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Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood
Rereleased to coincide with Ed Wood, a Tim Burton movie based on the book, this authoritative underground biography brings to life the renegade filmmaker who broke new ground in absurd supernatural horror and campy suspense. The author recalls the '50s, when the invasion of movie houses by monsters became a national youth craze. 140 photos.
231 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
November 20, 2008
Great book, even if you hate Ed Wood movies there's still tons of great photos and greater stories of the sleazy B-movie craze of the 1950's. Not as cuddly as the Johnny Depp portrayal, he pretty much became a Bukowski stew-bum drunk in the Hollywood scene in the 1970's writing porn. This book never gets boring!
February 6, 2017
This book was not what I was expecting. Which I probably should have expected given the subject.
Instead of a standard biography that follows chronologically through the live of Edward D. Wood, Jr, we are instead presented with a series of interviews from the people who knew him best. These interviews from friends and family are put in a rough order, but more based on the subject matter of the moment instead of any distinct timeline of events. This can throw the reader for a loop, as it did me, when the speaker mentions something that tangentially relates to the subject at hand, but happened either long before or long after the event being discussed in the moment. It got a little confusing at points.
The whole book reads more like a documentary film would, with the interviews set to footage and images from Wood's life. It's like Grey planned this as a film, couldn't get the proper funding, so just published the interviews in book form instead. How very Ed Wood of him.
Still, this is a fascinating look into the life of Ed Wood, king of schlock. Not only are there in depth, very frank moments from his friends and family, but Grey also includes a full bibliography and filmography of all of Ed Wood's work. Because, hey, if you really want to get into the head of a creative, just absorb their content.
Instead of a standard biography that follows chronologically through the live of Edward D. Wood, Jr, we are instead presented with a series of interviews from the people who knew him best. These interviews from friends and family are put in a rough order, but more based on the subject matter of the moment instead of any distinct timeline of events. This can throw the reader for a loop, as it did me, when the speaker mentions something that tangentially relates to the subject at hand, but happened either long before or long after the event being discussed in the moment. It got a little confusing at points.
The whole book reads more like a documentary film would, with the interviews set to footage and images from Wood's life. It's like Grey planned this as a film, couldn't get the proper funding, so just published the interviews in book form instead. How very Ed Wood of him.
Still, this is a fascinating look into the life of Ed Wood, king of schlock. Not only are there in depth, very frank moments from his friends and family, but Grey also includes a full bibliography and filmography of all of Ed Wood's work. Because, hey, if you really want to get into the head of a creative, just absorb their content.
April 30, 2008
I found the format of this book to be very annoying. There is no narrative, only excerpts from interviews taken from various people on various areas of Ed Wood's life. If you are a fan of Ed Wood the film then most of the information in this book will not be new to you. I was expecting a lot more from this book and it did not deliver. I would only suggest reading this if you absolutely do not know anything about Ed Wood. If you are already familiar with Mr. Wood I'd steer clear of this one.
February 6, 2017
Pics and interview segments about the life of Ed Wood.
My biographobia defeated my Ed Wood curiosity in straight sets. Read 20 pages, bounced around the rest of the book for a half hour over lunch, threw in the towel.
The book's a lot darker than the Tim Burton movie. Wood was an alcoholic wife-beater on top of being a gloriously terrible underrated hack.
My biographobia defeated my Ed Wood curiosity in straight sets. Read 20 pages, bounced around the rest of the book for a half hour over lunch, threw in the towel.
The book's a lot darker than the Tim Burton movie. Wood was an alcoholic wife-beater on top of being a gloriously terrible underrated hack.
November 19, 2025
Ed Wood, based on the book by Rudolph Grey
9.5 out of 10
Paradoxically and sadly, the hero of this splendid film was an almost absolute failure, but the story of his life, adapted for the big screen makes for compelling viewing.
One might be tempted to say that Johnny Depp is especially mesmerizing when he plays outre, troubled, bizarre characters like Edward D. Wood Jr., because he is also a very peculiar man, when off the set...perhaps on it as well.
To begin with, the director works in theater, but the critic that counts is not favorably impressed.
Ed Wood though is of an optimism that borders, perhaps surpasses, Panglossian exaggerations.
When his small cast, including the phenomenal Bill Murray as Bunny Breckinridge and his lover and actress Dolores Fuller aka Sarah Jessica Parker, is depressed by the negative review, the hero is optimistic...
He said the stage design was realistic.
There is an ad that mentions the making of a film about somebody who changes sex.
Ed Wood meets producer Georgie Weiss and some of the exchanges are hilarious...indeed, the whole film is a formidable cocktail of amusement and sorrow for the fate of almost all the protagonists.
The producer is honest, modest and states clearly that his films are crap.
One jocular line is the reply to the offer of putting a star in a production:
We will have shit with a star...or words to that effect
When Weiss is interested to know what makes this director especially qualified for the sex change feature, he confesses that he likes to wear women's clothes...underwear, brassiere and the whole paraphernalia.
He is not gay, loves women, but he has this fetish that would get him in trouble with Dolores, although not with Kathy O'Hara aka Patricia Arquette, who would be tolerant, if not interested, in this oddity of the writer- director.
Ed Wood would meet with Bela Lugosi, played by the majestic, glorious Martin Landau, who has won a deserved Oscar for is part.
The once great performer is no longer employed.
This is the moment when the director talks to the producer of minor films and explains he would get the great Lugosi for $ 1,000.
On the set, there would be a few memorable scenes, one of which has one member of the crew talk to the once famous star and say to him in awe...
You were the sidekick of Boris Karloff!
Karloff was not good enough to smell my shit, replies the furious Lugosi.
Ed Wood may remind you of The Disaster Artist.
Unsuccessful and perseverent , the hero would always have trouble raising money.
He is talking to anyone who could potentially finance his most often ridiculous projects.
Even in a meat packing hall, he takes the two conditions that the financial backer imposes with resignation.
One, I want the movie to end with an explosion, and two, my son, who is rather slow, will be the star, leading man...
In another instance, he thinks he has found a rich woman, who is given the lead role, causing thus a commotion at home, where his girlfriend is aghast, only to find that all she has is three hundred dollars...she had said that sixty thousand seems reasonable for the making of a movie, but never said she has them.
Then there would be religious people, who want to do twelve films and Ed Wood is there to help them.
The crew is baptized in a pool, they all attend church, albeit artistic differences would be a major handicap and would make the public laugh, yet again.
Ed Wood is a marvelous motion picture.
9.5 out of 10
Paradoxically and sadly, the hero of this splendid film was an almost absolute failure, but the story of his life, adapted for the big screen makes for compelling viewing.
One might be tempted to say that Johnny Depp is especially mesmerizing when he plays outre, troubled, bizarre characters like Edward D. Wood Jr., because he is also a very peculiar man, when off the set...perhaps on it as well.
To begin with, the director works in theater, but the critic that counts is not favorably impressed.
Ed Wood though is of an optimism that borders, perhaps surpasses, Panglossian exaggerations.
When his small cast, including the phenomenal Bill Murray as Bunny Breckinridge and his lover and actress Dolores Fuller aka Sarah Jessica Parker, is depressed by the negative review, the hero is optimistic...
He said the stage design was realistic.
There is an ad that mentions the making of a film about somebody who changes sex.
Ed Wood meets producer Georgie Weiss and some of the exchanges are hilarious...indeed, the whole film is a formidable cocktail of amusement and sorrow for the fate of almost all the protagonists.
The producer is honest, modest and states clearly that his films are crap.
One jocular line is the reply to the offer of putting a star in a production:
We will have shit with a star...or words to that effect
When Weiss is interested to know what makes this director especially qualified for the sex change feature, he confesses that he likes to wear women's clothes...underwear, brassiere and the whole paraphernalia.
He is not gay, loves women, but he has this fetish that would get him in trouble with Dolores, although not with Kathy O'Hara aka Patricia Arquette, who would be tolerant, if not interested, in this oddity of the writer- director.
Ed Wood would meet with Bela Lugosi, played by the majestic, glorious Martin Landau, who has won a deserved Oscar for is part.
The once great performer is no longer employed.
This is the moment when the director talks to the producer of minor films and explains he would get the great Lugosi for $ 1,000.
On the set, there would be a few memorable scenes, one of which has one member of the crew talk to the once famous star and say to him in awe...
You were the sidekick of Boris Karloff!
Karloff was not good enough to smell my shit, replies the furious Lugosi.
Ed Wood may remind you of The Disaster Artist.
Unsuccessful and perseverent , the hero would always have trouble raising money.
He is talking to anyone who could potentially finance his most often ridiculous projects.
