Ed Wood with an encore. Conceived as the screenplay The Racket Queen, the basis was rewritten by Wood as The Sinister Urge. The script focused on a sexually motivated killer and may have been inspired by Psycho (1960). Filmed in July 1960 for an estimated $20,125, The Sinister Urge (1960) opened on December 8th, 1960 and was Wood’s last mainstream release. Afterwards Wood only directed adult films and wrote for others. Urge’s sequel The Pepper never materialized. Gift Giving Shower, Blowing Up Deep 13, Keeping Clean and Neat, Huggy Bear, Potato Cakes, Deep Fried Frank. “Hey, she’s trying to give someone the slip”, “Oh, I love this game. The sinister urge is a silly urge” “The sinister urge is a stupid urge”, “Oh help me! Help me! Oh, what a lovely spot. Help!” “She’s here for the Lutheran picnic” or “Quickly into the TARDIS”?
If nothing else, this episode taught us that Godzilla vs. Megalon wasn’t part of Mike’s training. Otherwise Crow wouldn’t be surprised by that mention.
The short covers a lot of the same ground as Body Care and Grooming (seen with The Painted Hills). The main difference is that it’s aimed at the elementary school set. What struck me as a rather inane moment occurred when the narrator talks about color combinations in your clothes. That’s all well and good, but the point is undermined by how the short was filmed in black and white. For all we know, the subject could be wearing orange and purple together.
The feature is another clunker written and directed by Ed Wood and can be regarded as a pornography variant of the Reefer Madness template. If you wish to proclaim arguments about the societal ills of pornography, you would probably be better off not have the assistance of Mr. Wood. To start off, the cops who are investigating the porn racket are fanatics that regard it as the root of all crime. The seriousness of the subject matter is hamstrung by how the porn is not exactly titillating (unless it’s being marketed to Discworld trolls). Then there’s the sequence with Mary, the naïve woman with dreams of Hollywood stardom. Back when porn was more underground, in all probability women like Mary were hired under false pretenses and then coerced when they learned what was expected of them. Here, this potentially dark and troubling narrative thread ends up being farcical.
Mind you, this assumes Wood was being sincere. There’s a strong case to be argued that he wasn’t. Seeing as how this was made not too long before he started working in porn films himself, it isn’t that big a stretch to think that he was doing a send-up. Who can say?
He may not seem like it but his work is all over the place. How much is sincere and how much is calculated? Wood is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994) paints him as a wholesome everyman. The accounts of his life and the films themselves pose contradictions, passions, and behaviors that Burton also captured. But to what extent and degree were his impulses? We’ll never entirely know.
A beloved episode to me! The fun starts with the short. It’s one of my all time favorite shorts. From “uh oh dad’s vomit” to “he knows alot about women’s toenails” this one makes me laugh pretty much all the way through. And the fun continues with the episode! You got Duke Moore sounding drunk half the time, Harvey B. Dunn and his missing finger, Jean Fontaine and her gravelly voice, the elfish movie director. It’s full of misfits! Typical Ed Wood movie! And I like the film noir host segments! Especially Crow and Servo’s good cop, bad cop sketch.
There are few other episodes that I find this good from start to finish!
Ah, Ed Wood. There’s no shortage of crazy stuff in his movies. This time we focus on the greatest threat of all time, if the Woodian cops are to be believed, incredibly chaste pornography! We get our fill of crazy with a brawl from another movie, the prom dress lady with a voice you could shave with, a kooky faux-German director, and Kline overdrive.
What is it about Ed Wood pictures that make them so ideal for riffling? The craziness, the moralizing, the wooden delivery of every actor? All of it and how Wood delivers it?
