Too much of everything

That was an excellent one.

Fantastic!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Dialog in Ed Wood movies are often among the worst you'll ever hear in any movie. It's tone cringing and hilariously bad at times. Especially also hilarious how Ed Wood tried to put in humor into this movie. Wood perhaps wasn't the worst director of all time but he might very well be the worst writer of all time. This movie its story is also really confusing to follow, since it just doesn't make much sense. It's a movie with many sub-plots, rather than one clear main plot and the movie focuses too much on too many different characters, rather than it has one clear and likable main character. The movie misses a Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson or Vampira.But I have to hand Ed Wood one thing. Some of his movies handle for its time some sensitive and daring themes. He previously for instance did this before with his movie "Glenn or Glenda", which was about transvestites and more or less also with his movie "Plan 9 From Outer Space" which had some social criticism in it. "The Sinister Urge" concentrates on the world of pornography. Of course not a subject that would often be handled 'seriously' in '60's movies. Ironicaly enough Wood himself would land into the world of soft-core porn movie making after this film as a director, writer and (unfortunatly also) actor. It's especially since this movie tries to show how 'evil' pornography is. It even turns people into serial killers. Especially the dialog explaining how evil it all is, is extremely moralistic and completely totally horrible. I actually also would suspect that the portrayal of the porn industry is far from the truth and how it was at the time. So it's also really doubtful that Ed Wood actually did some research for his movie.Continuety is a big problem and the editing often doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Character positions and even car models change suddenly in between different cuts. It's also quite hilarious that the movie at times recycles some of its sequence and of course Wood also uses some archive footage again, this time even from some of his previous movies, of which some got never completed. This movie might very well feature the worst editing out of all Ed Wood movie's.Ed Wood was basically also really an horrible actors director. The acting is extremely wooden and the actors obviously at times don't know how to act or move, probably because they themselves had a hard time understanding the script or what Wood wanted from them.Of course the budget was also obviously low again for Mr. Wood. This means that the movie is mostly being shot at location and inside small studios, with cardboard sets and hardly any dressing to it, expect for a desk, a phone and a map of the world. Ed Wood always had a hard time finding financiers for his movies. This movie was perhaps the last straw for him and the reason why he for a while quite film-making after this in, in order to pursuit a writing career, before venturing himself into the world of soft-core porn movie-making.Edward D. Wood Jr's last 'serious' film-making attempt is consistent with the movies he did prior to this movie. So Mr. Wood ends in style with "The Sinister Urge".2/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Edward D. Wood Jr (or E.D. Wood credited for the film) is practically revered today as a filmmaker forgotten and neglected in his time as just another Shlock-Meister of B-movie (or Z-movie) cinema. His legacy is now, well, being the ultimate in bad schlock kind of movie-making, where you can almost see the sets about the tear at the seams, the actors going through their lines like they know they won't get any pay for it, and camera-work (and perhaps editing too) that becomes jarring in the worst possible ways. While the Sinister Urge, Wood's last 'real' film before diving deep into obscure porn directing (ironic considering the film's subject here), does not have a kind of classically bad way about it like Plan 9 From Outer Space. That film has since become a kind of cult classic where the actor in place of the late Bela Lugosi in the film, the various props and sets (including the 'saucers'), and horrendous narration becomes most of the ironic fun. The Sinister Urge in comparison doesn't have that impressive ambition to be something more than it can never be, as this film is nothing more than an under-cooked 'warning' film about porn movies, and the people who may kill to be apart of them.The Sinister Urge is 71 minutes long, which doesn't overstay its welcome (though one may try and define 'welcome' with an Ed Wood picture) as a film with many static camera angles and very few moments of ingenuity. One of those- the scene where the brakes don't work with the car- is ironically successful, as it really shouldn't be at all workable as a scene, but as a little piece of suspense it could be worse. Most of the rest of the picture isn't so lucky- again, many, many actors who seem like they are not only content to not become stars, they're almost doomed to be in pictures like Wood's. Often the performances are wooden, but of course part of the real problem with watching such actors is the often silly dialog. It tries to be 'realistic', but Wood has no gripe with stopping somewhere to have a character (usually the lead cop character) to lay out a dull speech about the message of the story. On top of the story not really being too coherent, anyway, the director's method of the 'cut, print, perfect' method can be seen quite often with some laughable mistakes abound.Now, does all of this make the Sinister Urge as astoundingly, amusingly bad as Plan 9? Not really; there's nothing too memorable about how the film is bad here, unless you're a die-hard fan of the director. He does try here and there to keep some storytelling merit, with his style being so uncomplicated and static it shows his ambition. But the lack of talent overcomes everything else, not to mention the cardboard-sided points of the film. It's also not too unworthy of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment either, which has now made the film available on DVD. The commentary is spot-on usually and funny, though as with Plan 9 you may still want to make wisecracks on your own. That's Wood as the mustached guy who fights at the Cafeteria in one scene.

its true, this film is one of the worst i have seen yet that Ed Wood did. i will never get that hour and 11min back. once again there was the on going repetition of police, baddies, women in distress, cross dressing and insightful wisdom from our elders. however, the stock fotage was minimal so big up. i am beginning to realise that once you've seen one Ed Wood film, you have as good as seen the rest. it makes me wonder why people who knock his films continue to hunt down new ones. it makes me wonder why i still watch them. i think Ed Wood was a man who lived, made films, lived his life happily and then died probably happy despite being an alcohlic and penniless. to be honest i don't think he cares anymore, why should we?

I really think smut gets a bad rep. This Ed Wood schlocker attempts to correlate the smut racket and the ills of society's problems. Well, at least back in 1961. Of course, this isn't shown so well and Ed delivers his usual bland scenes of dialogue where the characters are trying to further progress the story. Or were they trading borscht pie recipes? Well this all adds up to a movie that seems like a 10 hour skin grafting session.Is it bad? Of course, no question. Or was it made out to be that way? After seeing Ed Wood's works, it looks like his actors are giving serious, genuine performances, but there's a sense that they're having fun with it (that is until Ed explained how he was going to pay them). Characters galore range from crazed psychotic who really intimate with a switchblade to 9 fingered wonder Harvey B Dunn who adds new meaning to `giving the bird'. Some scenes are so kampy, it's funny. An interview with naïve actress really had me laughing when the interviewer slyly explains what type of film they'll be shooting. Also, a group of teeners (aka more of Ed's extras) witness a fight break out for no reason!! To try and explain the hilarity of this scene would not do it justice. Count how many desk scenes there are till your wall paint starts peeling! And that Kline, can he steal a scene or what?Ah, but let's not forget Jean Fontaine as Gloria. Her grating voice really adds a menacing presence (I will never look at a leotard the same way ever again). Maybe smut wasn't the problem and Gloria was the root of the problem? Well, that or her seal tight ensemble displayed throughout the movie! Listening to Gloria's logic and way of reasoning makes me realize that caning may not be such a bad thing after all. And her great line "Dirk? No, that can't be Dirk. Uh-uh. No, that's not Dirk. No" is well worth the price of admission. There's so much more like shooting on the smut set of scantily clad (?) actresses, abrupt jump cuts, a police raid (HA HA HA), the Syndicate….oh man, some directors wish they could create movies with the flair Ed Wood had. I'm starting to see method in Ed's madness.