Oh Ed Wood, you silly, silly man. Despite the well deserved Worst Director of All Time labels I just can’t give his movies less than *** , They’re just too damn much fun to watch. Frankly I’ll take Wood’s incompetence and 8-year-old-with-ADD imagination over most of today’s insufferable B-movie horror. Night of the Ghouls is just as good, bad, so-bad-it’s-good and just-plain-bad as any of his work. Because of Wood’s inability to afford the lab fees to produce the negatives, this film wasn’t aired to the public until 1987. Needless to say it was worth the wait.
The plot? Do you really want to know? Really? Well alright then, I’ll give it a shot. The first few minutes don’t make any sense whatsoever. There’s a woman crying in police station about something and then a car drives off a cliff. The car is never explained or even mentioned again. Moving on. A young couple are attacked and killed by a mysterious veiled ghost woman in a graveyard. But forget about her for a moment as she actually has precious little to do with the story. Wood eventually settles on a plot involving a psychic scam artist (isn’t that redundant?) named Dr. Acula who operates out of Willow’s Lake. “Willow’s Lake? You mean the place where the mad doctor made monsters?” asks the bumbling cop sent to investigate. “Oh no use getting excited – the doctor and the monster were destroyed years ago by lightning.” Sure why not.
Lt. Bradford goes undercover and witnesses Dr. Acula’s séance which amounts to a group of suckers sitting around a table holding hands with skeletons in addition to a bugle dangling from strings. Tor Johnson makes things livelier by playing the only role he knows how to play – a disfigured, slow-moving, dim-witted but still highly dangerous monster named Lobo. He’s awesome, as always. Dr. Acula’s scheme eventually backfires when his ability to contact the dead turns out to be more real than he ever suspected. There’s really nothing else I can say. This movie is purely ridiculous, beginning to end.
Oh one more thing! It’s never clear whether or not Dr. Acula (the whitest white man to ever sport a turban) is actually a vampire or not. There is no indication whatsoever aside from the fact that he sleeps in a coffin. Maybe I missed something…
5 comments:
I forgot to mention that the veiled ghost woman comes back at the very last minute for one last shocker! (Who or what she is is left to our imagination though.)
Dr. Acula. Hmm, there's something about that name that troubles me...
Nice review, you gave me some good laughs, which is always a good thing while working in a mood disorders clinic!
I just adore Ed Wood, he truly believed he was a visionary. Maybe he was in a way, after all we're still watching his films. Excellent review.
Excellent. I can't believe I keep putting off watching some Ed Wood stuff. Your review has got me on a mission to find some now.
The reference to the mad scientist, monster, lightning, etc. is to Wood's film "Bride of the Monster" where Bela Lugosi had his last speaking role as the aforementioned mad scientist - he is really awesome in the movie. This one is a sequel to "Bride"
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