Even in a meat packing hall, he takes the two conditions that the financial backer imposes with resignation.
One, I want the movie to end with an explosion, and two, my son, who is rather slow, will be the star, leading man...
In another instance, he thinks he has found a rich woman, who is given the lead role, causing thus a commotion at home, where his girlfriend is aghast, only to find that all she has is three hundred dollars...she had said that sixty thousand seems reasonable for the making of a movie, but never said she has them.
Then there would be religious people, who want to do twelve films and Ed Wood is there to help them.
The crew is baptized in a pool, they all attend church, albeit artistic differences would be a major handicap and would make the public laugh, yet again.
Ed Wood is a marvelous motion picture.
February 22, 2016
A friend who liked the cult black and white B movies loaned me this book. The photos were surprising; a film director wearing fluffy angora sweaters, the standard horror scenes and actors we expect of the genre.
The research was mainly a collection of conversations with people who had known Wood and acted in his low-budget, swiftly filmed, films which had little continuity. The list of films includes 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'. By the end however the stars had continued to work while Wood was sinking into alcoholism. A store owner was quoted as saying that Wood came in every day for a pint of spirits and 'you know when people are near the end because they start buying a half bottle. They sell everything to buy drink; the TV is always the last to go.'
I found it quite sad but maybe it was typical of the era. A lot of people seemed to have enjoyed working in the madcap filming and gained a living from it, though Wood was chronically financing one film from the promises of the last one. Anyway, I've never watched one of his films but must have seen clips. This book would better appeal to fans of the quirky director.
The research was mainly a collection of conversations with people who had known Wood and acted in his low-budget, swiftly filmed, films which had little continuity. The list of films includes 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'. By the end however the stars had continued to work while Wood was sinking into alcoholism. A store owner was quoted as saying that Wood came in every day for a pint of spirits and 'you know when people are near the end because they start buying a half bottle. They sell everything to buy drink; the TV is always the last to go.'
I found it quite sad but maybe it was typical of the era. A lot of people seemed to have enjoyed working in the madcap filming and gained a living from it, though Wood was chronically financing one film from the promises of the last one. Anyway, I've never watched one of his films but must have seen clips. This book would better appeal to fans of the quirky director.
October 28, 2010
While this book calls itself the "authoritative biography," it's really just a collection of interviews with people who knew Ed Wood and worked with him.Having said that, if you only know Ed from Tim Burton's wonderful biopic, then get ready to have your eyes opened. Certainly, Ed was a compulsive filmmaker -- he loved writing, producing and directing his own stuff, and his enthusiasm for his work is inspiring -- but he lived and drank hard, eventually spiralling into making sleazy porn flicks and writing bad exploitation novels just to survive. You'll read what girlfriends, actors, producers, drinking buddies, and -- from time to time -- even Wood himself had to say about Wood's talent, films, drinking, mood swings, compulsions, and, oh yeah, that angora sweater/transvestite thing. It's all good stuff, but it's not a biography -- so make sure you go into this knowing what to expect.
April 20, 2009
A fascinating exploration of the life, career, and bizarre social circle of one of the more infamously-untalented filmmakers in the history of film, Nightmare of Ecstasy is also the chronicle of a man who failed at virtually everything he ever did, yet found a posthumous niche as a pop culture icon. The narrative here is disseminated in pieces, fragmentary bits of first-person recollections from Wood's friends and co-workers. The book is unflinching, and makes no effort to whitewash Wood's flaws, yet underneath it all, the reader will fall in love with the man and his so-bad-its-good output just the same.
February 8, 2008
A joy to read. If you have any interest at all in the films of Edward D. Wood, Jr., this is an essential part of your library. Filled with great interviews and illustrations.
December 21, 2019
One of the best biographies I've ever read. Funny, sad and full of inspired madness
October 8, 2025
The only reason I'm giving this a 4 instead of a 5 is because I found it a little disjointed. I am writing a similar biography with the hopes that the true story, comprised of an amalgamation of incredible facts, will be hopefully less stilted.
As a person who has Directed, wrote, acted and produced many, many indie films, some on a shoe-string budget, I can relate whole-heartedly to Ed Wood's drive, passion and self-induced insanity. Whether or not I like the silky smooth sensation of woman's undergarments remains to be seen, but I find him utterly relatable.
As a sometimes shoe-string "no-budget" filmmaker, I really felt every trick of the trade Ed used, as well as his desire to create at all costs. Whether it was feature length screenplays that would never see the light of day, pulp sexploitation novels, or even industrials for the Sex Education Correspondence School or Autonetics, Ed always felt the need to put out new creative content... The Good, The Bad, and the oft times hideously ugly. I respect him as a true artist (Ars Gratis Artis) who often only got paid a mere pittance, or sometimes not at all, for his prolific work (something we call "on spec") in the film business.
As a sometimes successful, sometimes struggling filmmaker, author, and artist myself, my big takeaway from this book is that we, as artists, are not alone in our plight. Also kudos to Rudolph Grey for documenting, in grave detail, bringing light to things that otherwise would be lost forever to recorded history. And finally, I felt a sense of camaraderie with all filmmakers and writers after reading this. The late night shoots, late rent, alcohol and drug use, pranks, antics, star-studded LA parties and joyrides, and lonely depression of never-ending rejection are something universal, especially if you are a survivor of the love/hate relationship that is known as the entertainment business in the City of Angels.
Thank you Ed (Glen/Glenda) and all the artists for keeping the dream alive!
As a person who has Directed, wrote, acted and produced many, many indie films, some on a shoe-string budget, I can relate whole-heartedly to Ed Wood's drive, passion and self-induced insanity. Whether or not I like the silky smooth sensation of woman's undergarments remains to be seen, but I find him utterly relatable.
As a sometimes shoe-string "no-budget" filmmaker, I really felt every trick of the trade Ed used, as well as his desire to create at all costs. Whether it was feature length screenplays that would never see the light of day, pulp sexploitation novels, or even industrials for the Sex Education Correspondence School or Autonetics, Ed always felt the need to put out new creative content... The Good, The Bad, and the oft times hideously ugly. I respect him as a true artist (Ars Gratis Artis) who often only got paid a mere pittance, or sometimes not at all, for his prolific work (something we call "on spec") in the film business.
As a sometimes successful, sometimes struggling filmmaker, author, and artist myself, my big takeaway from this book is that we, as artists, are not alone in our plight. Also kudos to Rudolph Grey for documenting, in grave detail, bringing light to things that otherwise would be lost forever to recorded history. And finally, I felt a sense of camaraderie with all filmmakers and writers after reading this. The late night shoots, late rent, alcohol and drug use, pranks, antics, star-studded LA parties and joyrides, and lonely depression of never-ending rejection are something universal, especially if you are a survivor of the love/hate relationship that is known as the entertainment business in the City of Angels.
Thank you Ed (Glen/Glenda) and all the artists for keeping the dream alive!
February 12, 2020
Edward D. Wood Jr., the godfather of psychotronic and cult films, was a man who had it all. Well , had it all except money managements skills, control over his drinking impulses, and talent. So maybe he didn’t really have it all but what he did have was a nice house in Hollywood, a group of loyal friends, and a huge collection of angora sweaters. He also has a lasting influence on outsider art and counter-culturalism that has lasted to this day. What more could a man want? Rudolph Grey’s biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr. examines this auteur and pulp sleaze author. By connecting all the dots presented in these pages, you might even be able to see why films like Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space have survived in popular and unpopular culture.
Nightmare of Ecstasy is an oral biography. Grey interviewed people who knew Ed Wood personally and put their accounts together. It is not a linear narrative and is actually more like commentaries on different aspects of Wood’s life. Separate chapters focus on things like his military service in World War II, his transvestism, his friendships with Bela Lugosi and other stars of 1950s horror cinema, his alcoholism, his involvement with the porn industry, and the sad and unsettling end of his life. The book ends with a list and commentaries of the known books and movies he worked on. What was surprising about it all was that the chapters about his movie productions were the least interesting parts of the biography. The stories and descriptions of the man himself were what really made this a good read.
What kind of a man was Ed Wood? By most accounts he was friendly, humorous, open minded, generous to a fault, charming and extremely good looking. People loved to be around him and his parties were popular. He worked in most aspects of the cinematic industry and his most famous films are just a small part of everything he did professionally. He did know some important people in Hollywood but he also made friends with a host of other eccentrics like Criswell, Tor Johnson, and Vampira. His identity as a heterosexual cross-dresser made him accepting of other people with unconventional ideas and even gained him entrance to a secret club of male celebrities who liked to dress up as women. As Ed Wood became more and more comfortable about cross-dressing in public, his drinking problem got worse. The chapters at the end are harrowing accounts of his descent into self-destruction. He may have only lived at the margins of the Hollywood in-crowd but he had a good life in his younger years and a lot of people loved and admired him. Reading about how Ed Wood lived in hell in the end was a little disturbing.
