Ed Wood vs. Herschell Gordon Lewis

Ed Wood worked so hard. Plan 9 from Outer Space had a fairly complex plot, three or four different threads going---the old man, the army guy, the airline pilot, the police. I thought it was nicely edited. It had special effects, constructed sets, miniatures. It had a few decent actors---Gregory Walcott, Tom Keene, Lyle Talbot, Dudley Manlove who was big in radio; Joanna Lee who went on to be a writer and producer in television (although she cheerfully denied any connection to Plan 9). It had scenes in The Pentagon, in the barren desert landscape outside Washington, D.C., in and around Los Angeles. He had one good shot of Tor Johnson rising from the grave.

Contrast that with the crap Herschell Gordon Lewis churned out. He filmed whole scenes in one master shot. He never tracked or dollied like Ed Wood did. His storylines were simply excuses for sex or gore scenes. Everything was brightly, evenly lit.

So. Should you be more like Herschell Gordon Lewis or more like Ed Wood? You probably wouldn't want to be either one, but they didn't choose to be who they were, either. For someone just setting out with a digital camcorder, with little money, experience, and probably not much talent, how hard should you really try?

People watch low budget movies and think, if it's any good, that if the filmmaker just had some money to work with they might have made a pretty good movie. You never think that watching the movies of Ed Wood or Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Lewis probably had less to be embarrassed about. He made few pretenses.

Ed Wood made a deeply but weirdly personal film, Glen or Glenda, a heartfelt plea for tolerance. Plan 9, bankrolled by a Baptist church, called for an end to the arms race. Bride of the Monster ended with a nuclear explosion intended to protest nuclear weapons.

Herschell Gordon Lewis knew when to quit. He went into "direct marketing". Ed Wood stuck it out to the bitter end.