This 1955 horror and sci-fi mixture, with many puzzling lines of dialogue and unbelievable moments, is another of Edward D Wood Jr’s hysterical, surreally awful home movies.
Bela Lugosi stars as mad professor Dr Eric Vornoff who, assisted by the brutish Lobo (Tor Johnson), develops an atomic-ray machine that produces a gallery of superhuman grotesques before a giant prop-department octopus puts him out of our misery. Intrepid reporter Janet Lawton (Loretta King) sets off for the swampland to investigate where Vornoff lives and why people keep dying.
Alas poor Bela! How did he sink this low? Nevertheless, even sick and old as you cannot avoid seeing that he is, he still produces moments of spark.
Otherwise Ed Wood and Alex Gordon’s terrible original story and screenplay are matched by rotten acting and appalling direction down to Wood’s best, most risible standards.
Also in the cast are Tony McCoy as Lieutenant Dick Craig, Harvey B Dunn as Captain Robbins, George Becwar as Professor Strowski, Paul Marco, Don Nagel, Ann Willner, Dolores Fuller, William ‘Billy’ Benedict and Bud Osborne.
It is also known as Bride of the Atom.
It is another movie released by the ironically named Real Art.
It is followed by Ed Wood’s Night of the Ghouls (1959).
© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5286
Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com