Bride of the Monster

I guess I have a little more pull than I realize.

There's a big top secret forum for LAMB members only and one of the things discussed in there are all the different features that are featured on the LAMB. One of these things is called LAMB In The Director's Chair, where for three days, the LAMB focuses on a director. I've partaken in this before when that Kathryn chick was the main feature and I took on "Near Dark" and "Point Break", two movies that nearly cost me all my readers.

Well, at some point, the guy that runs it (I forget his name. Billy? Ted? Something like that) asked us for suggestions. OF COURSE people were like "Clint Eastwood! Martin Scorsese! Woody Allen!" and I was like "Ed Wood!" Cause, well, he's a director. And I find his movies MUCH more entertaining.

This was like two years ago and NOW....taa-daa! He's a featured director! I caused a thing to happen! Thanks Billy! Or Ted!

My first movie from Mr. Wood's catalog is going to be "Bride of the Monster". If you seen the Tim Burton film "Ed Wood" you seen some mention of this movie and how it was made...sort of. It stars Bela Lugosi and some people Ed Wood knew and some people who was putting up money for this project. Cause when you are begging people for money, you'll do just about anything, including putting them in your monster/atomic movie.

The movie starts with two guys in the woods just kinda standing around. It's never said what they were doing or where they were going. And it's raining. They decide to get out of the rain, so they go to a nearby house and knock on the door. Bela answers and yells at them in his accent to go away. At least he didn't turn them into The Human Centipede.

So the guys start roaming around, not knowing what to do cause Ed Wood didn't think that far into their story, when one of them falls into a hole. The hole, I guess, is connected to some water source and in this water source is an octopus. Or at least stock footage of an octopus.

The one guy is pretty much eaten while the other guy is attacked by Lobo, this big giant not-that-bright guy played by Tor Johnson. Lobo brings the other guy back to Bela's lab and he's turned into segment B of the Human Centipede!

Ok, just kidding.

Bela starts talking but his accent, mixed with his withdrawls of heroin, makes him hard to understand. Something about either making him a super invinsible giant or...dead. Bela throws a switch and guy ends up dead. Oh well. Octopus food!

Thanks to some....eyewitness reports? I guess? the newspaper reports on a monster attacking the two dudes. We go to the police station and Detective Dick, who's girlfriend Janet is a reporter doing all the stories about monsters. Dick and his police chief, played by 9-fingered Harvey B. Dunn, aren't happy about this. Janet wants Dick to talk but he won't, so she says screw you and goes investigating on her own.

While she's off doing that, another badly accented dude named Prof. Strowski appears, saying he knows what all this monster business is about. He's willing to help out the police by tagging along with Dick to investigate the swamp all these monster sightings are happening.

Janet is driving to the swamp herself when she simply drives off the road and crashes. I guess cause she's a woman in the 50's, I dunno. Lobo finds her and takes her in, "Misery" style. Bela wakes her and introduces himself...then immediately puts her back to sleep. Maybe she'll be segment B.

I have Human Centipede on the mind, sorry.

The next day, Dick finds that Strowski left on his own so Dick goes chasing after Strowski. Strowski shows up at Bela's and there's a 20 minute discussion scene where they just basically said this: Bela was from some country but he fled cause no one liked his work. His country realizes maybe Bela might be onto something so they hired Strowski to bring him back, under any circumstances. So what's Bela's plan, exactly?

I have no idea. It's not really clear. It has something to do with the giant octopus that exists in stock footage, plus the making the giant supermen he tried to make earlier. So I dunno. Anyway, Bela doesn't wanna leave so he has Strowski killed by a fake rubber octopus that doesn't move cause they forgot the motor.

Dick finds Janet's car and realizes she's in danger. He takes off running to Bela's place and...ok where the fuck is Bela's place? Everyone makes it seem like they have to hike 20 miles to get there but other people just randomly find it easily. I don't get it.

Bela puts Janet in a bride's dress and declares her The Bride of the Atom...or the monster. I guess he was going to superman her and have her fuck the octopus? I don't know. Thankfully, Dick shows up to stop Bela, but Lobo gets the jump on him and knocks him out.

Oh, one weird thing is Bela likes to whip Lobo, sometimes for no reason. So all this whipping got Lobo mad and he decides to revolt...kinda randomly actually. He knocks Bela out and frees Janet. Janet then frees Dick, while Dick frees the dog and the dog frees Lincoln while Lincoln frees the slaves!

Sorry.

While all this freeing is happening, Lobo puts Bela on the table and does whatever to make him superman or kill him. This time....he becomes superman. And by superman, I mean Bela is replaced with a stunt double and the double is wearing platform shoes. It's pretty hilarious.

Bela kills Lobo and grabs Janet. Dick runs out to help her and suddenly it's an editor's nightmare.

-We get scenes of Bela on a soundstage just grimacing.
-We get scenes of Dick running around.
-We get scenes of the police chief running around.
-There's footage of the octopus just chilling.

All kinda mished mashed. Dick finds Janet and saves her. Then he pushes a boulder on Bela, causing him to fly into a water source where he has to move the octopus' arms since they forgot the motor. Then kind of out of nowhere, Bela's house explodes, and the chief gives us this great line:

"He tampered in God's domain."

The end.

The only way you should see this movie is seeing it on MST3K. The riffing is hilarious. The movie? It's unintentionally funny but pretty painful. You'll be mainly confused by a lot of what's going on. So anyway, this is one Ed Wood review in the books.

-Jason