La nuit des revenants

Ed Wood rounds up the usual suspects for this craptastic shocker. Lt. Moore is hot on the trail of shyster medium Dr. Acula (Uh huh, Dracula…I get it) who sets up his show in the good old Dr. Vornoff's (Bela Lugosi's lair in 'Bride of the Gorilla' (1955)) old lair to bilk little old ladies hard earned social security by channeling their love ones with floating sheets and phantom trumpet players who couldn't hold a tune even if they had pockets.. This guy couldn't talk to the dead with a two cans connected by string.

The Woodmeister really outdoes himself with 'Ghouls'. I was laughing my butt off during the good doctor's séances. Oh great swami salami please raise the dead. 'Night of the Ghouls' is badly acted with horrible dialogue and some of the cheesiest effects in all his films. I had a great time with this one. 4/5

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!

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.

I know what you're thinking. This is an Ed Wood movie so it can't be that good. Yeah, well, it ain't that bad either. An elderly couple show up at the police station frightened out of their wits having claimed to see a ghost near an old house in the woods once owned by a deranged scientist. The police feel they need to check it out so they send in one of their officers who specializes in ghosts (don't all police squads have a ghost unit?). Another officer is sent who is very possibly the worst cop in the history of cinema. He fires his gun at anything that frightens him in the least. He's played by Ed Wood regular, Paul Marco, played with not one ounce of common sense or normalcy. Anyway, the two cops investigate the house and see it's just a front for the new owner, named Dr. Ackula (I'm not kidding), to run a profitable scam that involves talking to peoples dead relatives. One of Dr. Acula's goons to do his dirty work is played by Tor Johnson who is always a welcome sight in a movie like this. Criswell narrates the film but really is unnecessary to the story, although it kind of adds to the campiness. It is rumored that this movie sat in the can for almost two decades because Ed Wood couldn't afford to have the film developed. If you liked "Plan 9 from outer space" you'll probably at least find this film moderately amusing.

Night of the Ghouls (1959)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Edward D. Wood, Jr. directs this semi-sequel to his cult film Bride of the Monster. People are seeing ghosts all over Los Angeles so a Detective (Duke Moore) goes to investigate. He comes across the weird Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan) as well as a burned Lobo (Tor Johnson) among others. This is a rather interesting Wood film as it's probably his best made due to a couple reasons. For starters, Wood couldn't afford to pay the lab bill so the film set unreleased for 24-years. When Wade Williams stepped in and bought the film, he had professional editors edit the movie so this here makes it look somewhat better than normal. Even in other ways the film works better from the better special effects to a couple nice shots, not to mention some nice comedy bits and not those unintentional laughs we're use to. However, the film never reaches that "so bad it's good" level so we're left with a pretty bland film that doesn't go anywhere. The film is pretty boring, which is something you don't normally say in regards to Wood. The burn make up on Tor Johnson is probably the most graphic of any film from this era and looks great.