Grey’s biography gives details about the life of Ed Wood but it could have benefited from a chapter examining his legacy. He is often laughed at for the being the world’s worst film director but that designation is neither fair nor accurate. Glen or Glenda can be seen as a groundbreaking film and one of the first to explicitly deal with a sexual behavior that was once considered a mental illness but is now considered harmless by most people. Even if few people saw it when initially released, you have to admit it took courage to produce and star in it it in the 1950s.
While Plan 9 from Outer Space is not a good film by conventional standards, it was far better than even a lot of monster movies made in Ed Wood’s time. While those films may have had bigger budgets, higher production standards, and more professional acting, most of them were boring and formulaic with the same plot: a monster appears and threatens the world, inevitably followed by an hour of people talking about how to kill it. In the last fifteen minutes, they fight the monster and it dies. Only the end of movies like The Crawling Eye or It Conquered the World are worth watching. Plan 9 from Outer Space is actually fun to watch from beginning to end. His films have had an influence on not only trans people and punks but on indy film makers and underground artists as well. In a John Waters kind of sense, being called the world’s worst film maker is an honor, not an insult. Besides, Ed Wood’s films are far more entertaining than anything Bruce Willis, Keanu Reeves, or Sandra Bullock have ever done. I can’t even sit through half of a Quentin Tarantino movie without falling asleep and yet I’ve sat through Plan 9 from Outer Space at least ten times. His books are coveted by collectors too. A copy of the novelization of Orgy Of the Dead sold on Ebay for more than $400. It must be a strange book considering that that movie was little more than a feature length film of women dancing topless in a cemetery. But Grey’s book ends with Ed Wood’s death and does not explore the meaning or significance of what he accomplished.
Nightmare of Ecstasy shows, maybe indirectly, what sets the films of Ed Wood apart from other b-movies and exploitation films. Ed Wood was a funny and charming guy to work with especially when directing movies in drag; he inspired a lot of people by just being courageous enough to be who he was. The casts and crews he worked with had fun during production times. They knew they weren’t making anything profound or artistically correct. They didn’t care either. This sense of playfulness and joy is what makes his movies interesting despite themselves. They are possessed of the same kind of naive spirit that animates so much of outsider art. Ed Wood and his friends did not take themselves too seriously and that is maybe why he is remembered to this day while other so-called “serious” films like the academy award winning Kramer Vs. Kramer was forgotten a long time ago. Maybe that’s what is missing in today’s world: people who aren’t afraid to be themselves, people who don’t take themselves too seriously, and people who just do what makes them happy. Maybe that is what is needed to revive the jaded film industry we have in the 21st century.
The people who knew or remembered Ed Wood are mostly dead now. Being the marginal figure he was, there was not a lot of documentation about him either. This will probably be the last and only biography about this good man. For this reason, Nightmare of Ecstasy should be cherished by fans of Ed Wood and connoisseurs of the unusual and obscure.
https://grimhistory.blogspot.com/
Nightmare of Ecstasy is an oral biography. Grey interviewed people who knew Ed Wood personally and put their accounts together. It is not a linear narrative and is actually more like commentaries on different aspects of Wood’s life. Separate chapters focus on things like his military service in World War II, his transvestism, his friendships with Bela Lugosi and other stars of 1950s horror cinema, his alcoholism, his involvement with the porn industry, and the sad and unsettling end of his life. The book ends with a list and commentaries of the known books and movies he worked on. What was surprising about it all was that the chapters about his movie productions were the least interesting parts of the biography. The stories and descriptions of the man himself were what really made this a good read.
What kind of a man was Ed Wood? By most accounts he was friendly, humorous, open minded, generous to a fault, charming and extremely good looking. People loved to be around him and his parties were popular. He worked in most aspects of the cinematic industry and his most famous films are just a small part of everything he did professionally. He did know some important people in Hollywood but he also made friends with a host of other eccentrics like Criswell, Tor Johnson, and Vampira. His identity as a heterosexual cross-dresser made him accepting of other people with unconventional ideas and even gained him entrance to a secret club of male celebrities who liked to dress up as women. As Ed Wood became more and more comfortable about cross-dressing in public, his drinking problem got worse. The chapters at the end are harrowing accounts of his descent into self-destruction. He may have only lived at the margins of the Hollywood in-crowd but he had a good life in his younger years and a lot of people loved and admired him. Reading about how Ed Wood lived in hell in the end was a little disturbing.
Grey’s biography gives details about the life of Ed Wood but it could have benefited from a chapter examining his legacy. He is often laughed at for the being the world’s worst film director but that designation is neither fair nor accurate. Glen or Glenda can be seen as a groundbreaking film and one of the first to explicitly deal with a sexual behavior that was once considered a mental illness but is now considered harmless by most people. Even if few people saw it when initially released, you have to admit it took courage to produce and star in it it in the 1950s.
While Plan 9 from Outer Space is not a good film by conventional standards, it was far better than even a lot of monster movies made in Ed Wood’s time. While those films may have had bigger budgets, higher production standards, and more professional acting, most of them were boring and formulaic with the same plot: a monster appears and threatens the world, inevitably followed by an hour of people talking about how to kill it. In the last fifteen minutes, they fight the monster and it dies. Only the end of movies like The Crawling Eye or It Conquered the World are worth watching. Plan 9 from Outer Space is actually fun to watch from beginning to end. His films have had an influence on not only trans people and punks but on indy film makers and underground artists as well. In a John Waters kind of sense, being called the world’s worst film maker is an honor, not an insult. Besides, Ed Wood’s films are far more entertaining than anything Bruce Willis, Keanu Reeves, or Sandra Bullock have ever done. I can’t even sit through half of a Quentin Tarantino movie without falling asleep and yet I’ve sat through Plan 9 from Outer Space at least ten times. His books are coveted by collectors too. A copy of the novelization of Orgy Of the Dead sold on Ebay for more than $400. It must be a strange book considering that that movie was little more than a feature length film of women dancing topless in a cemetery. But Grey’s book ends with Ed Wood’s death and does not explore the meaning or significance of what he accomplished.
Nightmare of Ecstasy shows, maybe indirectly, what sets the films of Ed Wood apart from other b-movies and exploitation films. Ed Wood was a funny and charming guy to work with especially when directing movies in drag; he inspired a lot of people by just being courageous enough to be who he was. The casts and crews he worked with had fun during production times. They knew they weren’t making anything profound or artistically correct. They didn’t care either. This sense of playfulness and joy is what makes his movies interesting despite themselves. They are possessed of the same kind of naive spirit that animates so much of outsider art. Ed Wood and his friends did not take themselves too seriously and that is maybe why he is remembered to this day while other so-called “serious” films like the academy award winning Kramer Vs. Kramer was forgotten a long time ago. Maybe that’s what is missing in today’s world: people who aren’t afraid to be themselves, people who don’t take themselves too seriously, and people who just do what makes them happy. Maybe that is what is needed to revive the jaded film industry we have in the 21st century.
The people who knew or remembered Ed Wood are mostly dead now. Being the marginal figure he was, there was not a lot of documentation about him either. This will probably be the last and only biography about this good man. For this reason, Nightmare of Ecstasy should be cherished by fans of Ed Wood and connoisseurs of the unusual and obscure.
https://grimhistory.blogspot.com/
August 23, 2022
Certain interests will always confuse most people. When my artistic tastes began to develop, my mother was able to understand, although not share, my joy in horror and science fiction. However, she was never able to make anything out of my fascination with the infamous director Ed Wood. Her position (and it’s a tough one to dispute) was that Wood made lousy movies. Why would anyone really care? Initially, I thought my interest was limited to Wood’s place in Hollywood horror and sci-fi history. In reality, it’s much deeper and Rudolph Grey holds the key.
