Dramatization of the life of B-movie director, Ed Wood.
| Title | Ed Wood (Special Edition) |
| Directed By | Tim Burton |
| Label | Touchstone / Disney |
| MPAA Rating | R (Restricted) |
| Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 |
| Format |
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| Original Release Date | 1994-09-28 |
| Brand | Buena Vista Home Video |
| Studio | Touchstone / Disney |
| Starring | Johnny Depp,Martin Landau,Sarah Jessica Parker,Patricia Arquette,Jeffrey Jones |
| Running Time | 127 minutes |
| Release Date | 2004-10-19 |
| Manufacturer | Touchstone / Disney |
| Publisher | Touchstone / Disney |
| Region Code | 1 |
| Theatrical Release Date | 1994-09-28 |
| UPC | 786936212501 |
| EAN | 0786936212501 |
| Number Of Discs | 1 |
| MPN | 786936212501 |
| Creator |
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Review by Rosemarie Goodman, 2010-09-01
Ever since i saw "Ed Wood" in October 1994, I was in love with this film!
The opening credits which are very creative help set the mood
as the film unfolds.
Bottom of the B films ladder, struggling director Ed Wood trys to get his artistic vision made even if hes the only one who can invision the final masterpiece!
One thing comes up threw out & that is the main character Ed Wood's loyalty to his friends & coworkers.
As Ed begs borrows & steals to get his films made! The acting is superb by a great cast ,starring Johnny Depp as Ed, Sara Jessica
Parker as Ed's girl friend Delores.
The funny Jeffery Jones as the great Chriswell, the hilarious Bill Murray as Bunny! & the wonderful Patricia Arquette as Kathy Ed's future wife to be.
And its a all true! Enjoy, Martin Goodman
Review by Miles Forman, 2010-08-14
Ed Wood may be both Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's finest hour in the film biz! This bio-pic about legendary B-Movie icon Ed Wood is marvelously done from every aspect of the craft. The same cannot be said for the real Ed Wood, as you'll learn here his films where often flimsy and contrived. However, Mr. Woods life story is highly intriguing; way more so then his body of work. If only they had behind the scenes footage from way back then...Even better we have this film! BUY IT!
Review by S. Tyrrell, 2010-07-20
I love this movie. Johnny Depp is awesome! Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi is Incredible! I believe he may have won an Oscar for his role. There are many celebrities in this film and they all do a great job. The movie is sometimes a little sad but mostly very, very, funny. It's also an interesting story about the life of filmmaker Ed Wood Jr.
Review by Anonymous, 2010-06-20
It takes a special weird genius to be voted the Worst Director of All Time, a title that Wood has earned by acclamation. He was so in love with every frame of every scene of every film he shot that he was blind to hilarious blunders, stumbling ineptitude, and acting so bad that it achieved a kind of grandeur. But badness alone would not have been enough to make him a legend; it was his love of film, sneaking through, that pushes him over the top.
Wood's most famous films are "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (during which his star, Bela Lugosi, died and was replaced by a double with a cloak pulled over his face), and "Glen or Glenda," in which Wood himself played the transvestite title roles. It was widely known even at the time that Wood himself was an enthusiastic transvestite, and when Tim Burton, director of the "Batman" movies, announced a project named "Ed Wood," I assumed it would be some kind of a camp sendup, maybe a cross between "Rocky Horror" and "Sunset Boulevard." I assumed wrong. What Burton has made is a film which celebrates Wood more than it mocks him, and which celebrates, too, the zany spirit of 1950s exploitation films - in which a great title, a has-been star and a lurid ad campaign were enough to get bookings for some of the oddest films ever made. It was a decade when there were still lots of drive-in movie theaters, cut-price fleapits and small-town bijous that thrived on grade Z double features.
The people who made many of those films may have been hucksters and conmen, but they were not devoid of a sense of humor, and often their movies had more life and energy than their betters. America's theaters hadn't been centralized and computerized, and you couldn't book 2,000 screens with a single keystroke, and Ed Woods could thrive.
Burton's career has always shown a fondness for touching outsiders, like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, Batman and Jack Skellington (the lonely star of "The Nightmare Before Christmas"). In "Ed Wood," he gives us a hero who is not merely an outsider, but one who attracts even more desperate cases to himself. Played with warmth and enthusiasm by Johnny Depp, Wood is a guy who simply must make movies - and who is so bedazzled by Hollywood legend that he mistakes poor Bela Lugosi, long past his prime and mired in drug addiction, as a star.
