Even if you think you don’t know him, you know him. Few in the Hollywood orbit have had greater influence; few have experienced more humiliating failure in their lifetime. Thanks in part to the biopic directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp and bearing his name, Ed Wood has become an icon of Americana.
Perhaps the purest expression of Wood’s théma—pink angora sweaters, over-the-top violence and the fraught relationships between the sexes—can be found in his unadulterated short stories, many of which (including “Blood Splatters Quickly”) appeared in short-lived “girly” magazines published throughout the 1970s. The 32 stories included here have been verified by Bob Blackburn, a trusted associate of Kathy Wood, Ed’s widow. In the forty years or more since those initial appearances in adult magazines, none of these stories has been available to the public.
Wood died in 1978, but the legacy of the director of “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” “Glen or Glenda,” “Jail Bait” and so many other beloved screen classics has only grown in importance. Wood speaks—not least for himself—as one of America’s “outsiders” caught up in the struggle to find acceptance inside—and never more directly than in the material in this book.
Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and editor (often performing many of these functions simultaneously). In the 1950s, Wood made a run of independently produced, extremely low-budget horror, science fiction, and cowboy films, now celebrated for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric casts, and outlandish plot elements, although his flair for showmanship gave his productions at least a modicum of commercial success. Wood's popularity waned soon after his biggest "name" star, Béla Lugosi, died. He was able to salvage a saleable feature from Lugosi's last moments on film, but his career declined thereafter. Toward the end of his life, Wood made pornographic movies and wrote pulp crime, horror, and sex novels. His posthumous fame began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time.[1] The lack of conventional filmmaking ability in his work has earned Wood and his films a considerable cult following. Following the publication of Rudolph Grey's biography Nightmare of Ecstasy, Wood's life and work have undergone a public rehabilitation, with new light shed on his evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production, and Tim Burton's biopic, Ed Wood, earned two Academy Awards.
From the 1950s onward, Wood supplemented his directing and screenwriting income with hastily written pulp fiction, including innumerable pulp crime, horror, and sex novels and occasional non-fiction pieces. As he became increasingly unable to fund film projects, the novels seem to have become Wood's primary source of income.
Wood's novels frequently include transvestite or drag queen characters, or entire plots centering around transvestism (including his angora fetish), and tap into his love of crime fiction and the occult. Wood would often recycle plots of his films for novels, write novelizations of his own screenplays, or reuse elements from his novels in scripts. His first novel, Black Lace Drag was published in 1963 and reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag. Among his other books are Orgy of The Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968), and A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973). Descriptions of Wood's working methods in Nightmare of Ecstasy indicate he would work on a dozen projects at once, simultaneously watching television, eating, drinking, and carrying on conversations while typing. In his quasi-memoir, Hollywood Rat Race, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better."
As Wood's most famous films of the 1950s are not explicitly sexual or violent, the outré content of his novels may shock the unprepared reader. Wood's dark side emerges in such sexual shockers as Raped in the Grass or The Perverts and in short stories such as Toni: Black Tigress, which exploit hot-button topics like violence, rape, racial issues, juvenile delinquency, and drug culture.
Some of Wood's books remained unpublished during his lifetime. Hollywood Rat Race, for example, was written in 1965 and finally released in 1998. The nonfiction book is part primer for young actors and filmmakers, and part memoir. In Rat Race, Wood recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.
I love Ed Wood—and I say that without adding qualifiers like “ironically” or “as a joke.” For me, his films constitute the height of cinematic outsider art: disarmingly strange, deeply personal, unflaggingly independent… and, yes, okay, wonderfully incompetent (although there’s something to be said for the accidental surrealism of something like Glenn or Glenda).