In his beautifully written introduction, Grey recounts how he first became aware of Ed Wood and his films. The background was the first release of classic horror films to television in the 1950s and the rise of genre magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland. The first time I read all this, I was entranced and I didn’t know why. After several re-reads, and examinations of the extensive Wood bibliography and filmography at the end of the book, I think I’ve figured it out. Grey manages to conjure up a strange, amusing and, above all, mysterious world. It is a world where, walking into a side street movie theater or a back alley bookstore, or flipping on the TV late at night, or pulling something with a lurid cover off a small magazine kiosk, you really didn’t know what you were getting. There might be ghosts. There might be aliens. It would probably be pretty cheap. Frequently, it was poorly done. At times, it was quite funny. Infrequently, but not quite rarely, it was sublime. Boredom and satiety, on the other hand, WERE pretty rare. What Grey puts his finger on is the reason why I’ll watch direct to DVD horror movies, why I’m excited when I hear something didn’t cost a lot of money, why I miss the randomness that used to be seen on late night TV scheduling and why my heart leaps when I see dollar store DVD sections, and used bookstores, and bargain bins, and remainder tables. Wood’s life and work defines this world. He had faith that all he needed was his imagination to make us believe steel factories had something to do with cross-dressing or that cardboard cut-outs were gravestones. Ed Wood was the living embodiment of this curious world. Now, he is its patron saint. Saints, however, go through intense suffering for what they believe in. Also, much of their glory only comes after death. Grey shows that Ed Wood was no different.
It should be understood that this book is not a biography in the traditional sense. Grey terms it “an oral history” and embraces the fact that people who knew Wood have conflicting, sometimes totally contradictory, memories. The majority of the book is made up of direct quotations from the interviews Grey conducted with Wood’s family, friends and associates. The chapter order loosely follows Wood’s life. There are sections on his early life, the making of his major films, his late career turn to pornography and his tragic final years. Some chapters digress to look at aspects of his personality and work habits and one focuses on some of the more colorful members of his entourage.
Through all this, Grey stays silent. We only hear the author’s voice in the introduction and in the bibliography and filmography of Wood’s work. For the most part, we are left with the people who knew Wood. This can be dizzying at times, since the speakers are only thoroughly identified in a section near the end. Also, some interviewees are a WHOLE lot more pleasant to spend time with than others. Finally, it is hard to know for sure what is true and what isn’t. Readers should probably reserve judgement at times. For the most part however, Grey’s passive approach lends an appropriately documentary film feeling to his look at a man who, everyone agrees, adored movies.
We learn much about Ed Wood’s life and passions and the movie industry he worked in. There is also a lot about the people he knew. Fans of the legendary Bela Lugosi will not be disappointed. On a less pleasant note, there is a very disturbing (assuming it is true) revelation about B movie favorite, wrestler turned actor Tor Johnson. An incredibly moving passage comes from none other than Dudley Manlove, one of the hilariously awful actors (“Your stupid minds! Stupid!! Stupid!!!”) from Wood’s magnum opus, Plan 9 From Outer Space. By the end of his life, Ed Wood was a bitter and mean alcoholic, living in poverty. Manlove’s desperately futile attempt to help him is so sad that I can’t even laugh at his dreadful acting anymore.
In the end, no one could save Ed Wood. There seems to be a parable of warning in Grey’s book. The world Wood believed in is not real. Life will always conquer it. Wood never seemed to learn this. While other men and women who take part in the whimsical dreams and magic of Wood’s world know it is as fleeting as the joys of Halloween night and build other lives, Wood put his whole self into his fantasy. He wouldn’t accept that Halloween ends and you’d better have something else under your cool mask.
In the end, who really cares? If ever a book defined “niche interest,” this is it. If readers are not interested in any of this stuff, it’s hard to imagine them changing their minds, nor should they. But for anyone who is even slightly charmed by the magic Ed Wood was tantalized by, this book will become precious. It is a hymn to that world and its magic. That magic is real, I believe, and it still exists. It does seem a bit harder to find these days, however. This book is a marvelous place to start the search.
In his beautifully written introduction, Grey recounts how he first became aware of Ed Wood and his films. The background was the first release of classic horror films to television in the 1950s and the rise of genre magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland. The first time I read all this, I was entranced and I didn’t know why. After several re-reads, and examinations of the extensive Wood bibliography and filmography at the end of the book, I think I’ve figured it out. Grey manages to conjure up a strange, amusing and, above all, mysterious world. It is a world where, walking into a side street movie theater or a back alley bookstore, or flipping on the TV late at night, or pulling something with a lurid cover off a small magazine kiosk, you really didn’t know what you were getting. There might be ghosts. There might be aliens. It would probably be pretty cheap. Frequently, it was poorly done. At times, it was quite funny. Infrequently, but not quite rarely, it was sublime. Boredom and satiety, on the other hand, WERE pretty rare. What Grey puts his finger on is the reason why I’ll watch direct to DVD horror movies, why I’m excited when I hear something didn’t cost a lot of money, why I miss the randomness that used to be seen on late night TV scheduling and why my heart leaps when I see dollar store DVD sections, and used bookstores, and bargain bins, and remainder tables. Wood’s life and work defines this world. He had faith that all he needed was his imagination to make us believe steel factories had something to do with cross-dressing or that cardboard cut-outs were gravestones. Ed Wood was the living embodiment of this curious world. Now, he is its patron saint. Saints, however, go through intense suffering for what they believe in. Also, much of their glory only comes after death. Grey shows that Ed Wood was no different.
It should be understood that this book is not a biography in the traditional sense. Grey terms it “an oral history” and embraces the fact that people who knew Wood have conflicting, sometimes totally contradictory, memories. The majority of the book is made up of direct quotations from the interviews Grey conducted with Wood’s family, friends and associates. The chapter order loosely follows Wood’s life. There are sections on his early life, the making of his major films, his late career turn to pornography and his tragic final years. Some chapters digress to look at aspects of his personality and work habits and one focuses on some of the more colorful members of his entourage.
Through all this, Grey stays silent. We only hear the author’s voice in the introduction and in the bibliography and filmography of Wood’s work. For the most part, we are left with the people who knew Wood. This can be dizzying at times, since the speakers are only thoroughly identified in a section near the end. Also, some interviewees are a WHOLE lot more pleasant to spend time with than others. Finally, it is hard to know for sure what is true and what isn’t. Readers should probably reserve judgement at times. For the most part however, Grey’s passive approach lends an appropriately documentary film feeling to his look at a man who, everyone agrees, adored movies.
We learn much about Ed Wood’s life and passions and the movie industry he worked in. There is also a lot about the people he knew. Fans of the legendary Bela Lugosi will not be disappointed. On a less pleasant note, there is a very disturbing (assuming it is true) revelation about B movie favorite, wrestler turned actor Tor Johnson. An incredibly moving passage comes from none other than Dudley Manlove, one of the hilariously awful actors (“Your stupid minds! Stupid!! Stupid!!!”) from Wood’s magnum opus, Plan 9 From Outer Space. By the end of his life, Ed Wood was a bitter and mean alcoholic, living in poverty. Manlove’s desperately futile attempt to help him is so sad that I can’t even laugh at his dreadful acting anymore.
In the end, no one could save Ed Wood. There seems to be a parable of warning in Grey’s book. The world Wood believed in is not real. Life will always conquer it. Wood never seemed to learn this. While other men and women who take part in the whimsical dreams and magic of Wood’s world know it is as fleeting as the joys of Halloween night and build other lives, Wood put his whole self into his fantasy. He wouldn’t accept that Halloween ends and you’d better have something else under your cool mask.
In the end, who really cares? If ever a book defined “niche interest,” this is it. If readers are not interested in any of this stuff, it’s hard to imagine them changing their minds, nor should they. But for anyone who is even slightly charmed by the magic Ed Wood was tantalized by, this book will become precious. It is a hymn to that world and its magic. That magic is real, I believe, and it still exists. It does seem a bit harder to find these days, however. This book is a marvelous place to start the search.
October 8, 2023
Exactly as I expected. I've never been a big Tim Burton man to begin with but the more I've given his career time he really is an infantile moron isn't he. Something that kind of works for his Ed Wood biopic (by far his best movie) because there is that Saturday matinee for the kids thing going on in Woods career but I always knew enough about Bela to realise he lightened some of the story atleast with Dracula himself and his addictions/health. Then you read this and realise he only told half the Ed Wood story too. Most likely cause he is such a child and can only perceive those aspects through his juvenile brain. The later stuff is too complicated for him to begin to understand. So you only get half the story and half the man. You'd need someone like Paul Thomas Anderson in Boogie Nights mode.
Ed Wood in the 70s with his porno films and alcoholism sounds fucking wild. His kinks and perversions have always been fine and with that he was ahead of his time. But all his wife beating and alcohol infused paranoia is extremely dodgy. And even then in this period there is still some anecdotes that are fucking hilarious. For me though, you need the complete picture, you can't just choose half the man. Take the the good but leave the bad. And you can't really split it in half either. It's not like you could do a sequel to Ed Wood that covers this period. You'd have to start again. It's with all his faults, cinematic passion and heoric qualities as transvestite in Hollywood that he becomes a legend. And I sure love how this book is set up like loads of interviews and perspectives. Some lies. Some truths. All adding up to the mythical qualities of the man. This book will on one page make you laugh until your bent in half, on the next make you disappointed and then after that have you getting all emotional. That's as good as it gets for me. I love all these guys in this. They're like the Dreamlanders of their time. The losers and the freaks of the world just all finding each other. I love all that shit.
