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| Conrad Brooks, Ed Wood, Criswell, some graffiti, and Tor Johnson figure in this documentary. |
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| A somewhat forgotten documentary. |
"No, I don't think so. No, Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything. I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. A missing piece."
I flashed back to Citizen Kane while watching the little-loved 1990 documentary On the Trail of Ed Wood. This humble, hour-long film, made by Michael Copner and Buddy Barnett of Cult Movies magazine, is essentially an extended interview with Conrad Brooks (1931-2017), Eddie's close friend and an actor in several of his films, including Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).
Conrad is a lot like the interview subjects in Citizen Kane, ruminating on the life of a famous dead man and trying to glean some meaning from the chaos. The difference is, the remembrances in Kane are full of drama, comedy, intrigue, tragedy, philosophy, etc. while Conrad Brooks' stories are often vague and slow-paced. Connie spent a lot of time with Ed Wood but doesn't seem to possess any special insight into the eccentric filmmaker. As a result, On the Trail of Ed Wood plays like the footage Orson Welles (or Jerry Thompson, for that matter) might have cut from Citizen Kane.
But that's not to say On the Trail is without merit. The documentary turns 30 this year, so this is as good a time as any to look back on it. If nothing else, it offers a snapshot of the Wood cult as it stood a decade after the publication of Harry and Michael Medved's The Golden Turkey Awards and four years before the release of Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood. This was an in-between time for Eddie's fandom. The initial wave of curiosity provoked by the Medveds had cooled off, but the second, more scholarly wave of Woodmania hadn't really begun yet. In particular, Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) was still two years away from publication, so the closest thing to a career-spanning Wood biography was the homemade 1981 chapbook Edward D. Wood Jr.: A Man and His Films by superfans Randy Simon and Harold Benjamin.
Besides Grey's book and Burton's movie, the 1990s also saw the release of three distinctive, stylized documentaries about Eddie: Ted Newsom's Look Back in Angora (1994), Mark Patrick Carducci's Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992), and Brett Thompson's The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1995). Crude as it is, On the Trail of Ed Wood predates all of these, not to mention Grey's book. As far as I know, it's the first full-length documentary about Ed Wood of any real substance. For that alone, it deserves better than its current 3.8 rating at the IMDb.
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| The DVD version that I reviewed. |
After these credits, On the Trail offers us some goofy man-on-the-street interviews shot in Hollywood, with Copner asking passersby what they know about Ed Wood and Plan 9. Perhaps coincidentally, this is also how Flying Saucers Over Hollywood starts. While I'm not hugely enthusiastic about this material in either film, this footage at least allows us to see what the busy intersection of Hollywood Blvd. and Cherokee Ave. looked like 30 years ago. (Side note: The legendary Musso & Frank Grill, a key location in Ed Wood and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is just offscreen.)
"We have just seen the evidence," says Copner to the camera in the style of Criswell. "There are still people out there in the world today who have no idea who Edward D. Wood, Jr. really was. Now we hope to change all that with this videotape." On the Trail was originally marketed as a mail-order VHS tape in the pages of Cult Movies magazine, but the version I reviewed was a DVD edition from Alpha Video.
Copner gives us a very perfunctory, pre-Wikipedia description of Ed Wood (back when people thought Eddie made only six movies), then explains that he and Barnett ran into Conrad Brooks while doing research on a horror movie book. According to Copner, Brooks allowed the Cult Movies team to see rare pictures and other documents from Connie's own personal archives. Throughout the film, we glimpse various posters, lobby cards, and press kits related to Ed's movies, with Orgy of the Dead (1965) being the most recent film thus featured. There are also plenty of photographs, including behind-the-scenes pictures, headshots and promotional photos, and even some personal snapshots. I don't think any (or many) of these were new to me, but maybe this was all virgin territory in 1990. This was pre-internet and pre-Nightmare of Ecstasy.
The vast majority of On the Trail consists of Conrad Brooks, dressed casually in a red sweatshirt and dark blue slacks, slumped on a couch, reminiscing at great length (but not great depth) about Ed Wood. Buddy Barnett occasionally chimes in with questions or prompts. Connie is not exactly a natural raconteur, with his slow, halting delivery, and the slack editing here does him no favors. On the Trail really makes you appreciate those other '90s Ed Wood documentaries I mentioned, all of which feature multiple interview subjects rather than just one. I can imagine clips from this film being used in another, more focused movie.
As it is, Copner and Barnett's discussion with Conrad Brooks is divided into a few major sections, interrupted by occasional field trips to significant locations in Los Angeles. I've done what I can to find interesting or useful information in these parts of the documentary.
As it is, Copner and Barnett's discussion with Conrad Brooks is divided into a few major sections, interrupted by occasional field trips to significant locations in Los Angeles. I've done what I can to find interesting or useful information in these parts of the documentary.
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