged his legs. And it was during his recovery from these injuries that he got addicted to morphine. Lugosi did do some work in the cold water, but most of the shots in the film appear to be his stuntman, Eddie Parker. (Yep, that’s him wearing those platform shoes.) They had to dam up a little stream in Griffith Park to make the lake to submerge the octopus-prop. And when they broke the dam after filming, it flooded a nearby golf course. The giant rubber octopus was stolen from Republic Studios. (It’s the one that menaced John Wayne and Ray Milland in Wake of the Red Witch.) They also managed to lop off one of the tentacles while stealing it, and forget to get the motor that ran the tentacles -- so the actors had to wrap themselves up in the them to simulate an attack.

This is my favorite Ed Wood film because it refuses to grind to a halt like all his others tended to do. I do enjoy most of his other films, too, and I believe it's because of despite anything that resembled any actual talent for filmmaking, the guy more than made up for it with enthusiasm. And he tried so hard. He had to beg, borrow and swindle to get them made, but the man got it done. And no matter how bad they turned out, he still managed to make an incredible amount of films -- and no one can ever take that away from him.

Posted: 10/27/01. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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