His short fiction gives us more of this bizarro, spit-and-chewing-gum aesthetic and offers a more unfiltered look into his (deeply troubled) mind. This collection, which puts together all of the various stories Wood wrote for porno mags throughout the 70s, gives us another roughhewn and unsettling trip through Wood’s various obsessions: horror kitsch, pulp violence, sexual fetishism, criminality, crossdressing, and (of course) angora sweaters. The stories run the gamut from workmanlike B-sides to pure pop-surrealism… and those bizarre prose experiments really stick out. It quickly becomes clear that Wood didn’t have his heart in all of these. Some of them feel padded out and inconsequential, and not even Wood’s signature purple prose can bring any life to them. Others, however… well, let’s just say I had to pick my jaw off the floor numerous times. The highs are dizzying high, in this respect: booze-soaked and bizarre and wonderfully entertaining. Highlights include the loopy “Blood Splatters Quickly,” the enjoyably overwrought “Scream Your Bloody Head Off,” the stupendously goofy “Hellfire,” the lurid “To Kill a Saturday Night,” the farcical “Come Inn,” and the flat-out insane “Calamity Jane Loves Hosenose Kate Loves Cattle Anne.”
This collection also makes me wish I could find a copy of Ed Wood’s Killer in Drag. But alas… looks like that’ll be out-of-print forever.
Ed Wood fue un guionista y director de cine muy excéntrico y esperpéntico, que cobró notoriedad en su Estados Unidos natal a partir del biopic de Tim Burton y Johnny Depp. Fue tachado de ser "el peor director de la Historia" por sus resonantes fracasos cinematográficos, el más célebre de ellos Plan 9 del espacio sideral. Parece ser que este hombre, que era todo un personaje extraño para su época, un rarito que a pesar de no ser gay y tener pareja estable gustaba, cada tanto, de vestirse de mujer, no logró volver a filmar más películas y debió dedicarse a la escritura para sobrevivir. Colocando sus relatos en revistas pornográficas de la época, entre páginas de mujeres desnudas, escribió una treintena antes de ser despedido por su editor debido a su constante estado etílico. Como era de esperar, estos relatos están llenos de las locuras, el absurdo y el humor negro de un Ed Wood bastante intoxicado que aún así lograba sacar algunas piezas interesantes. Hay por lo menos 10 piezas que valen la pena, y no olvidemos que esto es puro pulp barato escrito en los años 70.
La sangre se esparce rápidamente: un joven investiga el asesinato de su bella hermana. Puro pulp bizarro con vuelta de tuerca.
Divorcio isleño: un gordo gay y adinerado se consigue un gigoló más joven, pero las cosas no le resultarán nada bien.
Misión(era) imposible: unos misioneros en la selva, en busca de una tribu perdida, desearán no haberla encontrado jamás cuando conozcan a su reina.
A grito pelado: puro shudder pulp clásico, un deleite de sangre y tripas. El mejor cuento de la antología.
La Estrella del sexo: una ninfómana casada decide dedicarse a la pornografía, y gracias a esto descubrirá el bizarro secreto que oculta su marido.
Pechugas en bandeja: el otro gran relato de la colección, un perverso que gusta de comer carne humana recibe su merecido.
Acabar en un hotel: una pareja con problemas sexuales busca la solución en un viejo caserón donde mora una vieja bruja que duerme en un ataúd.
El día que la momia regresó: unos arqueólogos desentierran una momia y esta vuelve a la vida, con fatídicas consecuencias. Se nota el cariño de Wood por las películas clásicas del género.
El prostíbulo del terror: una prostituta, buscando estabilidad laboral, cae en manos de unos sádicos que se dedican a infectar a la gente con diferentes enfermedades venéreas.
Telón final: una fallida imitación de Poe.
Definitivamente Ed Wood amaba el cine, pero el cine no lo amaba a él. Lo intentó con la escritura y tampoco tuvo suerte, pero no se puede decir que el hombre no pusiera lo mejor de sí. Nos quedan estos relatos, algunos completamente absurdos y desechables, otros interesantes por lo anecdótico.