There are others who fall into his orbit: Bunny Breckinridge (Bill Murray), a camp queen who would have stood out like a sore thumb in anyone else's pictures, but fit right into Wood's. And the amazing Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), amazing primarily for being able to find employment for no apparent talent. And Tor Johnson (George "The Animal" Steele), physically inept but gifted in Wood's eyes. And Vampira (Lisa Marie), the midnight movie hostess whose cleavage always looked clammy. And then Lugosi (a brilliant performance by Martin Landau), as a man who was half Wood's headliner, half his patient. When Wood assembled his casts, they looked like a cartoon portrait from Mad magazine.
In Burton's version, Wood is a man who not only accepts reality, but celebrates it. Far from being secretive about his love of dressing in women's clothes, he treats it as the most natural thing in the world, putting on an angora sweater, skirt and high heels to help himself relax while directing a scene. "Are you a homosexual?" he's asked. "No!" he replies cheerfully. "I'm a transvestite!" Depp plays Wood as a man deliriously happy to be making movies. He rarely makes two takes of the same shot because the first one always looks great to him. (In one take Tor Johnson misses the door and walks into a wall, shaking the set, but when the cameraman in amazement asks Wood if he doesn't want another shot, he replies thoughtfully, "You know, in actuality Lobo would have to struggle with that problem every day").
Wood's partner in his uncertain career is his long-suffering fiancee Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker), whose misfortune is to view his situation clearly ("I see the usual gang of misfits and dope addicts are here"). She bravely tries to deal with his cross-dressing, however, and pitches in to act along with the usual gang (Wood's salaries were so low and infrequent that his actors bordered on volunteers).
I am uncertain how much of the movie is based on actual fact, and how much has been invented by Burton and his writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. But I relished the process by which Wood's project "Grave Robbers from Outer Space" became "Plan 9 from Outer Space" after he raised the money from a church group which objected to grave-robbing, in the title, anyway.
There is a wonderful scene where Wood grows angered when the church leaders try to meddle with his vision, and stomps into Musso and Frank's legendary grill room on Hollywood Boulevard, wearing women's clothes and a wig. he spots Orson Welles (Vincent D'Onofrio) alone at a booth, turns to him for encouragement, and gets it - along with the movie's funniest line of dialogue.
The movie's black and white photography convincingly recaptures the look and feel of 1950s sleaze, including some of the least convincing special effects in movie history. There are also running gags involving Wood's ability to write almost any piece of stock footage into almost any script.
At the heart of the movie is Wood's friendship with Lugosi, a man he truly adores, and who comes to depend on him. We see Lugosi alone and lonely in a flimsy little tract house, inhabiting the deepening gloom of his obscurity and addiction (his first scene in the movie shows him trying on a coffin for size), and Wood is able to lift the gloom, if only briefly, in a final series of roles which gave him double immortality: As the star of some of the best horror movies ever made, and then of some of the worst.
Review by H. Jin, 2010-06-03
It would be the easiest thing in the world to cruelly point and laugh at Z-grade movie-maker Ed Wood. So of course, Tim Burton doesn't do that for this biopic. Instead, we're treated to a more rounded and sympathetic view of the infamous director; he is portrayed as a man who simply loved making films, and who wasn't going to let his lack of talent or money stifle his enthusiasm.
A lot of the credit must obviously go to Johnny Depp, who infuses Wood with an infectious energy and optimism. Despite laughing at his cack-handed attempts at camerawork and special effects, you cannot help but cheer for Wood and hope he can make the masterpiece he aims for. Likewise, Martin Landau provides a memorable performance as the ageing, washed-up Bela Lugosi, giving him a real presence and sense of dignity. There are some excellent supporting roles too, with Bill Murray, Patricia Arquette, and Sarah Jessica Parker turning in strong performances.
Tim Burton really nails the look and feel of the film. It's not just the black-and-white cinematography, Burton really brings out the spirit of Wood in things such as Criswell-style narration and deliberately cheesy opening credits, as well as recreating a number of famous scenes from Wood's films. You get the sense that Burton is genuinely fascinated with his subject, and that he does have respect for Wood's dedication and independence, if not his talent. The film seems to long for a (perhaps mythical) past when film-making wasn't controlled by a handful of Hollywood executives, and anyone with a camera and an idea could just go out and make the movie they wanted.
`Ed Wood' is an inspired take on Wood and his films, and a very memorable one. This is an excellent, under-rated film that ticks all the boxes: memorable performances, fantastic energy, great direction, and most importantly, an unexpected empathy with its subject. Five stars.
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