Cheap Ed Wood (Special Edition) (DVD) (Johnny Depp, Martin Landau) (Tim Burton) Price

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Customer Reviews of Ed Wood (Special Edition)

Ed Wood: Very Good!
This black and white film by Tim Burton is based on the life (well, principally the 50s career) of Edward D. Wood Jr, the sci-fi B-movie purveyor often hailed as the worst director of all time. The movie isn't constrained by its roots in reality; Wood's real-life experiences (transvesitism, a friendship with the aging Bela Lugosi, and a desire to make some truly awful films) are so outlandish that they need no embellishment. But it still comes across as a Tim Burton film - the picture opens with a slow-motion camera crawl across B-movie country (misty swamps, underwater monsters, UFO sightings) with the credits inscribed on graveyard headstones... then Criswell (Jeffrey Jones) rises from his coffin to deliver an ominous introduction to the story. Johnny Depp is in effeminate mode here (a la Sleepy Hollow) but he plays Wood as an eternal optimist; so much so that it's hard to equate Wood's eventual demise with Depp's cheery portrayal. As for Martin Landau - well, I pretty much forgot it was him at all, he's so convincing as Bela Lugosi!

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"I want it to end with a BIG explosion, smoke fills the sky"
Johnny Depp plays Ed Wood, who earned the distinction of America's worst movie maker. In post-war California Ed just wants to make pictures, even if it means stringing together bits of unrelated stock footage. The events portrayed in the film are true, little has to be embellished to make a comedy of a man's life when he did such off the wall things as getting himself and his crew baptised by a local church just to get some of it's members to invest in a movie. Wood is an eternal optimist and rather clever hustler who knows how to sling the bull, cut costs and corners and be convincing enough to pass himself off as a competent "B-movie" director. Wood thinks he has hit the jackpot when he has a chance meeting with Bela Lugosi (brilliantly played by Martin Landau), whose star has long since faded. The two are perfect for each other, Lugosi gives Wood a name he can attach to his marquee and Wood pays Lugosi the money he needs to support his unfortunate morphine habit. The supporting cast, including Sarah Jessica Parker and Bill Murrary, does a marvelous job portraying all the crazy people that filled the life of Ed Wood. One of the best roles goes to Jeffrey Jones as 'Criswell', a two-bit pyschic who got lucky by accidently predicting the Kennedy assassination, who helps instruct Wood on how to fake it in show biz. At times Wood is a clueless optimist at other times a cynical manipulator and always driven by ambition and the love of films, which makes him rather American and easy to like, just like this movie.

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No really this is good, honest
Watching Ed Wood movies and watching Ed Wood there is an alarming thing - Ed Wood's life was better suited to a movie than he was as a director! And as he tried woefully to express this side of his personality to the public with the woeful Glen or Glenda ( " Did you see the movie? Uh huh. Worst movie you saw in your life? OK but how about.....hello hello! )

Johnny Depp is hilarious as Ed and really plays the part extraordinarily well. You almost feel sorry for him as he gets rejected from everyone because he seems to have his intentions right no matter how skewed they end up being.

Of course Ed has a fetish for women's clothing which would make itself known in the film Glen or Glenda but Dolores wouldn't know about this until she read the script. Let's just say she doesn't take to it as well as Ed's rather naive script would like her to be! Although I have to admit that Sarah Jessica Parker is not exactly that easy to like in the movie

Martin Landau is the one who I think plays Bela Lugosi and I have to say that the resemblance is uncanny that you almost feel like singing the line from the Bauhaus song Bela Lugosi's Dead -" Oh Bela, Bela's not dead " indeed!

Bill Murray is fantastic in his role. As ever, he has the best lines in this movie. One of the best roles I've seen him in

I've seen this film - it must be about nearly 7 or 8 times and it's so funny that some of the lines in it are implanted in my head. One that has to be watched for those interested in seeing something a little unusual