Pull the String...
Flying Saucers and forgotten dreams - The curious case of Edward D. Wood Jr
Recently I found myself at the BFI watching Ed Wood—quite possibly Tim Burton’s most sincere and affecting work. It’s a film made with such open hearted affection that even its melancholy feels warm. You leave it not laughing at its subject, but oddly protective of him.
Which brings us, inevitably to the question—was Ed Wood really the worst director in history?
It’s a title that has clung to him with almost theatrical stubbornness. His films-particularly Plan 9 from Outer Space—are routinely held up as exhibits in the case against competence. The criticism’s are familiar: chaotic editing, threadbare sets, performances pitched somewhere between the amateur dramatic and the absurd.
On paper, yes the title seems appropriate.
And yet, there’s something curiously unjust about it.
Because to be the ‘‘worst director’’ implies a kind of absence-of skill, of judgement, of basic cinematic understanding. But Wood’s films are not empty. If anything, they are overfull. They strain with ideas, with ambition, with an almost defiant belief in cinema’s power to astonish.
The problem is not that he had nothing to say. It’s that he had no reliable means of saying it.
Compare this with the truly forgettable directors-the competent craftsmen who produce films that function perfectly well and vanish instantly from the mind. No cult forms around them. No midnight screenings. No affectionate quoting of their dialogue.
Wood, by contrast, endures.
Like The Room or Troll 2, his work occupies that peculiar space where failure becomes fascination. These are not films you admire, exactly—but nor can you dismiss them. They linger, they entertain, they invite participation. And, crucially, they are never boring.
There is no cynicism in Wood. No sense that he is cutting corners out of laziness or contempt. Quite the opposite. His films feel rushed not because he didn’t care, but because he cared too much—because he was so eager to capture the vision in his head before it slipped away.
And that, perhaps, is the most damning counterargument to the charge.
The worst director in history would surely be someone who inspires nothing—no laughter, no affection, no curiosity. Someone whose work simply exists, unnoticed and unloved.
He may have been a terrible technician. He may havre been gloriously ill-equipped to realise his ideas.
But the worst director in history?
Not even close.
He is something far more enduring: a filmmaker we are still talking about.
“My God, I’ve given everything, I should be a millionaire. I should have a million bucks right now.”
Edward D. Wood Jr
In the 1960’s and 70’s, Wood moved towards sexploitation films such as The Sinister Urge and Orgy of the Dead. During the last 15 years of his life, he depended almost entirely on writing pornographic novels to earn a living, reportedly receiving around $1000 per book, much of which was spent almost immediately on alcohol.
He wrote dozens of pulp novels at speed, while he and his wife were routinely evicted for non-payment of rent. At times, he even arranged for his royalties to be sent directly to the local liquor store, so he would not have to carry cash.
By the time of his death in 1978, his name and films had faded into such obscurity that Variety did not run an obituary.
And yet—he did not disappear.
Within a few years, a quiet resurgence began. Through late-night television and word of mouth, the films of Ed Wood finally found their audience.
As Jim Morton wrote in Incredibly Strange Films (1986):
“Eccentric and individualistic, Edward D. Wood Jr. was a man born to film.
Lesser men, if forced to make movies under the conditions Wood faced, would have thrown up their hands in defeat.”
NOTE: The clip above is the only known footage of Ed Wood directing. Across every account, one detail remains constant—he was remembered as cheerful, charming, and above all, a dreamer.