Ed Wood in the 70s with his porno films and alcoholism sounds fucking wild. His kinks and perversions have always been fine and with that he was ahead of his time. But all his wife beating and alcohol infused paranoia is extremely dodgy. And even then in this period there is still some anecdotes that are fucking hilarious. For me though, you need the complete picture, you can't just choose half the man. Take the the good but leave the bad. And you can't really split it in half either. It's not like you could do a sequel to Ed Wood that covers this period. You'd have to start again. It's with all his faults, cinematic passion and heoric qualities as transvestite in Hollywood that he becomes a legend. And I sure love how this book is set up like loads of interviews and perspectives. Some lies. Some truths. All adding up to the mythical qualities of the man. This book will on one page make you laugh until your bent in half, on the next make you disappointed and then after that have you getting all emotional. That's as good as it gets for me. I love all these guys in this. They're like the Dreamlanders of their time. The losers and the freaks of the world just all finding each other. I love all that shit.
January 7, 2010
As a fan of bad / low-budget movies, I became a aware of Ed Wood's odd work in my early 20s.
To say that some people are fans of Ed Wood specifically isn't really the case. That would be like saying there are actually people out there who are fans of generic, knock-off toys found in the dollar stores across the land. No one really wants that stuff, but sometimes you just end up with it in front of you instead of the good stuff, and sometimes those second-rate items can be fun enough to play with (until they fall apart because they were made as cheaply as possible).
It's fair to say that everyting Ed Wood made fell apart upon closer scrutiny. His movies were stupid. His personal relationships didn't last, or they ended badly eventually. His most famous friendship with Bella Lugosi has been interpreted as genuine, but not by Lugosi's son who continues to believe that Wood was a user and a hanger-on of his father.
It was so sad reading this book, learning as this guy was somehow able to put a few deals together by willpower alone, but ultimately he demonstrated no professional talent for filmmaking. Eventually he found himself writing disposable pornographic novels, he crawled into a bottle, and died little more than a bum.
If there was a lesson to be learned from Mr. Wood's non-successful life in Hollywood, it would have to be that we should all learn when it is time to get out. Quitting before you lose too much is not the same as being a quitter.
To say that some people are fans of Ed Wood specifically isn't really the case. That would be like saying there are actually people out there who are fans of generic, knock-off toys found in the dollar stores across the land. No one really wants that stuff, but sometimes you just end up with it in front of you instead of the good stuff, and sometimes those second-rate items can be fun enough to play with (until they fall apart because they were made as cheaply as possible).
It's fair to say that everyting Ed Wood made fell apart upon closer scrutiny. His movies were stupid. His personal relationships didn't last, or they ended badly eventually. His most famous friendship with Bella Lugosi has been interpreted as genuine, but not by Lugosi's son who continues to believe that Wood was a user and a hanger-on of his father.
It was so sad reading this book, learning as this guy was somehow able to put a few deals together by willpower alone, but ultimately he demonstrated no professional talent for filmmaking. Eventually he found himself writing disposable pornographic novels, he crawled into a bottle, and died little more than a bum.
If there was a lesson to be learned from Mr. Wood's non-successful life in Hollywood, it would have to be that we should all learn when it is time to get out. Quitting before you lose too much is not the same as being a quitter.
December 15, 2023
Nightmare of Ecstasy By Rudolph Grey is about director Edward D Wood Jr. who is coined the worst director of all time.
If you want to learn about Ed Wood I think this is the best book to do so, and one of the best media to do so besides various documentaries and the film by Tim Burton starring Johnny Depp.
If you are interested in Hollywood history or horror film history this book is excellent at that. I also recommend this book if you are a native of Los Angeles or want to be a director, producer, film writer or actor. If you live in LA you'll definitely recognize many of the places talked about in this book and you'll recognize the names of the people around Wood if you like classic hollywood and television histroy.
The best thing about this book is they got words and dialogue from the Ed, Tor Johnson, Ed's wife Kathy, Vampira, Criswell, Lugosi, Manlove etc and facts about them.
The stories on Ed were done in a comic yet real retelling of his life.
Overall I had a good time reading this one
5/5 it was amazing
If you want to learn about Ed Wood I think this is the best book to do so, and one of the best media to do so besides various documentaries and the film by Tim Burton starring Johnny Depp.
If you are interested in Hollywood history or horror film history this book is excellent at that. I also recommend this book if you are a native of Los Angeles or want to be a director, producer, film writer or actor. If you live in LA you'll definitely recognize many of the places talked about in this book and you'll recognize the names of the people around Wood if you like classic hollywood and television histroy.
The best thing about this book is they got words and dialogue from the Ed, Tor Johnson, Ed's wife Kathy, Vampira, Criswell, Lugosi, Manlove etc and facts about them.
The stories on Ed were done in a comic yet real retelling of his life.
Overall I had a good time reading this one
5/5 it was amazing
December 24, 2013
Ed Wood was a terrible filmmaker. But unlike so many terrible filmmakers (Michael Bay, McG, etc.) Wood had passion for his crap. He wasn't just in it for the paycheck, he really loved what he did. That love comes through in every frame of his movies, which is why they hold up better than his sets (which sometimes are falling apart during scenes).
This is a book about Ed, the worst director of all-time (or at least until Tommy Wiseau). It's also about his friends- a collection of weirdos that include a drug addicted Bela Lugosi. These were people who were outside of the happy world of the 1950s. Cross-dressers, liberated women, gay men, and pornographers all inhabit Ed's strange world.
This is an oral history, told by the people who lived in Ed's world. Fans of the movie be warned, real life is much more depressing for our heroes. But the fact that the work lives on to this day give hope to anyone who has a dream, even if that dream doesn't exactly line up with your abilities.
This is a book about Ed, the worst director of all-time (or at least until Tommy Wiseau). It's also about his friends- a collection of weirdos that include a drug addicted Bela Lugosi. These were people who were outside of the happy world of the 1950s. Cross-dressers, liberated women, gay men, and pornographers all inhabit Ed's strange world.
This is an oral history, told by the people who lived in Ed's world. Fans of the movie be warned, real life is much more depressing for our heroes. But the fact that the work lives on to this day give hope to anyone who has a dream, even if that dream doesn't exactly line up with your abilities.
June 12, 2018
Ed Wood has been one of my favourite directors since I first saw Plan 9 played on an old cine-projector during my undergraduate days. Gray's biography, told subjectively through the memoirs and words of those who knew Eddie best, really touched me : I knew Wood's cinematic story from Burton's film and critics reviews, but never truly realised how a good, loving, generous and determined man eventually spiralled down into alcoholism and wife-beating, living on the breadline and staying afloat from a meagre income writing sleazy paperbacks until the booze finally claimed him at 53 yeas of age. It's a bittersweet story, but one which left me confirmed in my admiration for Ed and his works.
February 11, 2015
Basically an oral history of not just one of Hollywood's most noted eccentrics, but almost of Hollywood's whole wide subculture landscape from the lurid to the laughable. Told with a degree of reverence for its wild subject, this is one of those rare works of which one may simply pick up and begin reading from any page, and be instantly captivated, transported to a strange, compelling alternate universe of madly driven kook-artists and their cadres of starry-eyed, hopeless hangers-on. A must-absorb adventure into weirdness... and all true.
May 29, 2007
If you're a fan of movies that are so bad, they're good, then you've probably heard of Ed Wood.
I didn't care much for the way this book was written: much of it is a collection of quotes/reminisences thrown together. I like the fact that the book gives a detailed filmography of Wood's "oeuvre" but I would have preferred more prose throughout.
I didn't care much for the way this book was written: much of it is a collection of quotes/reminisences thrown together. I like the fact that the book gives a detailed filmography of Wood's "oeuvre" but I would have preferred more prose throughout.
March 10, 2021
An oral history of Ed Wood's zany antics in Hollywood. Total mess; more a collection of loosely connected anecdotes and memories than a real biography. Would have benefited greatly from some contextualizing notes from the author, and some historical background to the stories. Recommended for Ed Wood fanatics - and absolutely nobody else.
April 18, 2007
If you saw the movie you only got half of the story.
April 25, 2021
Ajankuva ja konteksti oli mulle herkkua. Lisäksi muistitietotutkimuksellisesta näkökulmasta tällainen suullinen historiikki / kokemuskerronta aina kiehtovaa!
