Hellborn

Hellborn (1993)

Edward D. Wood, Jr. started directing this movie after THE VIOLENT YEARS but he apparently ran out of money after a day or two. The film was never completed but Wood used some footage of his in his films THE SINISTER URGE and NIGHT OF THE GHOULS. If you bought the recent Blu-ray of THE VIOLENT YEARS then the great folks at Something Weird Video has included all of the HELLBORN footage that was shot. It clocks in at just over ten-minutes and we basically see a couple gangs creating terror by robbing people or beating them up. There isn't any audio so we can't hear any of the words that Wood might have written, which is too bad but at least we have the footage. It looks like the type of juvenile delinquent film you'd expect as there are some over-the-top moments, some fighting and of course teens acting tough. It's too bad Wood ran out of money as it seems like this one could have been a hoot.

"Hellborn" was a film that Ed and Conrad Brooks were working on over the course of more than a decade. The film never got made, but the footage shot was used in both "Night of the Ghouls" and (more significantly) in "The Sinister Urge."

Shown here for the first time is all of the remaining footage that was shot for "Hellborn" along with the complete home movie footage Ed shot for Conrad and his brothers around 1948.

Conrad's "Mysteries in Shadow" is far less interesting, but helps flesh out an otherwise thin lineup on the tape.

Interview segments with Conrad are sometimes interesting, but he mostly tells the same stories he's told elsewhere. More useful is an interview with actor Peter Coe at the end of the tape, where they speak of Ed's last days. (Ed died in Coe's house in 1978.)

Worth hunting down for the Ed collector.