With as long and varied as his career was, it’s a shame that when most folks talk about Ed Wood the focus is exclusively on his short stretch of films starting with Glen or Glenda and ending with The Sinister Urge. After his brief film journey in the 50s he started pumping out a ton of short stories and paperbacks, the majority of which are near impossible to get. This book collects some of his short stories and includes his excursions into crime, supernatural horror, and smut. The stories are engaging, with a hard boiled tone reminiscent of Dragnet, but with the typical Wood flourishes (yes, he mentions angora sweaters in several of these stories). I’m not going to make a claim that he was a secret literary genius, but these stories are a lot of fun and worth reading, and his dialog in some of these stories (in particular the story about craps players at a funeral) is surprisingly good.
This book has a somewhat strange mix of short stories. In the introduction to the book, it is mentioned that most of the stories are from a limited period of time, in spite of the fact that the author wrote throughout his life. So this selection is both limited in the time span, and presumably as a vehicle for showing the author’s talent or some might say lack of talent.
Some of the sexually titillating stories in the book I would consider as raunchy. Sex does not play a role in all of the stories, but in quite a few of them it is right out front. Some of the stories have a cleverly surprising ending.
Directos y viscerales, los cuentos aquí reunidos bajo la firma del legendario Ed Wood Jr. apuntan al pulp más básico en su vertiente efectista. Relatos breves cuyo escaso pulimento y caracterización dan paso a un festín xploitation que atraviesa diversos géneros (western, terror, erotismo), revelando además la urgencia y el desahogo propios de un creador que - viviendo años difíciles - apuntó a los instintos básicos del ser humano en títulos desechables que apuntan a su lectura rápida... consiguiendo irónicamente resultados más que notables dentro de su nicho.
Mal escritos, a veces grotescos, otras delirantes, otras involuntariamente geniales, los cuentos de este volumen —sin una pizca de arte, escritos para comer, para beber, para calentar, para, en fin, vivir— solo podrían haber surgido de la mente afiebrada de Ed Wood. Protagonizados por travestis, homosexuales, borrachos, prostitutas, asesinos, criminales, soldados, vaqueros y religiosos, apuntan a la efectividad y aciertan. Son malos, pero únicos, y eso es mucho decir.
Un montón de cuentos al pie, directos, con desparpajos, sangrientos, terroríficos, sexuales y graciosos. Los hay de terror, de bar, de prostitutas, de esposas frustradas sexualmente, de maltrato, de travestis, de momias, de borrachos. Parecen escritos al tiro y casi todos tienen un final con remate, como un punch line con el título o un juego de palabras. Algunos son joyitas. Otros son flojitos. Pero muy divertidos.
¿Te gusta el pulp? Te va a encantar este libro. ¿No te gusta el pulp? ¿Qué haces aquí? ¿No conoces el pulp? Excelente, te recomiendo empezar con los cuentos "No hay ateos en la tumba" y "El día que la momia regresó". Si te gustan, sigue leyendo, que este mundo es maravillosamente pulp.
This is filled with some very sadistically horny and not at all spooky absurdist dialogue e.g. TO KILL A SATURDAY NIGHT and THE AUTOGRAPH will be both quality knee slappers and head scratchers for most.