August 1, 2022
I'm still looking for the ecstasy.
ED WOOD: NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY by Rudolph Grey is one of those books I've been wanting to read since I saw Tim Burton's justly praised 1994 film, ED WOOD. It's only taken me 28 years to finally do so.
I've always known about Edward D. Wood Jr. Most film fans have and many of us have invoked his name when we come across a particularly cheap and poorly made film (Uwe Boll made a run at replacing Ed Wood for this but that kind of a name just never took hold).
After reading this book, I have to say that being turned into a shorthand is really unfair to Ed Wood- many of the pictures we mock don't have the energy or purpose of something made by Wood.
That is not to say Wood's movies are good. What NIGHTMARE… does do is give me an appreciation of Wood's enthusiasm, if not his technical or creative skill. Even this is tempered by the nature of the book. It is one that can be described as an "oral history" and it is made up of both letters and scripts written by Wood, and then anecdotes from people who knew and worked with Ed Wood.
So are the stories any good? Yeah. And they're kind of sad. And they're kind of depressing.
The book starts with Wood's early years and his time as a marine in the Pacific Theater of World War II (a notable absence is Grey's omission of any interviews of Wood's fellow marines. The book was released in 1992, surely a few of them would have been alive by that year.). We are given stories of actual combat Wood saw, and that he was part of an assault wave while wearing a pair of pink panties with a pink bra under his uniform- this from Wood himself.
The book then continues with Wood getting to Los Angeles, and his relative lack of success there. A play he writes fails, but soon, he meets Bela Lugosi, the original Dracula, and things look up (ish).
The few extant cast and crew of Wood's early films tell stories of making these films and the troubles getting them made. Money almost never existed and production was a day or two here and there… followed by more attempts to find money. Most Hollywood histories never deal with this because they're writing about industry success stories where NIGHTMARE… is a story of an industry failure.
It is this aspect that makes the book worth reading, even though it is a brief book (160 pages, followed by an extensive timeline and bibliography of Wood films and novels). We are given lots of stories of strange financial arrangements and set mishaps Wood productions inevitably encountered.
Yet through most of it, I was impressed by Wood's work ethic. He could write storms of stories and while the quality was poor, there was no shortage of creativity. This even lasts through the 'skin flicks' era Wood had (which the movie never covered).
However, there's no happy ending. Wood drank, whether from PTSD or career disappointment is never discussed, and his last few days are recounted in many painful anecdotes. The story of his time at the Yucca Flats apartments is particularly sad as that place is made out to by a dive (and apparently, still standing).
Ed Wood's legacy in film history is only lightly touched upon. I would have liked a bit more on the cult audience his films have gathered in the years since his death. This is probably the closest we'll get to an Ed Wood biography, and it is useful to have a book about a Hollywood player that wasn't a success. I just wish I could have changed the ending so Ed saw some of the affection that eluded him in life.
ED WOOD: NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY by Rudolph Grey is one of those books I've been wanting to read since I saw Tim Burton's justly praised 1994 film, ED WOOD. It's only taken me 28 years to finally do so.
I've always known about Edward D. Wood Jr. Most film fans have and many of us have invoked his name when we come across a particularly cheap and poorly made film (Uwe Boll made a run at replacing Ed Wood for this but that kind of a name just never took hold).
After reading this book, I have to say that being turned into a shorthand is really unfair to Ed Wood- many of the pictures we mock don't have the energy or purpose of something made by Wood.
That is not to say Wood's movies are good. What NIGHTMARE… does do is give me an appreciation of Wood's enthusiasm, if not his technical or creative skill. Even this is tempered by the nature of the book. It is one that can be described as an "oral history" and it is made up of both letters and scripts written by Wood, and then anecdotes from people who knew and worked with Ed Wood.
So are the stories any good? Yeah. And they're kind of sad. And they're kind of depressing.
The book starts with Wood's early years and his time as a marine in the Pacific Theater of World War II (a notable absence is Grey's omission of any interviews of Wood's fellow marines. The book was released in 1992, surely a few of them would have been alive by that year.). We are given stories of actual combat Wood saw, and that he was part of an assault wave while wearing a pair of pink panties with a pink bra under his uniform- this from Wood himself.
The book then continues with Wood getting to Los Angeles, and his relative lack of success there. A play he writes fails, but soon, he meets Bela Lugosi, the original Dracula, and things look up (ish).
The few extant cast and crew of Wood's early films tell stories of making these films and the troubles getting them made. Money almost never existed and production was a day or two here and there… followed by more attempts to find money. Most Hollywood histories never deal with this because they're writing about industry success stories where NIGHTMARE… is a story of an industry failure.
It is this aspect that makes the book worth reading, even though it is a brief book (160 pages, followed by an extensive timeline and bibliography of Wood films and novels). We are given lots of stories of strange financial arrangements and set mishaps Wood productions inevitably encountered.
Yet through most of it, I was impressed by Wood's work ethic. He could write storms of stories and while the quality was poor, there was no shortage of creativity. This even lasts through the 'skin flicks' era Wood had (which the movie never covered).
However, there's no happy ending. Wood drank, whether from PTSD or career disappointment is never discussed, and his last few days are recounted in many painful anecdotes. The story of his time at the Yucca Flats apartments is particularly sad as that place is made out to by a dive (and apparently, still standing).
Ed Wood's legacy in film history is only lightly touched upon. I would have liked a bit more on the cult audience his films have gathered in the years since his death. This is probably the closest we'll get to an Ed Wood biography, and it is useful to have a book about a Hollywood player that wasn't a success. I just wish I could have changed the ending so Ed saw some of the affection that eluded him in life.
April 12, 2019
The filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. is primarily known now thanks to director Tim Burton's ode/send-up to the "worst director of all time," starring Johnny Depp in a manic performance, working opposite Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in a tragicomic turn that rightfully won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and will stand as some kind of benchmark for the ages.
The movie is good, and gets some things right about Mr. Wood (while taking license here and there), but Rudolph Grey's book (upon which the movie is based) presents a more well-rounded picture of Eddie than one is going to get from the film alone. Consisting primarily of interviews, book and press excerpts, as well as still photos, "Nightmare of Ecstasy" is a loving and loosely arranged examination of every facet of Ed Wood's personality, his work, and the strange cult of fandom that has grown up in the years since the director died, penniless, in Los Angeles.
Say what you want about Wood, about his sexual proclivities, his heavy drinking, womanizing, his supposed anti-talents behind the typewriter or behind the camera, but the man had a dream, a vision, and his movies live on in perpetuity (online as well as on TV) with their own sort of weird, gothic indescribable aura that makes them magic artifacts, as imperfect as they were.
The film "Ed Wood" shows one side of Eddie, his manic phases, not the underbelly, the dark rages or what it was like for Wood to cope with horrifying memories from the War in the Pacific (Tarawa more specifically), nor the seedy descent the man made first into the soft-core porn industry and then finally into the totally artless world of hardcore film loops (mostly silent and plotless).
The book's end is an especially poignant artifact for burgeoning B-movie historians who can read page after page of Wood's CV, marveling at the man's prodigious output of everything from TV pilots to bodice-rippers (angora shredders?) over the course of a career that spanned three decades or so. Wood was a workhorse, and a warrior who never gave up on his dreams (even after everyone appeared to give up on him) and his persistence finally paid off.
May he rest in peace or in horror or whatever he prefers, and do it while lounging in drag in a Styrofoam crypt surrounded by a shroud of dry ice smoke, above which hubcaps spray-painted as flying saucers eternally orbit. Recommended.
The movie is good, and gets some things right about Mr. Wood (while taking license here and there), but Rudolph Grey's book (upon which the movie is based) presents a more well-rounded picture of Eddie than one is going to get from the film alone. Consisting primarily of interviews, book and press excerpts, as well as still photos, "Nightmare of Ecstasy" is a loving and loosely arranged examination of every facet of Ed Wood's personality, his work, and the strange cult of fandom that has grown up in the years since the director died, penniless, in Los Angeles.
Say what you want about Wood, about his sexual proclivities, his heavy drinking, womanizing, his supposed anti-talents behind the typewriter or behind the camera, but the man had a dream, a vision, and his movies live on in perpetuity (online as well as on TV) with their own sort of weird, gothic indescribable aura that makes them magic artifacts, as imperfect as they were.
The film "Ed Wood" shows one side of Eddie, his manic phases, not the underbelly, the dark rages or what it was like for Wood to cope with horrifying memories from the War in the Pacific (Tarawa more specifically), nor the seedy descent the man made first into the soft-core porn industry and then finally into the totally artless world of hardcore film loops (mostly silent and plotless).
