Pilot Wings: Ed Wood's Portraits of Terror- The Final Curtain

 Admittedly it is too late for me promoting this Pilot to do much good.  It's Director and Stars have all been dead for at least 3-4 Decades by now.

Even so, it is interesting to talk about this once-lost piece of TV and Film History.

Ed Wood tried to make a TV Show.  That's just a fun and silly sentence, no?

Life got in the way of him quite a bit and this is no different.  His only real Star- Bela Lugosi- died while allegedly reading this Script.

Obviously, the combination of age and drug use killed him, not the bad writing.  With a new Lead, Ed soldiered on to make...

You immediately know that this is an Ed Wood project.

First, he credits himself like 6 times on one page and THEN on another.

Second, who else writes such scintillating words like this?

***

After all of that build-up, what do we get?  It's...

Duke Moore (someone with only Ed Wood Credits) looking concerned, confused and sometimes scared in an empty Theater.  This one was shot without sound (since that was expensive).

All we hear is the late-great Dudley Manlove delivering Wood's hilariously-faux-classical dialog like a madman.

That's basically it- save for Stock Music and Sound Effects- for a good fifteen minutes until he goes upstairs, fondles an obviously-alive mannequin (played by an Actress who also only has Ed Wood Credits).

She smiles at him.
He leaves.
He finds a coffin and crawls inside.

That's it.  The End.

So that was...something.  The good part first- Dudley Manlove reading Ed Wood Dialog.  The Writing is silly and pretentious.  The delivery by Manlove makes it work in a weird, sort of twisted way for me.  He's not doing this like normal, serious narration.  He's clearly having a blast doing this.  Ed Wood- despite being a perfectionist in many regards- let alot of quality control clearly slip by him.  There's a reason that Plan 9 From Outer Space is studied by Film Students- it is chock full of mistakes and slip-ups.  So when it came to Manlove going full 'Doctor Orpheus' on his faux Poe prose, he either didn't see the humor or didn't care.  He gives you the ONLY bit of joy to be found in here.  Without him, all you have is Duke looking confused or frightened for long stretches of time.  This Pilot has a whole lot of *nothing* to be seen.  He wanders around.  A light goes out.  He wanders around.  He wanders around some more.  This is clearly supposed to be like The Raven or some sort of Lovecraft Tale.  The problem- there's no reason he can't leave.  Not getting into what the Ending is supposed to mean, it just feels like a guy who is standing around in a tuxedo being scared when he could just leave.  Speaking of that Tux. some of this footage is in Night of the Ghouls (from 1959) and he just writes in that the Police Captain was 'going to the Opera, so he was wearing a Tux' to cover this.  Is it good?  No.  Can it be funny with the right audience?  Maybe.  Like Ed Wood's sad, later days where he literally made Porn Films, it is still an interesting part of Film History to see this make the light of day.  Thanks, fellas.

If you're a die-hard Ed Wood fan, there's some fun to be had.  If you're looking for something truly funny, however, skip this and go for stuff like Plan 9.