Every September for thirty years, I’ve kicked off Halloween season the same way: Tim Burton’s film, the Rhino “Look Back in Angora” documentary by the late, great Ted Newsom, then a marathon of Edward D. Wood Jr’s actual movies. The cardboard tombstones, saucers on strings, Bela Lugosi stumbling through barely coherent stream-of-consciousness dialogue… it’s a … Read more
“Don’t get goofy on me.” Ed Wood arrived on home video today in 1995, after pulling the shtrink on an October 7th, 1994 theatrical release. Tim Burton’s infectiously earnest love poem to the work of a certain Edward D. Wood Jr. – and his entourage of ‘misfits and dope addicts’ – has been a perennial … Read more
Most cult movies don’t set out to be cult movies. They’re either misunderstood masterpieces, auteur-driven oddities only appreciated by fellow weirdos, or train wrecks so bad they loop back around to being entertaining. It’s a status that’s earned over time, granted by an audience rather than declared by the filmmakers. Uwe Boll, take note. Within … Read more