A Face do Crime

A morality play a la Reefer Madness, with guns instead of grass. Marilyn Gregor (Dolores Fuller), a fifties good-girl, is bailing out her brother Don (Clancy Malone), who's been run in for gun possession. Although Don's father is a prestigious plastic surgeon, Don Jr. has renounced this respectable profession in favor of a life of crime. He's pretty incorrigible if he's got a gun in his hand so after Marilyn drives him home, he gets a revolver from a hollowed out book to replace the one the cops confiscated and goes out to meet his henchman, Vic Brady (Timothy Farrell), at a downtown watering hole. It seems the two have one last caper to commit before bedtime: they hold up an office for $23,000 in theater payroll checks. Unfortunately, the holdup goes wrong; Don kills a security guard/retired cop and Vic tags a fleeing secretary but doesn't kill her. The cops arrive but Don and Vic shake them after a languid car chase that (maybe because Ed Wood forgot to get a shooting permit and didn't want anyone to know he was making a movie) obeys all traffic laws. They're safe for the time being but the secretary they failed to kill is a living witness so word gets out soon enough that Don is a cop killer. Choked by remorse, Don visits his father's office and Doctor Gregor convinces him to surrender to the authorities. But Vic catches Don there, takes him back to Vic's hideout, and after a brief altercation shoots him dead. Vic and his girlfriend Loretta (Theodora Thurman) trick Doctor Gregor the plastic surgeon into giving Vic a new face to escape the law, using for leverage a claim that they are holding Don hostage. When Doctor Gregor discovers that Don is already dead, he gets revenge by surreptitiously giving Vic Don's face. The police identify Vic as Don, the cop killer, and kill him after a quick and bloodless shootout. Justice having been done, we can all shake our heads ruefully and go home.

An essentially unremarkable cops-and-robbers potboiler, Jail Bait is pretty good evidence that Ed Wood gets far too much credit for making bad films. Though Wood's dialogue delivers the occasional trademark nonsequitur-when a police inspector (Lyle Talbot) explains to Marilyn that "carrying a gun can be dangerous business," she rejoins that "building a skyscraper" can be dangerous business, too, thus demonstrating that she's missed his point entirely-by and large this movie is marginally competent. I wouldn't make such a point out of this except that Ed Wood's "badness" is the key component of his continued notoriety; I guess I'm suggesting that anyone who's seen a movie as wretched as Paranoia or Blood Sisters (to name two of about four billion examples) should be unimpressed by Wood's supposed ineptitude.

The movie is most interesting when it's suggesting that our free wills and capacity to make decisions abandon us in the face of relatively banal stimuli-in this case, the condition of holding a gun in his hand is enough to make Don take leave of his senses and start shooting everyone in sight. Several times he insists that "I never thought it would come to this," just as the dope smokers of Reefer Madness seem to watch on helplessly as their own lives go up in bubbly, gurgling lung-smoke just because they couldn't see the long-term peril in a puff of marijuana. Doctor Gregor provides the obligatory Freudian theory for Don's miscreantism-turns out Dad spoiled Don as a child and the little fellow also suffered from an absent mother, "God rest her soul"-but this is largely an afterthought. The more Doctor Gregor and Marilyn sacrifice themselves for Don, the more we realize his upbringing was just fine; he simply can't think straight when he has a pistol in his hand. When Doc and Marilyn are preparing to meet with Vic for the first time the movie seems to consider pursuing this idea seriously-Marilyn, wanting only to protect Don, drops another in an apparently interminable supply of handguns into her purse-but once there the gun never resurfaces so the movie never makes good on its promise to transform Marilyn into a murderous fiend once she decides to pack heat.

Don't be fooled by the tagline-underage girls are not the "jail bait" of this movie's title. Guns are. Guns. Get it?

In "Jail Bait", Ed Wood applies his boundless enthusiasm and limited talent to the crime movie genre. From a technical viewpoint, it's actually one of his less unsound features, although that cuts down somewhat on the unintentional laughs that it provides. The story is actually pretty solid, and could have served as the basis for a pretty good film-noir. Most of its weaknesses are in the acting, pacing, and dialogue, plus the occasional zany out-of-place detail.

The story uses a basically familiar setup, but adds a couple of extra components to it. Lyle Talbot and Steve Reeves play a pair of policemen investigating the misdeeds of a young man whose father is a highly respected doctor. The doctor and his daughter, meanwhile, try to protect the son both from the police and from the career criminal who has led him astray. For the most part, the story is conventional but believable, with a rather clever ending.

