Can anyone comment on the image quality of the new 2-disc ED WOOD COLLECTION - A SALUTE TO INCOMPETENCE compared to that previous ED WOOD BOX, which collects the same movies on 6 discs?
(Not that "quality" is necessarily so all-important with movies like these...)

I am also curious to read some reviews for this set. Do any Passport logos appear during the movies?

Well one things for sure, i much prefer the artwork on the box set that I have, especially vampira on the spin of the box. It really stands out on my shelf.

Isn't "The Violent Years" (which was written by Ed, but not directed) new to this collection? The Ed Wood Box only had 5 films, plus a documentary.

I haven't seen this set, so I can't comment on the quality, but the "Salute to Incompetence" thing bothers me enough that I wouldn't buy it anyway. I don't think that's an accurate characterization of Ed Wood.

Agreed.

What's inaccurate about it?

"Incompetent" pretty much sums up Ed. He was enthusiastic and energetic, but untalented.

This set looks hideous. Get the other one.

I don't know... I think he had more issues with time/money to do retakes or have nice sets. He still got the movies done so that shows a certain level of competence.

Alas, we no longer have Ed but we still have his movies.

It's not so much the cheap quality of his sets and special effects that expose him as incompetent, it's also his bizarre, embarrassing dialogue. His screenwriting was terrible.

Incompetent does not mean the same thing as untalented.

If he was an incompetent filmmaker, he would not have been able to make a film. He made many.

It's just my opinion, but a guy who made as many movies as he did without any studio backing, none of which lost money and all of which are still enjoyed by viewers fifty years later doesn't rate as incompetent. As far as bizarre dialogue, I could say the same thing about Tarentino or David Lynch.

I agree. Anyway, couldn't they have just left it at The Ed Wood Collection ? Why is it necessary to insult the guy? I am so tired of this trend of supposedly clever subtitles.

It seems to me the studio is just playing off the "gimmick" that was reintroduce to the world after seeing johnny depp play ed wood.

I could make a terrible film too. It wouldn't be difficult to write some nonsense, paint some bad sets and then film people reading my script. That wouldn't make me a competent film maker...

All of his movies lost money except for Bride of the Monster. Many of his investors fell into debt or were ruined by involving themselves with Wood.

They've made money now, of course, as geek shows. You don't watch Ed Wood movies in the same spirit as Lynch or Tarantino movies, do you? Good lord, I hope not.

And I'm a big fan of Ed Wood. I have all of his films, including his bootleggy porno movies. But there's a sort of contrary dishonesty among his devotees. He was a fascinating film maker and an amazing man, but his movies are uniquely bad, and that's why we love them. They are accidentally wonderful.

I'm afraid I do. (I think Tarantino is a fraud, anyway, but that's a topic for another thread).

The fact that the movies are being released on DVD sort of implies that he was able to get them made, doesn't it? "Incompetence" is describing his abilities as a director and writer. I think it could be argued whether he was a competent producer or not; I would say that, given how many movies he got made despite garnering no respect as a writer/director in his lifetime, he must've been good at at least one aspect of producing; he consistently managed to raise enough money to do the films he wanted to do.

Look, this is the same logic behind that stupid "The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made!" disc you see everywhere. I own many of the films spotlighted on the disc. Are any of them good? Probably not, but they're fun, enjoyable and I cherish them all. In my mind, they should have named that thing "The 50 Cult & Exploitation Trailers We Could Actually Afford!". Just garbage... Films like these aren't high art, but I'd take them any day over some of the crap that's coming out these days. In my mind, cheap sets, goofy monsters and bad scripts have nothing to do with "bad"... I think I truly bad movie is one that is boring, contrived, pretentious, or the latest Hollywood "let's dig up an obscure 70's genre film and remake it and look smart" bullshit.

So yes, calling this thing "A Salute To Incompetence" will probably sell more discs (as EVERYONE knows that Ed Wood and his Plan 9 IS THE WORST MOVIE EVARRR!!!!!!), but it's a bit tacky and totally inaccurate. Put that tagline on The Wicker Man 2007 and we'll talk.

