NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (1958)

Ed Wood's follow-up to Plan 9 From Outer Space is about a phony psychic in a turban named Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan), who dupes grieving people into thinking he can contact their dead loved ones. Assisting Acula are the White Ghost (Valda Hansen), the Black Ghost (Jeannie Stevens), and Lobo (Tor Johnson), the 400-pound hulk who somehow survived the massacre that ended Wood's Bride of the Monster. Investigating Acula is Lieutenant Daniel Bradford (Duke Moore), assisted by Officer Kelton (Paul Marco), another Bride survivor.

As with Plan 9, our host is Criswell, a real-life bogus medium whose predictions were even less accurate than Jeane Dixon's. He narrates the film while sitting up in a casket, insisting that we are about to see a story so terrifying that it might make us faint. (The only effect it produced in me was laughter.) The most riotous scene is the séance, whose ghost effects are so idiotic, they wouldn't convince a person with severe brain damage. They include three skeletons sitting at the table, various objects floating in the air (including a trumpet and what looks like the cap of a Thermos), jarringly unfitting sound effects, somebody with a sheet over his head flapping his arms, and a grinning Black man in a cap that resembles an inverted flower pot. The scene climaxes with the Widow Foster's dead husband sitting up in his casket and addressing her. It never occurs to the woman to ask how Dr. Acula got hold of his remains—or why his long-dead body is still in pristine condition.

Though Bela Lugosi had fallen far by the time he worked for Wood, his absence here was palpable. He undoubtedly would have played a more entertaining fake psychic than Kenne Duncan, who seems bored with the role and looks pretty damned silly in that turban. As the ostensible comic relief, Patrolman Kelton, Paul Marco is just as annoying here as was he was in Plan 9 and Bride. As for the rest of the cast, what do I really need to say? It's an Ed Wood film. I'm just glad Dolores Fuller didn't turn up.

Night of the Ghouls is bad, but not in the freakishly entertaining way that so many of Wood's other films are. This is sub-par even by his standards.

Item: Though it is claimed that the house on Willows Lake was recently built, an exterior shot reveals it to be old and decrepit.

Item: Though it is claimed that Lt. Bradford had investigated the events in Bride of the Monster, that character never appeared in the earlier film.

Item: As Bradford explores the house (which uncannily resembles a soundstage), he climbs a spiral staircase and recalls that it leads to what had been the mad scientist's laboratory in Bride of the Monster. In that film, however, the lab was underground. And the house burned down at the end.

Item: Night of the Ghouls was unreleased in Wood's lifetime because he couldn't pay the film lab's bill. It resurfaced in 1982, when archivist Wade Williams paid the long-overdue lab fees and acquired the rights to it.

Finally, here are two examples of that super-fine Ed Wood dialogue:

POLICE INSPECTOR: I can see he's not here! But when he gets here, send him in here.

WIDOW FOSTER: I've been so lonely all these years alone!