Bride of the Monster (1955)

Nice effects though.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This movie has gotten a bad rap because the way others have seen Ed's other movies. This is a real good film & I have to say, it's Ed's best where he means it to be!! Yes, it's low budget, but when you watch, you think of having a better budget and people would have thought differently after seeing this.

BRIDE OF THE MONSTER is one of the sci fi/horror outings from cult filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr., commonly called "the worst director of all time". That moniker isn't anywhere near true, of course, as although his films are all low budget and cheesy, they're consistently entertaining, unlike many hack directors working today and throughout history.This film is more fun than PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, less inept and more tightly put together. Bela Lugosi stars in one of his last roles and while it's a shock to see him looking so aged and frail, he has a ball with this role and he's a barnstorming delight; he reminded me of Tod Slaughter a little. Tor Johnson is also a great presence as the zombie-like henchman and if the rest of the cast are a little bland, that's no real problem. BRIDE OF THE MONSTER has a giant killer squid, a mad scientist, scientific apparatus, murder, death, action, and plenty more besides. B-movie fans will be in their element.

When Bela Lugosi pulls out his whip and begins to pummel the much larger Tor Johnson, you've got to laugh because of the difference in their size. Bela Lugosi by this time was in his 70's, way beyond frail, yet he is not at all afraid of slapping the model for one of the most popular Halloween masks ever. Even less than a decade after his last major Hollywood release ("Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein"), Lugosi looked completely like a different person. His teaming with Ed Wood (or Edward D. Wood Jr. as the Orson Welles wanna-bee billed himself) dominated his later years, and with the exception of an "Old Mother Reilly" film and a wretched film with a team who were a pale imitation of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, his movie work was all gotten through who is today called "the worst director ever". This movie is basically a recap of everything Lugosi had done at Monogram or PRC in the 1940's. It is especially close to the highly melodramatic Universal serial "The Phantom Creeps", and if made on a much lower budget than that chapter play is still a lot more entertaining, mainly because as camp and for historical purposes, it plays better today. That is because the documenting of the filming of this with Tim Burton's wonderful "Ed Wood" (which won Martin Landau a well deserved Oscar as Lugosi) shows the big dreams of the director (Johnny Depp in a sweet, childlike performance) making what he considered to be a masterpiece yet the rest of the world considered to be crap.Yes, this is crap, but sometimes that is what makes the garden grow. The laughs are abundant here, and "Ed Wood" is no help in decreasing those laughs with the filming this cult favorite, whether it is Lugosi battling with the unmoving octopus or Lillian King (who financed the movie) encountering Dolores Fuller, Wood's previous leading lady, in one scene hysterically recreated. Of course, Lugosi does his best to give a moving performance, and in the scene where he's confronted by an old colleague, the threat is there to break your heart. Lugosi always believed that even with the lamest dialogue, you had to feel it in your heart to make it work, and somehow, he is almost right. Yet, a mad scientist in 1939 utilizing exploding mechanical spiders or a steel monster to do his bidding, or having a giant bat killing his enemies is the same as a 70-something year old man who briefly gains the strength of a 30 year old. You can't take stuff like this seriously, but you can find a lot of fun in enjoying it for being delightfully bad and the stuff that Hollywood legends are made of.

Bride Of The Monster was Bela Lugosi's last completed film and was done for that legendary director of bad movies, Ed Wood, Jr. At least Lugosi didn't live to see Plan Nine From Outer Space, he was spared that humiliation.Once again Bela is a mad scientist who has a scheme to create a race of atomic supermen and he's got a great old prototype in Tor Johnson formerly the Swedish Angel of pro wrestling fame. In fact Tor's nocturnal wanderings have given rise to a monster legend in and around Lugosi's secluded digs in the woods. That and the pet giant octopus he keeps around for no discernible reason other than to dispose of unwanted guests.Bela has all kinds of people on his trail, the cops, a Lois Lane type reporter who is girlfriend to one of the cops and another scientist from Lugosi's home country who wants to bring him back so he can do his work there. Bela however is a believer that a prophet has no honor in his home country and disposes of that unwanted guest via the octopus.The octopus and Ed Wood's inability to use it somewhat realistically are the main reasons that this Ed Wood classic is remembered today. I just read a very thorough biography of Lugosi and the rubber octopus was the one John Wayne struggled with in Wake Of The Red Witch. It was the property of Republic Pictures. But Republic was slowly going out of business so Wood got the thing from Herbert J. Yates somehow, he rented it, Yates sold it to him in a fire sale, or he just gave it to him there not being a big market for giant rubber octopuses. Now that thing would bring thousands of dollars in an on line auction if it still exists. Even with a missing tentacle, broken off during the shooting of Bride Of The Monster.Not much else to recommend it, cheesy sets, acting on the junior high school level, and a man with no eye for special effects directing this epic. Still worth a few laughs though.