Does anyone know why the last non-porn film he directed, "The Sinsiter Urge," has never had an official release? I love Ed's movies too, but I have never seen this one and am curious why it is always excluded from the sets.

I know MST3K did it on their show, but I don't want to watch a butchered version, I'd like to see the original.

Hmm..(we agree about Tarantino, although he captured lightning in a bottle and spawned tons of imitators who thought they were stealing from him, and not the dozens of sources Tarantino himself was swiping from. So as a sort of signpost for 90's filmmaking, Tarantino has to be respected, whether you enjoy his movies or not. He defined his times.)...back to Ed Wood.

Could you elaborate on your take on his films? Are you saying that David Lynch is a bad filmmaker too? Or that Ed was a good one?

I have to admit, certain sections of Glen Or Glenda showed promise (the devil sequence in particular) but the rest of his work is so incredibly poor that I'm not sure I grasp your meaning.

I never noticed that. Didn't it have an official VHS release?

Sinister Cinema sells it on DVD. I don't know anything about the release (or the company), though.

First, let me say to Gypo99: - Sorry for hijacking your thread -

'Fraud' might have been a little harsh - I think Tarantino is a very good (and competent) filmmaker. I don't mind him borrowing from other directors, that sort of thing has always gone on. I liked Reservoir Dogs, True Romance (he wrote), & Pulp Fiction. I think he peaked there and has been in a downward spiral ever since. Like EW, QT has had problems with alcohol, so maybe that's an issue. The 2 Kill Bill movies were absolute crap - much worse than any of the (non-porn) movies Ed Wood ever made, IMO, yet the critics said things like "Absolutely no plot and completely silly - but it's great! 4 stars." There's a sort of mentality that everything he touches is automatically cool and hip and that annoys me to no end.

As for Lynch, he's also a good filmmaker and I've enjoyed a lot of his movies, but some of them are incomprehensible to me, particularly his later non-narrative ones. So why should some incomprehensible Lynchian dialogue be elevated to a plane higher than some incomprehensible Wood-ian dialogue? I'm sure both made sense to the director at the time. It's especially hard to compare modern films & filmmakers with their earlier counterparts. Some time in the late 60's or early 70s movies changed from melodrama to realism which means you are really talking about two different animals. Still, if I were to recommend a movie for pure entertainment value, I'd have to recommend one of the movies in this Ed Wood collection over Eraserhead, Mulholland Falls, Lost Highway, Wild at Heart, or Dune.

If I (or better yet, the MST3K crew) watched a Lynch movie with the express purpose of picking out things to ridicule, I'm sure he could be made to look silly or inept, just like anyone else. Factor in the the budgetary constraints of Wood's movies which would result in cheap sets and bad acting and there you go. In spite of all this, Wood made the movies he wanted to make and told his stories the way he wanted with the tools that were available, not unlike an abstract or impressionist painter. It's easy to sit back and criticize the finished product, but suppose these movies were made by someone else with a bigger budget. Would "Plan 9" have been that much better if Richard Matheson wrote it and it was released by Universal? Suppose Wood decided that since he didn't have the budget he needed, he just wouldn't do it. Would the world be a better place if these movies had never been made? I've watched these movies many times because they are fun and I admire the effort. If you can look beyond the cheapness and bad acting, which is admittedly hard to do, they are really not that much worse than the stuff the studios were releasing back then.

I am not an Andy Warhol fan, I find his films completely uninteresting, but I watched the recent PBS documentary on him and found he was more aware of his role in the art world than I thought. He knew his popularity made him rich and cranked out a lot of product because people regarded it as art. He seemed to be aware of the irony that once people decide you're an artist, anything you do is art. That explains the "automatic validation" of certain people and made me question whether one person's art can ever be considered more valid than another's. With that in mind, I am reluctant to try to classify anyone as a bad or good filmmaker, or further to try to figure out which are worthy of respect.

I'd practically guarantee it. I can't think of a recent Passport release that didn't have a logo/bug.