O estadunidense Edward Davis Wood Jr., mais conhecido como Ed Wood(1924/1978), foi diretor, ator, produtor, roteirista e escritor. Sua, por assim dizer, notoriedade começou em 1980 quando o livro “Golden Turkey Awards” colocou no topo da lista dos piores filmes de todos os tempos um filme de Ed – o estranhíssimo “Plan 9 from outer space”. Neste filme, lançado em 1957, de baixíssimo orçamento com (d)efeitos especiais risíveis e tendo como um dos “destaques” algumas cenas iniciais protagonizadas pelo notório Bela Lugosi (1882/1956), um dos mais famosos Dráculas do cinema, uns alienígenas mal ajambrados numa nave mambembe, trazem de volta à vida três indivíduos como forma de brecar o crescimento do poderio nuclear do planeta Terra (sim, isso mesmo). A “premiação” de “Plan 9 from outer space” despertou o interesse de um certo nicho de público para a obra de Ed e outros filmes do cineasta como “Glen or Glenda” e “Bride of the monster” despertaram o interesse de muitos. Desde então os filmes de Ed passaram a ser exibidos em festivais, foram relançados em VHS e DVD e ganharam status CULT, a despeito das bizarrices e estranhezas. Em 1995 o cineasta Tim Burton dirigiu uma cinebiografia de Ed Wood. Protagonizado com esmero por Johnny Depp, o filme foi sucesso de público e de crítica, tendo ganhado, inclusive, dois oscars (maquiagem e ator coadjuvante – Martim Landau, excelente como Bela Lugosi). A cinebiografia reforçou ainda mais o interesse pelo diretor do “pior filme de todos os tempos”. Um lado pouco conhecido de Ed Wood é o “lado escritor”. Esse caprichado lançamento da editora Darkside preenche essa lacuna. Essa edição com uma capa rosa muito “fashion” foi organizada por Bob Blackburn, especialista no trabalho de Ed Wood e ilustrada com muita ousadia e talento por Laerte. São 33 narrativas curtas e algo delirantes que, escritas com linguagem por demais pop, ágil, direta e sem firulas narrativas, trafegam com desenvoltura pelo terror, pelo horror, pelo suspense, pela pornografia, pela fantasia e pelo drama. Os personagens criados por Ed Wood apresentam graus variados de afronta à sociedade burguesa, capitalista e cristã estadunidense e é impressionante a quantidade de personagens que hoje seriam denominados membros da comunidade LGBTQIA+. Ele mesmo, Ed Wood, era um heterossexual crossdresser (na Segunda Guerra Mundial, quando serviu com bravura tendo, inclusive, recebido condecorações, seu temor era ser capturado ou morto pois isso, fatalmente revelaria que, por debaixo da farda, ele vestia roupas íntimas femininas). Ed é, hoje em dia, considerado um homem à frente de seu tempo e, um ícone LGBTQIA+. Todas os contos merecem uma atenta conferida mas destaco “O grito de Banshee”, “Drácula revisitado”, “Eu, bruxo”, “Estrela do sexo”, “Os seios da galinha”, “A cena do crime”, “No solitário pedregoso”, “O amor delas” e “O prostíbulo do horror”. Paulo Biscaia Filho, graduado em Artes Cênicas pela PUC-PR e Mestre em Estudos Teatrais pela Royal Holloway University of London, na excelente introdução disse, com muita propriedade e sensibilidade, sobre Ed Wood, o seguinte:
“Sua obra traz a certeza de que os espaços para questionar qualidade não apenas são desprovidos de objetividade como nem sempre são aplicáveis para a apreciação de uma obra. Eddie sempre fugiu das convenções – e até mesmo dos padrões de quebra das convenções”.
Por demais bizarro mas muito interessante e divertido. Ótima pedida!
This is not a five star book in the traditional sense. It's a sleazy collection of stories written by a desperate alcoholic to make the rent/booze money and the goal was to fill pages in adult magazines. There are stories of Wood banging these pages out completely hammered while entertaining guests in his apartment. Most of these stories barely make sense. They were written for adult magazines, but none of them are "porn" and any erotic content in them can't really count. All the "sexy" stories are filled with characters complaining and insulting each other. Most of the stories feels like noir, drunk bums bumbling through life. At best, as far as the writing goes, this is three stars.
The thing is, this is more than just a collection of short stories, just coming from Ed Wood elevates it. Every story in this feels like it has part of Wood's ID in it. Breathless self-loathing pages dedicated to describing and cherishing booze. Wood's drag name "Shirly" and the descriptions of Angora float through many of these. Every genre from crime to war is represented. The more sexual stories are nearly all homosexual punchlines, but you will find a proto-Necromania - One of Wood's last adult films - in these pages. Every story has a touch of the sleaze demanded and damn, some of these are good enough to stand on their own. Wood is such an enigmatic character in film/pop culture that this is an absolutely invaluable collection for fans to read.