The book's end is an especially poignant artifact for burgeoning B-movie historians who can read page after page of Wood's CV, marveling at the man's prodigious output of everything from TV pilots to bodice-rippers (angora shredders?) over the course of a career that spanned three decades or so. Wood was a workhorse, and a warrior who never gave up on his dreams (even after everyone appeared to give up on him) and his persistence finally paid off.
May he rest in peace or in horror or whatever he prefers, and do it while lounging in drag in a Styrofoam crypt surrounded by a shroud of dry ice smoke, above which hubcaps spray-painted as flying saucers eternally orbit. Recommended.
August 5, 2023
Maverick director Ed Wood did not lead a well-documented life. Castigated and mostly ignored when he was alive, his films have been (and still are) ridiculed. Some people, however, have come to see a kind of artistry in them. Rudolph Grey is one of them. While this may be the closest Wood gets to a standard biography, this book consists of a series of interview responses by those who knew him and a few personal notes by Wood himself. There’s really no connecting narrative. Still, it gives you a good idea of what Wood’s life was like.
Illustrated, and with a timeline and notes about who the interviewees are, it is a useful source in trying to understand a man who came to a tragic end. It would be helpful, for those of us who tend to read books end-to-end, to have had the list of interviewees in front. I didn’t discover it until after I’d read the rest of the book, making for some confusion along the way. A few flips back and forth helped out, however.
The story that emerges here is one full of contradictions and differences of opinion. One thing that is clear, however, is that Wood took his art and his efforts seriously. The results may have been bad—he struggled with very low budgets—but he nevertheless made memorable movies. I find such stories ultimately hopeful. As I note elsewhere (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World) there is hope that those of us who struggle for recognition might find it, even if it comes after we’ve moved on.
Illustrated, and with a timeline and notes about who the interviewees are, it is a useful source in trying to understand a man who came to a tragic end. It would be helpful, for those of us who tend to read books end-to-end, to have had the list of interviewees in front. I didn’t discover it until after I’d read the rest of the book, making for some confusion along the way. A few flips back and forth helped out, however.
The story that emerges here is one full of contradictions and differences of opinion. One thing that is clear, however, is that Wood took his art and his efforts seriously. The results may have been bad—he struggled with very low budgets—but he nevertheless made memorable movies. I find such stories ultimately hopeful. As I note elsewhere (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World) there is hope that those of us who struggle for recognition might find it, even if it comes after we’ve moved on.
March 18, 2023
"Nightmare of Ecstasy" tells the story of one of the most unusual personalities in American film history. Grey has interviewed Ed Wood's close friends and movie-making collaborators to create an oral history. Interviews of, and writings by, Ed Wood are used to flesh out the story. Many of the Ed Wood entourage are here: struggling young actors, faded movie stars, eccentrics, and outcasts. Ed Wood's friendship with Bela Lugosi comprises a good part of the story but Tor Johnson, Paul Marco, Maila Nurmi (Vampira), Criswell the Great, Kenne Duncan, Conrad Brooks, and Bunny Breckinridge are here too. Grey offers descriptions of Ed Wood's partially-filmed and completed movies, some of his many novels, and his numerous never-realized projects. Famed for cult horror films like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and "Bride of the Monster", after 1960, Ed Wood relied on pornographic movies and books to earn a living, a depressing reality that seems to have deepened his dependence on alcohol. His cross-dressing (part camp humor, part fetish) is also discussed, along with the recollections of his girlfriend Dolores Fuller and wife Kathy Wood. Ed Wood was unique and despite his failures he somehow put his quirky vision on film. "Nightmare of Ecstasy" is recommended for any Ed Wood fan.
July 20, 2025
Four stars as the author did the lord's work in spending ten years collecting every interview they could, from 1984 to 1994. Some of the people interviewed died before the book's completion.
The book's format is of the "oral history" variety, allowing everyone a chance to tell their version of events. While I appreciate getting people's unfiltered quotes without an author's spin, an editor needed to step in and suggest a little bit of reader assistance.
This book is for the already converted, who have a thorough knowledge of Wood's projects. There are no film summaries given within the text - surprising, given that this was written in a pre-internet era. We're simply given names and quotes, with no context as to who these people are, or their relation to Wood. Halfway through reading, I found there is a rundown of the bios in the back - but it's incomplete, and I got tired of constantly flipping back and forth just to figure out who was speaking.
With all that in mind, these are amazingly candid remembrances of Wood and an moment in film making and Hollywood that is long gone. If you are a fan of the era, low-budget horror, or outsider artists, this is still a great read. Just be ready to do some cross-referencing research.
The book's format is of the "oral history" variety, allowing everyone a chance to tell their version of events. While I appreciate getting people's unfiltered quotes without an author's spin, an editor needed to step in and suggest a little bit of reader assistance.
This book is for the already converted, who have a thorough knowledge of Wood's projects. There are no film summaries given within the text - surprising, given that this was written in a pre-internet era. We're simply given names and quotes, with no context as to who these people are, or their relation to Wood. Halfway through reading, I found there is a rundown of the bios in the back - but it's incomplete, and I got tired of constantly flipping back and forth just to figure out who was speaking.
With all that in mind, these are amazingly candid remembrances of Wood and an moment in film making and Hollywood that is long gone. If you are a fan of the era, low-budget horror, or outsider artists, this is still a great read. Just be ready to do some cross-referencing research.
August 3, 2023
Like many people, I first became aware of Ed Wood as an object of ridicule and a byword for incompetence. In 1978 – the year of Wood’s early death – his opus Plan 9 From Outer Space had been declared the “Worst Film Ever Made” by Michael and Harry Medved in their book Golden Turkey Awards, and in autumn 1983 the film kicked off “The Worst of Hollywood”, a series on the UK’s Channel 4 in which it was introduced by Michael Medved (now better known as a right-wing polemicist) in front of a live audience.
Perhaps Wood would have seen the funny side: according to one interviewee in this oral history, Wood “laughed” when he read his work being panned in Arthur Lennig’s biography of Bela Lugosi. Another, however, said that Wood cursed Lennig as a “pig” – just one example of the contradictory recollections that Randolph Grey, Rashomon-like, sets before the reader without comment. Grey writes: “I have provided… a chronology for the ‘who-what-when-wheres’ of Ed Wood’s life. The mystery of the ‘why’ is best revealed in the stories I have woven together”.
Grey spent ten years researching his subject, a task that involved “hundreds of interviews”; snippets are arranged thematically in a way that is roughly chronological. The last 45 pages of the book are an exhaustive reference guide (now largely pillaged by Wikipedia) to Wood’s writings, films and unrealised projects, complete with notes and some cover images. The presentation by Feral House Press, which includes numerous photographs scattered through the text, is a good fit with Wood’s underground and cult status, while the fact that the British edition was published by the venerable house of Faber & Faber reflects the work’s status as a serious contribution to Hollywood history (all the more so now, thirty years since the book’s publication and the loss of most of the interview subjects). Today you could probably get several gender studies PhD out Wood’s “gender-fluid” behaviour and advocacy, which in the language of the time is mainly referred to as “transvestitism”.
The most likely candidate for the real “Worst Film Ever Made” would be something either too tedious or too obnoxious to endure – neither of which applies to Plan 9. Gregory Walcott, who starred, said that Wood had “poor taste” and would have been unable to make a good film no matter what the budget; but although the film is threadbare and ludicrous, it is also entertaining and has a striking trademark aesthetic. This is in large part thanks to Wood’s regulars, who included futurist prognosticator the Amazing Criswell, Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, proto-Goth Vampira (Maila Nurmi) and the drag artiste Bunny Breckinridge – all of whom live on as cult figures long after their departures from the world. Infamously, the film also contains the last screen images of Bela Lugosi – some disjointed footage which Wood strung together via Criswell’s florid narration and which ends with the off-camera screeching of tyres and a scream. This has been much lamented as an undignified exit, but is it less respectful than Universal resorting to a wax doll of Lugosi for a brief scene in Dracula’s Daughter 25 years before?
It's tempting to bracket Wood with William McGonagall or Florence Foster Jenkins as someone whose efforts were simply a parody the profession that he saw as his calling, but Wood for some years made a modest living from his work, and the cast of characters in his life includes the mainstream actors John Agar and Lyle Talbot and the filmmaker Stephen C. Apostolof; Ray Flin, a former cameraman of Orson Welles, was also a collaborator. Jailbait nearly had a cameo from James Cagney, who happened to be present at a location shoot and was invited to join in by Talbot; unfortunately, however, Wood was attempting to film without a permit and the crew was forced to flee after the cops were called.
