cinema history class: night of the ghouls

Session: Ed Wood Month, Week 4
Movie: Night of the Ghouls (1959 -- first released in 1984)
Directed by Ed Wood

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A fake psychic bilks rubes out of money by claiming to make contact with their dead relatives. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
It seems perfectly symbolic of Ed Wood's career that this film wasn't released until 25 years after it was made, and that the reason was that Wood didn't have the money to pay the processing lab.

As with the other Ed Wood movies we saw in this session, there was a whole lot to not like about this. There were continuity errors, wooden acting and oddly-used stock footage that was out of place and felt like filler. Oh, and Wood overused narration -- both a general narrator and a policeman's inner voice describing his thoughts. It seems that Wood had no business directing movies, yet he did. Again and again and again.

And yet, as bad as the movie was, there were some things that were just so odd they were amusing. The floating ghosts and trumpets during the seance scenes were a nice touch, and the makeup on Tor Johnson to show that his character, Lobo, had been horribly burned was excellent. And occasionally Wood used shadow really well -- making me wonder if maybe he could be a director of decent movies.

But the best part of the film was the ending. And I don;t mean that in a sarcastic way. For most of the movie, the story seemed uninspired. But the end was worthy of Twilight Zone, and literally saved the movie in my eyes. Until that point I was figuring on rating it a 7 -- which is a pretty bad rating in the context of this class. But the ending raised it to an 8.5.

Ratings:
Me: 8.5
Dave: 9.5
Ethan: 8
Joe: 9.5
Sean: 3 out of 4