Bride of the Monster (1955)

Very best movie i ever watch

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

"Home? I have no home. Hunted. Despised! Living like an animal!"One of screen icon Bela Lugosis' final completed roles is as the mad scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff, in this, one of the notorious efforts for schlock creator Edward D. Wood, Jr. Vornoff lives in an estate by a swamp where he conducts experiments in turning ordinary humans into atomic "super beings". He also utilizes the services of a henchman (Tor Johnson, amusing as always) and keeps a pet octopus on the premises. Headstrong journalist Janet Lawton (Loretta King) sniffs out a story and wanders into Vornoffs' domain."Bride of the Monster" may have been done on the ultra-cheap, but that does not mean it necessarily reeks of incompetence. Wood does manage to crank out an entertaining (if patently ridiculous) story and make a watchable film that runs a trim 69 minutes. He also gives Lugosi his last great hurrah by providing him with a role (and monologue) that the actor obviously relished. Truthfully, the film wouldn't be quite as memorable if Bela weren't playing Vornoff for everything that the part was worth.Budgetary restrictions are most hilariously apparent when it comes to the octopus. Wood alternates between stock footage of octopi and an absurd rubber prop that requires the actors playing the victims to do a fair amount of the work in death scenes. But the film does have good atmosphere, and a moderately effective lab set.The supporting cast has its moments. King is appealingly feisty, and Tony McCoy is passable as her hunky fiancee / hero, a detective lieutenant. (McCoys' father, a rancher (who retains an executive producer credit), financed "Bride" on the condition that his son get one of the principal roles.) Harvey B. Dunn is fun as McCoys' superior, a police captain whose pet bird is often perched on his shoulder. Former Wood companion Dolores Fuller has a regrettably minor role as a colleague of Janets'. And Woods' repertory player Paul Marco is typically a hoot as a dimwitted cop.Decent cinematography (credited to two men, Ted Allan and William C. Thompson), and music (by Frank Worth) further assist in making "Bride" a B picture to cherish.Eight out of 10.

Ed Wood had, has, and will continue to have one of the most lousy reputations out there as far as filmmaking is concerned. This highly incompetent film and science fiction enthusiast managed to manufacture some of the biggest schlock piles that made Roger Corman's early "motion pictures" seem like worth while efforts. Both written and directed by Wood "Bride of the Monster" presents us with poor, ill, elderly Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist who plans to create an army of atomic super-humans based upon his somewhat successful zombie-like prototype (Tor Johnson) so he can rule the world. With the law, discount Torchy Blane, and another scientist chasing him around Lugosi's shadow of his former self begins to dispose of these unwanted pests by having a giant octopus that's clearly just a rubber puppet devour them.It's difficult to get a laugh out of any of it considering how visibly miserable and confused the actors appear. Lugosi especially as he mumbles his ridiculously tedious dialogue, Johnson comes off less frightening than what was obviously intended, everyone else float around somewhere between overly over the top and too low-key to be even remotely worthy of mentioning.Far from being ironically enjoyable this movie is nothing more than an awfully depressing experience mixed with extremely tiny bits and pieces where there's a swift glimpse of whatever bizarre vision Wood originally had. As a man of vision Wood perhaps immersed himself in it so deeply which morphed his perception of the actual dismal reality taking place that is my theory anyway.

When Bela Lugosi pulls out his whip and begins to pummel the much larger Tor Johnson, you've got to laugh because of the difference in their size. Bela Lugosi by this time was in his 70's, way beyond frail, yet he is not at all afraid of slapping the model for one of the most popular Halloween masks ever. Even less than a decade after his last major Hollywood release ("Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein"), Lugosi looked completely like a different person. His teaming with Ed Wood (or Edward D. Wood Jr. as the Orson Welles wanna-bee billed himself) dominated his later years, and with the exception of an "Old Mother Reilly" film and a wretched film with a team who were a pale imitation of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, his movie work was all gotten through who is today called "the worst director ever". This movie is basically a recap of everything Lugosi had done at Monogram or PRC in the 1940's. It is especially close to the highly melodramatic Universal serial "The Phantom Creeps", and if made on a much lower budget than that chapter play is still a lot more entertaining, mainly because as camp and for historical purposes, it plays better today. That is because the documenting of the filming of this with Tim Burton's wonderful "Ed Wood" (which won Martin Landau a well deserved Oscar as Lugosi) shows the big dreams of the director (Johnny Depp in a sweet, childlike performance) making what he considered to be a masterpiece yet the rest of the world considered to be crap.Yes, this is crap, but sometimes that is what makes the garden grow. The laughs are abundant here, and "Ed Wood" is no help in decreasing those laughs with the filming this cult favorite, whether it is Lugosi battling with the unmoving octopus or Lillian King (who financed the movie) encountering Dolores Fuller, Wood's previous leading lady, in one scene hysterically recreated. Of course, Lugosi does his best to give a moving performance, and in the scene where he's confronted by an old colleague, the threat is there to break your heart. Lugosi always believed that even with the lamest dialogue, you had to feel it in your heart to make it work, and somehow, he is almost right. Yet, a mad scientist in 1939 utilizing exploding mechanical spiders or a steel monster to do his bidding, or having a giant bat killing his enemies is the same as a 70-something year old man who briefly gains the strength of a 30 year old. You can't take stuff like this seriously, but you can find a lot of fun in enjoying it for being delightfully bad and the stuff that Hollywood legends are made of.

Having enjoyed Plan 9 many times and Glen or Glenda once, I really expected this to be a serious turkey...and it wasn't! It's not overly good, but (since it came before Plan 9) I had ASSUMED Ed Wood had used this as a movie making dress rehearsal. Wrong! Lugosi is great! Tor Johnson is certainly more believable here than in Plan 9.It's a dumb movie with a dumb monster and dumb effects, but it works...almost. It's a fun watch: grab some popcorn and your buddies, set the bar low, and enjoy. Lugosi's performance makes me wonder what Plan 9 would have been like had he lived beyond 3 days into Plan 9's filming.