Night of the Ghouls

The story goes that 'Night Of The Ghouls' sat in the can for over twenty years because Ed Wood couldn't afford to have it developed. I've sometimes seen it passed off as a sequel to 'Plan 9 From Outer Space', but it's actually a sequel to 'Bride Of The Monster'. The links are slim but the mad scientist played by Bela Lugosi is mentioned once or twice, and his assistant Lobo (Tor Johnson) appears in horribly disfigured form. As well as Johnson a few Wood regulars are involved, notably Criswell and Paul Marco. Criswell is a hoot as always but Marco is tiresome. He's the comic relief but I can't stand his character who is always whining and screwing up. Duke Moore from 'Plan 9' plays the main cop and Kenne Duncan, who trash hounds might remember from 'The Astounding She-Monster', plays "Dr. Acula", a crook posing as a spiritualist. 'Night Of The Ghouls' is a lesser Wood movie. It's neither as crazy as 'Glen Or Glenda' or as effective as 'Bride Of The Monster', and frankly I miss Lugosi. So don't get your hopes up, it's fun but pretty forgettable.

Seriously bad movies takes the viewer into unexplored realms of weirdness quite beyond the range of more conventional films (there's an extraordinary sequence in 'Night of the Ghouls' depicting a seance, for example); although when a film begins with Criswell rising from a coffin to deliver a pious homily on the existential threat posed by juvenile delinquency you've got a pretty good idea what to expect. Veteran cameraman William C. Thompson meanwhile creates some memorable images; the single most haunting probably being the closeups of Jeannie Stevens in her fleeting appearances as the Black Ghost.

My review was written in June 1984 after watching the movie on THe Nostalgia Merchant video cassette.

"Night of the Ghouls" is a below-average B-picture, of interest since it is the 1959-lensed, theatrically unreleased sequel to the cult favorite "Plan 9 from Outer Space". After 25 years in the vaults, it now is available to home video fans and is reviewed here for the record.

Narrated by Criswell, the late psychic who used to appear annually on Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show" with his "I predict" routine, "Ghouls" has the L. A. County Sheriff's office investigating strange goings-on at the old house on Willows Lake. Years before (a vague reference ro "Plan 9"), a mad doctor had made monsters there, but everything was destroyed by lightning.

Currently, the fake swami Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan, wearing a turban), is swindling gullible folks by pretending to reanimate dead relatives. Unbeknownst to him, Acula's fake powers were strong enough to actually bring back the dead, who, in the lore of this film, have 12 hours of freedom to walk on Earth every 13 years when called forth by a spirit medium. Led by Criswell, the undead attack, and Aculas's assistant Sheila (Valda Hansen) is lured by a black-veiled ghost (Jeannie Stevens) to join them in the grave, as a real ghost rather than a fake one. Despite its title, film is not about ghouls, since there is no grave-robbing per se, nor any of the currently fashionable (in horror films) feeding on corpses.

The late filmmaker Edward D. Wood unior displays his usual minimal approach, utilizing barely dressed sets (typically a blank wal with a lonely looking picture hanging on it, poor eating tending towards swishiness in the supporting cast and an assortment of silly sound effects and cheapo insert shots which lamely try to inject humor into a dull script.. For those who place Wood's work on a pedestal, beyond the usual critical standards, it should be recalled that other earlier directors (e.g., Edgar Ulmer) and contempo ones (John Sayles, Wayne Wang) have crafted effective pictureson similarly minuscule budgets, with no apologies necessary.

How can you not like a picture that opens with a man (Criswell)sitting up in a coffin and warning that the story you are about to see may make you faint. Then the credits come on and you see the director is Edward D. Wood Jr. Yes, you may indeed faint . . .but from laughing too hard. This sequel to BRIDE OF THE MONSTER is fun on many levels. It offers unrelated footage from the unfinished movie HELLBORN (some of which later turned up in THE SINISTER URGE) which narrator Criswell tries to tie into the plot: there is also footage of Duke Moore that was shot for a 1/2 hour TV show that is woven in also. What was called "the old Willows house on Lake Marsh" is now "the house on Willow's Lake" and everyone remembers it used to be lived in by "the mad scientist who made monsters". The giant octopus is long gone but Lobo (Tor Johnson) has somehow survived and is now employed by Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan) a phony medium. Lobo is supposed to be the "monster" in the plot but one look at him makes you think otherwise. Dressed in rags, badly burned, half blind, groaning like he is in constant pain, Lobo inspires more pity than fear. In one scene Lt. Bradford (Moore) does not even seem to notice Lobo when he is standing right next to him! Well this is still a fun movie. The ineptness of an Ed Wood movie is compensated by the sincerity that he put into every production. Ed really believed he was contributing to the movie genre and making his mark. He sure did! Not quite in the way he expected, but look how many people are still watching his movies to-day!

All the mad ingredients that make up Ed Wood's delirious world are in full force here.

A spiritualist is busy raising the dead in a haunted house, and the cops investigate in classic Wood style. Ghouls, skeletons, bizarre and protracted dialogue aplenty in this 'sequel' to Bride of The Monster, which the script constantly refers to. There's even a narration delivered from a coffin by the inimitable Criswell!

It's no use arguing the merits of any Ed Wood film. At best, they're interminably silly by any conventional standard. Yet to his many fans they radiate with a weird appeal that defies explanation. I like 'em anyway.