Ed Wood vs. Herschel Gordon Lewis

Dramatic moment in Herschell Gordon Lewis's Linda & Abilene.

Look at Plan 9 From Outer Space. It had a lot of plot---four storylines that all come together in the end. It had plenty for the actors. Everyone had a lot of dialog, it had Bela Lugosi emoting. They put a real effort into it and it was just terrible.

Contrast this with the equally crappy films of such auteurs as Herschell Gordon Lewis. His movies were simply excuses for a series of sex or gore scenes, and they were kind of entertaining in their way.

One time---did I write this before?---I was watching one of Lewis's movies, The Psychic, with a friend. I was surprised he wanted to see it. He wasn't into bad movies.

The movie, which Lewis wrote but didn't direct, would have a scene of the psychic appearing on stage or on a talk show, then a scene of him having sex. That was the whole thing. Psychic scene, sex scenes, psychic scene, sex scene, psychic scene, sex scene, for 80 minutes.

My friend started fast forwarding through the sex scenes and just sat through the scenes of the guy mumbling on talk shows.

"Most people would fast forward through this stuff to get to the sex scenes," I told him.

He said that those particular sex scenes were unappealing.

My point here is that if you're making a movie and you have little money and probably not that much talent or ability, don't put much effort into it and you'll do just fine.