Bride of the Monster
Bride of the Monster: 1956, Rolling M Productions, 68 minutes, B/W, Directed by Ed Wood. Starring Bela Lugosi as Dr. Eric Vornoff, Tor Johnson as Lobo, Tony McCoy as Lt. Dick Craig, Loretta King as Janet Lawton and Harvey B. Dunne as Captain Tom Robbins. Schlock-Meter ratings: 6 stars out of a possible 10.
Many Ed Wood fans regard “Bride of the Monster” as his
closest-to-competent finished film. I don’t share that belief. I regard the
inspired patched-together chaos of “Plan 9 From Outer Space” as Wood’s
best film. But “Bride” is probably Wood’s most mainstream film. It has a
conventional 1950s outer space movie plot: A mad scientist (Lugosi) lives in
exile in a marsh area outside of Los Angeles. He’s trying to create a race of
atomic superman. He keeps a hulking Tibetan giant (Johnson) and occasionally
feeds unlucky humans (including a communist spy from his homeland) to a giant
octopus who lives in the marsh. Eventually, Lugosi is foiled by a nosy reporter
(King) and her cop boyfriend (McCoy).
Bela Lugosi fans should not miss this, since it is the last film he made
where he spoke dialogue. However, it’s sad to see him in this micro-budget
mess. He hovers around a fake laboratory that an eight-year-old boy would be
ashamed to play in. A photo enlarger is the “atomic ray” machine. Also, this
was filmed just before Lugosi checked himself into a hospital to be treated for
drug abuse, and he looks very weak. Still, just the dignity of his performance
lifts this to a six-star rating and should be viewed by all cult movie fans.
The story behind the octopus is more interesting than the flaccid prop
that’s called the monster. Wood
and Co. stole it from a studio, but they forgot the motor, so actors were forced
to wrap the limp prop around them in a failed attempt to make the monster seem
to be alive. It is almost painful to watch the great Lugosi, already sick,
flinging a flaccid prop around him on a cold night in Los Angeles’ Griffith
Park in the film’s climax.
Tor Johnson is okay as Lobo (How many films was Johnson in where he
played Lobo, I wonder?). Loretta King is a bit whiny as the reporter Janet
Lawton, who Vornoff captures and tries to make “Bride of the Monster.”
Despite the panning he received in the film “Ed Wood,” Tony McCoy is not too
bad as the cop. Other Wood regulars Harvey B. Dunne, Dolores Fuller, and Paul
Marco have roles as well. A sequel to “Bride,” “Night of the Ghouls,”
was filmed a few years later and included Johnson and Marco in the cast.