Most of the rest of the production does not come up to the level of the story. The ever-loyal Talbot gives his typically earnest performance, trying to make the dialogue sound as good as possible, while enduring some amusingly awkward interactions with the stilted Reeves. The rest of the cast is generally nondescript, and sometimes noticeably out of their depth.

The dialogue contains some of the expected unintentional laughs, and the characters often overexert themselves on unnecessary exposition or on pointing out details that were already completely obvious. The pacing, likewise, is inconsistent from scene to scene, although with fewer of the kinds of direction and editing slip-ups that generally characterize Wood's features.

No one could ever deny that Wood loved making movies, and he made sincere efforts to make them as well as he could, which is what has kept his movies so watchable despite their shortcomings. "Jail Bait" attempts to emulate the classics of its genre, but it is severely limited by the lack of talent and other resources.

None of Ed Wood Jnr's movies are not what I deem great, however I also don't consider any of them among the worst movies of all time or him the worst director. There are better written, made and acted movies out there, but no matter how bad they are they are kind of like guilty pleasures. I do prefer Plan 9 from Outer Space, Bride of the Monster and Glen and Glenda over Jail Bait, but Jail Bait is at least better than Night of the Ghouls, Orgy of the Dead and especially The Sinister Urge. That is my opinion of course. The ending is huge fun, obvious but it does have to be seen to be believed. Jail Bait while having a lot of continuity errors is also one of Wood's better-looking movies, the camera work is not as static and the sets not as wobbly. There is much that is really terrible though, especially the music which is very repetitive and cheesy, it also gets far too much very quickly. The dialogue is truly horrendous as well, though I admit I did bust a gut from laughing at some of the howlers. The story is thankfully more coherent than the likes of Orgy of the Dead and also not as deadly dull as The Sinister Urge, however it is rather sluggish and often illogical, the ending is the highlight and where things really liven up. The acting is really amateurish as well, the best is Herbert Rawlinson while the rest are as stiff as a robot. Steve Reeves does have sex appeal, but it doesn't disguise his very bland acting or that his shirtless scene felt out of place. In conclusion, terrible but somewhat entertaining. Even more entertaining actually is the facts behind the movie, they make for a fascinating read. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Ed Wood is mostly known for his complete ineptness behind (and in front of) the camera in such "bad" film "classics" as "Glen or Glenda" "Bride of the Monster" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space." However, Wood's brief foray into film noir, "Jail Bait", is notable for a few reasons. The first and foremost of which is that it was the first screen appearance of the legendary muscle man Steve Reeves, who was later immortalized in the "Hercules" pictures. "Jail Bait" is a somewhat misleading title, as it is a phrase that usually refers to women who are trouble, more specifically, underaged women who are trouble. In this film that simply isn't the case - the "jail bait" is more the main character's fascination with the underworld. The Rhino Video release of this film is labeled the "director's cut" because it features a short burlesque striptease segment in the place of the original segment which featured a comedian in blackface. Unfortunately, the edit is so poorly executed that it becomes painfully obvious that this "director's cut" was most likely made by the owner of the copyright. The film is just as inept as most of Ed Wood's films, though it is a little more intriguing, as it is set in a less "fictional" environment and features attempts, late in the running time, at plot twists. Plus, lovely international model Theadora Thurman plays the femme fatale (though she's a terrible actress). A necessary rental for Ed Wood or "bad movie" fans, and possibly an educational video on how NOT to do film noir.

How could you not like Ed Wood? Here was a man who loved film making for which he had absolutely no talent. He never gave up, he scrounged around for money and locations, used actors with no ability or who were desperate for work, and is treasured by all bad-movie buffs. He would probably be thrilled that his name is universally recognized albeit as the worst director of all times.

He does his magic again with "Jail Bait", an inept film to say the least. All that needs to be said about the acting, dialog, sets, and the annoying music has already been covered on these boards, so I won't repeat it. I'll just say that I wonder how Lyle Talbot, who had a pretty decent career in films in the 1930s and early 40s, ever sank to this level. He was a face that appeared all over moviedom for years and was a good actor in support of some of the big stars of the day. Times must have been very, very hard for him to stoop to this. We know why Bela Lugosi worked with Wood but maybe Talbot did it on a bet.....or not. It's always sad to see competent actors who once had careers, end up in this manner.

If you have never seen an Ed Wood film, put this one on your "must see list"..........really all of his films are "must sees" if you are a fan of "so bad that they are good" movies. Ed Wood, I salute you!!!!!!