Acknowledging Bride of the Monster (1955) as the most lavishly mounted work in the portfolio of cult favorite director Edward D. Wood Jr. (1924-1978) would be akin to recognizing the smartest of the Three Stooges. While the production values may have been on a par with a serviceable "B" picture, there's still plenty of the shaky continuity, stilted dialogue and eccentric performances that posthumously earned the tale-spinner his curious niche in cinema appreciation.

Wood's scenario opened on a pair of storm-trapped hunters who made the grave error of looking for shelter in a supposedly abandoned lakefront mansion. At the door, they receive a brusque reception from the expatriated Eastern European scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff (Bela Lugosi) and his hulking mute manservant Lobo (Tor Johnson). One of the unfortunate nimrods bolts into the self-animated clutches of Vornoff's mutated giant octopus, released from his subterranean tank onto the shorefront. The other is overpowered by Lobo, and taken to Vornoff's hidden lab as his latest subject.

The doctor, it seems, wants to prove his widely ridiculed theories correct by utilizing atomic energy to create a race of supermen. However, every unfortunate local exposed to his radiation cannon--which rather suspiciously resembles a photographic enlarger dangling from a microphone stand--has died as a result of the treatment. The string of disappearances, meanwhile, hasn't gone unnoticed by the authorities. Lt. Dick Craig (Tony McCoy) is at a loss for answers, and his aggravation is compounded by the fact that the media drumbeat is primarily coming from his journalist fiancée Janet Lawton (Loretta King).

It isn't long before Janet is snooping around the Vornoff homestead for answers, as is Prof. Strowski (George Becwar), an accredited creature expert brought in by the cops, but possessed of his own peculiar agenda. It doesn't take long for the reporter to fall into Vornoff's hypnotic thrall, and she's very shortly thereafter strapped to a lab table, regaled in bridal white. Throw in some angora-fueled jealous rage on the part of Lobo, and a devastatingly successful trial for Vornoff's device, and the film heads to its fissionable conclusion.

Wood was famous for obtaining the financing for his efforts on the fly, and Bride of the Monster would prove no exception. The bulk of the cash came courtesy of a meat packer named Donald McCoy, who, of course, had a few strings attached to his participation. Besides the installation of his son as both the heroic lead and executive producer, McCoy required that the script end with an atomic explosion, so as to give voice to his personal concerns regarding the nuclear age. Wood's then-girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, has maintained that King offered to put up the finishing costs in exchange for the role of Janet, resulting in her relegation to a small role; the relationship never recovered.

Beyond the dubious high-tech of the Vornoff lab, the signature cheesy element of Bride of the Monster remains the killer octopus, whose prior screen fame came in the John Wayne seafaring adventure Wake of the Red Witch (1948). By various accounts, Ed personally pilfered the mutant mollusk from the Republic prop department; however, the mechanisms that animated the arms were either missing or broken. The on-screen victims of this flaccid fiend were obliged to provide both ends of their own death struggles.

By the time he came into Ed Wood's orbit, the once-great Hungarian matinee idol Lugosi had been personally and professionally worn down by years of morphine addiction, as well as being steadfastly typed as a boogeyman for productions of ever-diminishing quality. Bride of the Monster would offer the last substantive speaking role he ever committed to celluloid. In the sequence where Vornoff is offered repatriation, Lugosi patently had to be channeling the humiliation of his circumstances in his delivery: "Home? I have no home! Hunted, despised, living like an animal...The jungle is my home!"

Wood regular Paul Marco, whose role as the knuckleheaded cop Kelton would be reprised in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) and Night of the Ghouls (1959), had vivid recollections of filming the scene. As he told author Tom Weaver for Return of the B Science Fiction and Horror Heroes, "Bela was not sickly, but he was tired, and not 100 percent well. So we put all his dialogue on cue cards... Well, he did it, without even looking at the cards, and the whole crew burst into applause and told him how great it was."

Before his noted career as a producer with AIP, Alex Gordon had been a friend and collaborator of Wood's, and was responsible for the screenplay's initial first draft. In Weaver's Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Flashbacks, he seemed to be at something of a loss when considering the Ed wood phenomenon. "I mean, Eddie was trying on a nothing budget to make these things just to be making movies. He was really in love with the idea of making movies and thrilled to be able to put something together and put it on the screen. The fact that he had absolutely no aptitude for it was something that was just in his character!"

Producer: Edward D. Wood, Jr., Donald E. McCoy
Director: Edward D. Wood, Jr.
Screenplay: Edward D. Wood, Jr., Alex Gordon
Cinematography: Ted Allan, William C. Thompson
Film Editing: Warren Adams
Music: Frank Worth
Cast: Bela Lugosi (Dr. Eric Vornoff), Tor Johnson (Lobo), Tony McCoy (Lt. Dick Craig), Loretta King (Janet Lawton), Harvey B. Dunn (Capt. Tom Robbins), George Becwar (Prof. Vladimir Strowski).
BW-68m.

by Jay S. Steinberg