My advice? Don't read more than 1-3 stories in a sitting for maximum impact. Wallow in this. It's rewarding.
Not exactly good per se. The restrictions of pulp locks a boot to most authors as opposed to lifting them up. And that's not even getting into the encouragement of propping up problematic topics. So that's one of the problems with this, another is that Wood just isn't a great writer. He churns em out and sits on one idea for too many pages (and there's not even a ton of pages to work with in the first place).
Nevertheless, when this is more of a stream of consciousness relay of Wood's thoughts and kinks, it's pretty good. Good in the sense that, although not formally inventive, it gets to a truth about a person.
En La sangre se esparce rápidamente, nos encontramos con una recopilación de cuentos escritos por Ed Wood entre 1969 y 1975, un período en el que su particular estilo pulp se manifestó en revistas eróticas de la época. Este libro, como su autor, tiene un encanto peculiar y desordenado.
Los 27 cuentos aquí reunidos oscilan entre ideas fascinantes y ejecuciones fallidas. Wood presenta conceptos originales y extravagantes: vaqueras lesbianas, travestis liderando tribus indígenas, rituales de nigromancia para superar disfunciones sexuales, y pilotos de guerra con una relación tóxica con el whisky. Estas premisas, llenas de potencial, capturan su habilidad para imaginar escenarios únicos, pero su ejecución narrativa deja mucho que desear.
El problema no es la falta de creatividad, sino la forma en que estas ideas se desarrollan. Los relatos carecen de solidez estructural, precisión y profundidad, lo que hace que muchas historias se sientan mediocres o inacabadas. A pesar de esto, hay un magnetismo en su estilo caótico y su visión del mundo, que transforma incluso los textos menos logrados en piezas de curiosidad cultural.
Este libro es, en esencia, para los fanáticos de Ed Wood y para quienes buscan una ventana al espíritu excéntrico de una era del pulp americano. Aunque no sea una obra maestra, ofrece una experiencia que, como su autor, es única, desbordante de personalidad y ligeramente defectuosa.
Me encantó como una lectura muy diferente a la que suelo recurrir, además para aprender algo del género pulp. Esperaba encontrarme más con el terror como comentaba en el prólogo pero no hay mucho de eso mas que algunos guiños. Cuentos muy cortos sobre prostitución, crímenes, descubrimiento de los placeres sexuales, mucho humor y sobre todo buenos finales inesperados. Al final me ha gustado leer algo diferente.
Eek...! This hasn't lit any fires under me so far. I think I'm nearly through with it at this point and it doesn't promise to get much better from what I can see either. The extremely short one about the banshee has been the best of them so far, and even that wasn't too much to write home about. Here's hoping for a single, mind-blowing piece amongst the remaining few. But I shan't hold my breath.
La genialidad de algunos relatos te recuerdan el potencial que tenía Ed Wood, pero después te encontrás con ciertas narraciones bastante peculiares, inclusive algunas de más. Pulp en su máxima expresión.
This could be called THE ED WOOD READER because these stories run the gamut of all the genres the filmmaker attempted. Unfortunately, the current title implies this is all horror which is somewhat misleading I feel. Enjoyable and Recommended!!!’
Efectivamente no es una obra maestra de la literatura, pero es uno de los libros más entretenidos que leí. Hay un par de relatos que sobran, pero hay otros que rebalsan de genialidad.
it'll come as no surprise that Ed Wood is not a good writer. No one probably picked this book up expecting to be surprised. what Wood supplies in place of talent or diligent work, is a child's enthusiasm that manifests in a sort of rush to get to the end. he may have been at the mercy of word count, but every tale here seems to be in a mad dash to get to the finale. Wood simultaneously wastes page space with constant repetition, and then leaves me wishing the stories had been further developed instead of suddenly ending.
like his films, Wood's fiction lacks the patience necessary to really explore and tell a story, he's more in love with the idea of stories and having written them, as opposed to writing them.