** Commentary by director Tim Burton and actor Martin Landau
* Deleted scenes
* Behind-the-scenes footage hosted by Johnny Depp
* "When Carol Met Larry" a cross-dressing introspective
* Production design featurette and more
* Widescreen format*
This is one of my absolutely favorite movies and Martin Landau was beyond brilliant in his Oscar winning performance. (I read recently that his performance did have one major critic however: Bela Lugosi, Jr., who considered the depiction of his father to be disrespectful and insensitive and who has NEVER SEEN THE MOVIE.)
This is one of those movies, incidentally, that tanked at the box office yet everybody I know has seen it. I wonder if it ever made a profit in video.
FINALLY I get to see this movie… I’ve been waiting to get it on DVD ever since I saw Fear and Loathing and wanted other Depp films to compare it to (aside from the obvious ones, like Edward Scissorhands and Gilbert Grape).
This is great news. One of the most seriously funny movies made in the past decade, and Burton’s best to date. More than simply succeeding as a formalist exercise in recreating Wood’s demented creative process, it’s one of the greatest odes to [oddball] friendship ever – suggesting that even the most miserable failures can still have a ball, when surrounded by friends and lovers.
As for the DVD – in a perfect world, the extras would include grainy home-video footage of Bunny Breckinridge’s ill-fated trip to Mexico, and excerpts from the late-career “nudie monster flicks” that Ed Wood is said to have made.
I was thinking I saw one of these once but then I looked at imdb to remember the title and I realized that what I saw (Orgy of the Dead) wasn’t really one of them (even though it was all about the naked people.) The thing is, Orgy of the Dead was the only movie with naked people I ever turned off as a horny teen. It was that horrible. “Teenager turns off tv when naked people are on it.” Believe it or not, it happened.
I love Ed Wood. I really love the part with Vincent D’Onofrio as Orson Welles. Johnny Depp is so damn good in Ed Wood. His optomistic face is just so endearing.
This movie was really hard to find for a long time. I saw it in the theatre but never found it to rent on video. I looked for it online for a long time but it was never available. Then last year poof there it was. Good thing it was only ten bucks because I’m not going to need it when I get the dvd.
Some trivia that I thought was really interesting when I was reading biographies of wood: the real Bunny Breckinridge was both a southern aristocrat (full name: John Cabell Breckinridge IV, after his great-grandfather ) and was a millionaire many times over; his daughter (yes, he managed to beget a child), Solange, is a French countess (though she now lives in Oregon). Shortly after Plan 9 premiered, he served time in a hospital for the criminally insane for taking rentboys across a state line.
The real Criswell was wealthy from real estate investments made by himself and his wife, Halo (a morbidly obese former showgirl who among other eccentricities enjoyed sunbathing nude in her front yard and eating grass while on all fours). IRL he slept in a casket and it was not an affectation; he grew up an unwanted bastard grandchild of an Indiana undertaker and the house was already full to capacity, so he slept in a coffin downstairs and by the time he was a teenager he had trouble sleeping in a bed. Among his predictions: JFK would not run for reelection due to “something that will happen in November 1963”, “Ronald Reagan will become governor of California and president of the United States”, the Liberace brothers George & Lee would become president and VP in the late 1960s, the world will end in August 1999, Denver would be destroyed by a volcano and New York City would secede from the United States and become its own country.
Gregory Walcott, Conrad Brooks and Paul Marco all appeared in Plan 9 From Outer Space as well as in cameos in Ed Wood . Wood’s real-life widow was a consultant on the film (i.e. a nice title that lets you give her some money) and swore that Johnny Depp, whom she fell in love with (how could you not?), was channeling the spirit of her husband (I wonder how Johnny felt about that). The real Dolores Fuller HATED the film because she thought it made her look like a bimbo, but the children of Tor Johnson loved it.
I am pretty suprised it has taken this long to be released on DVD. Anybody know what was the hold up. Or did all parties involve decide just to take their time, so they can have a better finished product?
Fabulous news! My wife and I love this movie dearly and are both huge Tim Burton fans. We enjoyed it so much that even though we’d both known about Wood and his movies for years, it wasn’t until after seeing Ed Wood that we finally bought some of his movies. I’m thrilled that Landau will be on the commentary. Hopefully he can get Burton a little excited because I’ve hated his previous commentaries, he sounded like he was miserable talking about his movies.
Woohoo! This one is a must-own for me. It’s worth watching, if only because Johnny Depp gives one hell of a performance. I managed to snag it on VHS a while back, just because I’d heard it was good, and sat through my first viewing with my mouth agape.
Finally! I reserved this from Suncoast twice in the past year on the assumption that it was to be released soon… and then waited, and waited.
I saw this movie when it first came out in the theaters, and loved it. I think the more familiar one is with Plan 9 and Bride of the Monster, the more fun the “making of” scenes for those movies are. And Landau’s Lugosi is incredible.
No idea. I know that the other 10 year old masterpiece that’s about to come onto DVD for the first time, Schindler’s List , was held up because Spielberg wanted to include basically the best DVD extras ever seen (including commentary by the “real” characters from the piece, a surprising number of whom are still alive).
He can’t. He said in an interview I read with him in EW recently that he thinks director’s commentary diminishes from the movie and makes people “remember that it’s a movie”, or something to that effect.
I’m thrilled! My favorite Tim Burton movie and my favorite Johnny Depp movie. Like Rainbowthief, I was already familiar with Ed Wood’s work, but finally rented Plan 9 From Outer Space after seeing Ed Wood for the second time. I’m going to hit The Bride of the Monster and Glen or Glenda? eventually, too.
anyone see the documentary THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EDWARD D. WOOD JR? I saw it’s “Hollywood” premiere at the Nuart in LA where a lot of Wood’s entorage were special guests. Bela Jr was the only non-Woodite, viewing him as an exploiter of his ailing father. Forry Ackerman (Ed’s literary agent, as well as founder of FAMOUS MONSTERS mag), Dolores Fuller (lovely & busty even in her old age), Conrad Brooks & Paul Marco, and Baptist pastor Lyn Lemon (of PLAN 9 fame, a tall stately rich-voiced gentleman- nothing like the ED WOOD portrayal) were all there & I got their autographs. Vampira & Loretta King, the BRIDE lady-star-investor (Juliet Landau in ED WOOD) were not there that night but were supposed to be at later showings. (One night was advertised as Dolores Fuller & Loretta King meet again for the first time since doing BRIDE.)
Btw, most people who knew Lugosi did think the ED WOOD script did him a disservice, that Bela was a European gentleman who would never have used that language, especially about his friend Boris Karloff.