The book formed the basis for Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic: the movie’s meeting between Wood and Welles is of course a fiction, but several details are confirmed, such as Bela Lugosi drawing a crowd with a spontaneous streetside recitation of his “Home, I Have No Home” speech from Bride of the Monster. Wood has been accused of exploiting Lugosi, but Lugosi enjoyed Wood’s company and the work he got from him. And unlike Universal, Wood certainly didn’t get rich off the horror legend: Wood’s last years before he died aged 53 were marked by reduced circumstances and a decline into alcoholism and depression – Forrest Ackerman would receive calls from him “smashed out of his skull”. Despite impoverishment and near-homelessness, there was never any question that he might throw in the towel and seek work outside films or writing.
Wood’s work in the 1960s and 1970s was increasingly explicit, and eventually involved making hardcore films featuring adult actresses such as Rene Bond and Ric Lutze. We might see this as a career decline, but perhaps Wood would have seen himself more of a pioneer: his books include a two-volume Study in the Motivation of Censorship, Sex & the Movies, and some of his explicit novels appeared under his own name rather than pseudonyms.
Part of the legend of Plan 9 is that Wood got the financial backing of a Baptist church. The story is told by the Reverend Lyn Lemon, who refers to J. Edward Reynolds, “a highly respected man among Southern Baptist churches in the area” (capitalisation of “Southern” corrected). Reynolds told Lemon that he had been given permission by Ma Sunday to make a film about Billy Sunday, and it was hoped that a science-fiction movie would raise the necessary funds. Reynolds seems to have disappeared from the historical record, although there’s an intriguing reference from Wood’s widow Kathy that “he was really a damn crook. Which was all found out later”.
One area that could have been explored further is Wood’s relationship with the science-fiction scene: Ackerman’s contribution is brief, and some recollections from Harlan Ellison or Robert Silverberg might have opened a whole new vista.
Perhaps Wood would have seen the funny side: according to one interviewee in this oral history, Wood “laughed” when he read his work being panned in Arthur Lennig’s biography of Bela Lugosi. Another, however, said that Wood cursed Lennig as a “pig” – just one example of the contradictory recollections that Randolph Grey, Rashomon-like, sets before the reader without comment. Grey writes: “I have provided… a chronology for the ‘who-what-when-wheres’ of Ed Wood’s life. The mystery of the ‘why’ is best revealed in the stories I have woven together”.
Grey spent ten years researching his subject, a task that involved “hundreds of interviews”; snippets are arranged thematically in a way that is roughly chronological. The last 45 pages of the book are an exhaustive reference guide (now largely pillaged by Wikipedia) to Wood’s writings, films and unrealised projects, complete with notes and some cover images. The presentation by Feral House Press, which includes numerous photographs scattered through the text, is a good fit with Wood’s underground and cult status, while the fact that the British edition was published by the venerable house of Faber & Faber reflects the work’s status as a serious contribution to Hollywood history (all the more so now, thirty years since the book’s publication and the loss of most of the interview subjects). Today you could probably get several gender studies PhD out Wood’s “gender-fluid” behaviour and advocacy, which in the language of the time is mainly referred to as “transvestitism”.
The most likely candidate for the real “Worst Film Ever Made” would be something either too tedious or too obnoxious to endure – neither of which applies to Plan 9. Gregory Walcott, who starred, said that Wood had “poor taste” and would have been unable to make a good film no matter what the budget; but although the film is threadbare and ludicrous, it is also entertaining and has a striking trademark aesthetic. This is in large part thanks to Wood’s regulars, who included futurist prognosticator the Amazing Criswell, Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, proto-Goth Vampira (Maila Nurmi) and the drag artiste Bunny Breckinridge – all of whom live on as cult figures long after their departures from the world. Infamously, the film also contains the last screen images of Bela Lugosi – some disjointed footage which Wood strung together via Criswell’s florid narration and which ends with the off-camera screeching of tyres and a scream. This has been much lamented as an undignified exit, but is it less respectful than Universal resorting to a wax doll of Lugosi for a brief scene in Dracula’s Daughter 25 years before?
It's tempting to bracket Wood with William McGonagall or Florence Foster Jenkins as someone whose efforts were simply a parody the profession that he saw as his calling, but Wood for some years made a modest living from his work, and the cast of characters in his life includes the mainstream actors John Agar and Lyle Talbot and the filmmaker Stephen C. Apostolof; Ray Flin, a former cameraman of Orson Welles, was also a collaborator. Jailbait nearly had a cameo from James Cagney, who happened to be present at a location shoot and was invited to join in by Talbot; unfortunately, however, Wood was attempting to film without a permit and the crew was forced to flee after the cops were called.
The book formed the basis for Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic: the movie’s meeting between Wood and Welles is of course a fiction, but several details are confirmed, such as Bela Lugosi drawing a crowd with a spontaneous streetside recitation of his “Home, I Have No Home” speech from Bride of the Monster. Wood has been accused of exploiting Lugosi, but Lugosi enjoyed Wood’s company and the work he got from him. And unlike Universal, Wood certainly didn’t get rich off the horror legend: Wood’s last years before he died aged 53 were marked by reduced circumstances and a decline into alcoholism and depression – Forrest Ackerman would receive calls from him “smashed out of his skull”. Despite impoverishment and near-homelessness, there was never any question that he might throw in the towel and seek work outside films or writing.
Wood’s work in the 1960s and 1970s was increasingly explicit, and eventually involved making hardcore films featuring adult actresses such as Rene Bond and Ric Lutze. We might see this as a career decline, but perhaps Wood would have seen himself more of a pioneer: his books include a two-volume Study in the Motivation of Censorship, Sex & the Movies, and some of his explicit novels appeared under his own name rather than pseudonyms.
Part of the legend of Plan 9 is that Wood got the financial backing of a Baptist church. The story is told by the Reverend Lyn Lemon, who refers to J. Edward Reynolds, “a highly respected man among Southern Baptist churches in the area” (capitalisation of “Southern” corrected). Reynolds told Lemon that he had been given permission by Ma Sunday to make a film about Billy Sunday, and it was hoped that a science-fiction movie would raise the necessary funds. Reynolds seems to have disappeared from the historical record, although there’s an intriguing reference from Wood’s widow Kathy that “he was really a damn crook. Which was all found out later”.
One area that could have been explored further is Wood’s relationship with the science-fiction scene: Ackerman’s contribution is brief, and some recollections from Harlan Ellison or Robert Silverberg might have opened a whole new vista.
February 23, 2019
Heynes Vermarktung als "Buch zum Film" ist recht irreführend.
Rudolph Grey versucht das Leben Ed Woods anhand von Interview Aussschnitten mit Personen welche mit ihm zusammengearbeitet / ihn gekannt haben nachzuzeichnen. Teilweise widersprechen sich diese Aussagen dabei stark, teilweise sind Interviewfetzen eingefügt welche besten Falls tangential zu dem passen was Grey in einem gegeben Kapitel zu illustrieren versucht, im schlechtesten Fall refelektieren sie noch nicht einmal bemerkenswerte Anekdoten.
Trotzdem gelingt es dem Autor ein einigermaßen kohärentes Bild von Ed Woods Lebensweg zu zeichnen, hin zu seinem konsequenten, tragischen Verfall.
Was dabei jedoch der Wahrheit entspricht und was nur Dichtung ist bleibt offen und es fällt am Ende weitgehend dem Leser zu sich zu entscheiden welchen Passagen man Glauben schenken mag oder kann und welchen nicht.
Dies allerdings passt dann wiederum sehr gut, zu dem Bild welches man von Ed Woods Charakter bekommt.
Rudolph Grey versucht das Leben Ed Woods anhand von Interview Aussschnitten mit Personen welche mit ihm zusammengearbeitet / ihn gekannt haben nachzuzeichnen. Teilweise widersprechen sich diese Aussagen dabei stark, teilweise sind Interviewfetzen eingefügt welche besten Falls tangential zu dem passen was Grey in einem gegeben Kapitel zu illustrieren versucht, im schlechtesten Fall refelektieren sie noch nicht einmal bemerkenswerte Anekdoten.
Trotzdem gelingt es dem Autor ein einigermaßen kohärentes Bild von Ed Woods Lebensweg zu zeichnen, hin zu seinem konsequenten, tragischen Verfall.
Was dabei jedoch der Wahrheit entspricht und was nur Dichtung ist bleibt offen und es fällt am Ende weitgehend dem Leser zu sich zu entscheiden welchen Passagen man Glauben schenken mag oder kann und welchen nicht.
Dies allerdings passt dann wiederum sehr gut, zu dem Bild welches man von Ed Woods Charakter bekommt.
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