Customer Reviews

Ed Wood - Look Back in Angora [VHS]

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"Thrown together" is the right description. This was done on the cheap, with lots of stock footage of the 1930s-50s, to his Hollywood days (however, lots of Ed's early home movies & photos had been destroyed after he was evicted from his last decent home in the 1970s). The best parts were the bits from his best-known movies, but I would have liked to have known more of his seedy days & seedy movies - his descent into bad porno films. The feature film "Ed Wood" remains the best "documentary" of EDW, Jr.

When we slightly twisted fans of Ed Wood discuss the merits of his work, we must bear in mind that the very nature of it wreaks havoc on our grading scale. How does one actually assess anything having to do with Ed when best is worst and good is bad?

This very funny 50 minute documentary cleverly written and directed by Ted Newsom and featuring the narration of Gary Owens is excellent in that it fully achieves its goal. What is that goal? To take an irreverent snapshot of the life and "achievements" of Ed Wood, Hollywood's Horrible Hack. And that's good! See, now yer catchin' on.

The instantly recognizable voice of Gary Owens, with his mock seriousness is a dog 'n' flea collar fit for 'LOOK BACK IN ANGORA.' (The title alone tells you what to expect.) The slapdash style of this documentary mimics the slipshod ineptitude of our hero's best (meaning "worst") work. Is Owens disrespecting his subject? Well, yeah, of course he is - sort of. (But not in an overtly demeaning manner.) What do you want? A SERIOUS documentary about Ed Wood? About ED WOOD?!!!! C'mon, get serious (meaning "loosen up.") We who appreciate Ed for the RIGHT reasons, admire him because (as Owens says...) "Wood's films have become true cult classics; they triumph over all obstacles, including his own singular lack of ability." He refused to quit; he did what he loved doing. Ed Wood followed his dream : a ridiculous nightmare of inadvertent bad filmmaking which was "stupid, stupid, stupid" (meaning, "funny, funny, funny.") "His stream-of-consciousness dialogue," Owens tells us, "was like a ransom note pasted together from words randomly cut out of a Korean electronics manual." Now that's funny AND accurate!

HOW MUCH FILM WOULD ED WOOD CHUCK IF ED WOOD WOULD CHUCK FILM? HE'D CHUCK ALL THE FILM THAT ED WOOD COULD IF ED WOOD WOULD CHUCK FILM. Fortunately for us, however, Ed Wood would chuck no film; he used it all. And this little biography pastes bits 'n' pieces of it together to give us a hilarious overview. Sure, I liked Tim Burton's treatment, but a movie BY Ed is always going to be worse (meaning "superior") to a movie ABOUT Ed. So, for me, this goofy collection of clips and brief interviews is the perfect companion tape to my pink angora-covered Ed Wood boxed set.

How's this for an amusing evening?: Invite your friends over; serve them hot sake in those authentic little Japanese sake cups; and show them PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and LOOK BACK IN ANGORA, in that order. You'll be immensely entertained and you'll find out just who your REAL friends are - because your real friends will love ya for it, or they'll love ya anyway.

LOOK BACK IN ANGORA: Yeah, it's pretty bad (and that's "very good!")

Surely even Ed Wood deserves better treatment than this disappointing documentary from Rhino! Yes, it does look cheap and there are plenty of clips from Wood's films. But most of these excerpts act as if the actors are commenting on the Great Bad One's filmmaking abilities. Narrator Gary Owens is frankly annoying. Finding at least one well-known film critic, Leonard Maltin or Roger Ebert anyone?, to comment on Wood's legacy would have added immeasurably and given this effort a lot more depth. For now, I'll stick with Tim Burton's great film. This is definitely not the definitive Ed Wood biography.

Actually, it took nearly six months, and the director did it on a budget that Wood would've understood. "Smarmy sense of humor?" Actually, I thought sub-heads like "Dead-Wood" and "Wood Work" were clever. Wood ended up badly, and unlike the Burton film, this doesn't whitewash.

This is a nice VHS to pick up if you're an ED Wood fan.
The running time is about an hour, so it's a little on the short side.
This doc from Rhino tells about Wood's life and of course his film career.
As for Ed Wood docs, I prefer the "Haunted World of Ed Wood, Jr. DVD a bit more, also recommended for Wood fans.