#popculture55: Atomic Supermen Love Ed Wood’s “Bride of the Monster;” Other Audiences, Not So Much

Schlockmeister director Ed Wood inflicted this turkey in 1955, one of the final films of a screen icon.

by Rich Watson 

This post is part of the So Bad It’s Good Blogathon, an event celebrating bad movies. At the end I’ll tell you where you can find more posts like this.

A lot of good movies came out in 1955: Oklahoma! Guys and Dolls. Rebel Without a Cause. Movies fondly remembered, and in some cases, cherished, to this day. Legendary directors like Hitchcock, Wilder, Preminger, and more were active that year, working with stars like Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and James Dean.

And then there was Ed Wood. 

Who made a movie called Bride of the Monster.

Really.

Who was Ed Wood?

Maybe you saw the 1994 Tim Burton biography of him. Maybe you read somewhere about this filmmaker who created the “worst movie ever.” Maybe a film nerd friend mentioned him to you once.

Chances are you know the name.

The TLDR edition: Edward D. Wood Jr., as he was usually credited, made cheap sci-fi, horror and sexploitation flicks during the fifties and sixties. He was not very good at it. Film nerds rediscovered him in the eighties and now he’s considered a “cult” filmmaker, like Tommy Wiseau or whoever made Sharknado. The centennial of Wood’s birth was last October. 

In 1955 Wood made Bride, also known as “Bride of the Atom,” about a mad scientist and his possible connection to a monster on a killing spree. Also, an octopus.

It starred Bela Lugosi.

Bela Lugosi’s dead

Now this guy you know. For almost a century, the Hungarian actor’s portrayal of Dracula has been, and continues to be, the definitive one. He was also in Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Island of Lost Souls, and many other horror classics from the thirties and forties.

Lugosi and Wood met in 1952 through Bride screenwriter Alex Gordon. Lugosi hadn’t been in a film since 1948. Allegedly, he had been so hard up for cash that Gordon arranged to have him stand outside the star-studded Hollywood premiere of House of Wax with a dude in a gorilla costume, on a leash.

Lugosi and Wood’s first collaboration was with the 1953 gender-bender flick Glen or Glenda. Lugosi plays an unnamed scientist who co-narrates. He should’ve been in Wood’s Jail Bait the next year, but was sick. 

This page summarizes the written correspondence between the two in 1954. Speculation has been that Wood exploited Lugosi, but the author disagrees:

If Ed Wood’s goal was to exploit Bela Lugosi for financial gain, he did a pretty poor job of it. Ed lived in abject poverty for nearly all his time in Hollywood and was occasionally too poor even to afford a telephone. And yet his love of classic monster movies, especially those starring Bela Lugosi, was so profound that he would buy horror memorabilia (including figurines, paperbacks and albums) when he barely had money to pay his rent.

Gordon wrote an early screenplay of Bride in 1953, but Wood didn’t have enough money to shoot it at the time. Co-star Tony McCoy’s father, a meat packing plant owner, put up the money on the condition that his son appear in the film as the hero.

Oh, and it had to end with an atomic explosion.

You can’t make this up.

Making Bride of the Atom Monster

Bride was co-produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff. He’d co-found American International Pictures and make MOAR low-budget movies for the drive-in market during the fifties and sixties, many with Roger Corman. Arkoff made more money on Bride than Wood. His share went into the creation of AIP.

At $70,000, it was Wood’s biggest-budgeted film. That’s about $827,000 in today’s money. The 2006 Irish movie Once was made for about $150,000. It made over nine million dollars and won an Oscar. 

But Wood lacked the talent the makers of Once had.

Lugosi was, for years, addicted to morphine and methadone. Supposedly, the “I have no home” speech—the film’s highlight, if it can be said to have one—was written on cue cards for Lugosi, but in the end, he didn’t need them. After he got through it, the crew applauded.

After Bride wrapped, he married for the fifth time, and went to get treatment. The premiere was meant to raise money for his hospital bills. It didn’t make much. He made one more movie in 1955, The Black Sleep, before his death a year later. (Lugosi and Wood made one more movie together. Sort of.) In Bride, he meets his end thanks to his octopus. 

About that octopus… Wood used stock footage and a rubber prop from an old John Wayne film. Yes, its victims, including Lugosi, had to flap the tentacles themselves to make like the octopus was strangling them because Wood lacked the motor that made it move!

Is Bride any good?

Surprisingly, I found Bride… watchable. Don’t get me wrong; it still sucks, but I thought it had fewer embarrassing moments than the film for which Wood is the most notorious (do I have to say the name?). The score was decent, and Lugosi gave it everything he had. Wood loved him for that, and I think it shows in the final product.

The tragedy is that Wood never learned from his failures. He was an eager beaver when it came to moviemaking passion, but he was also more concerned with getting his product done and on the market as quickly as possible. 

It’s a shame he was unable to find the proper balance.

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Also in 1955:

• Marty debuts. Next year it wins Best Picture.
• Blackboard Jungle uses the song “Rock Around the  Clock” in the soundtrack. Teenagers lose their minds.
• The Seven Year Itch includes the shot of wind blowing through a subway grating up Marilyn Monroe’s dress.
• James Dean dies.
• Bruce Willis is born.

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News: Micromance Magazine has published my historical romance story, “All My Joys Forego.” It’s set during the Revolutionary War and is based on the true story of America’s first known valentine.

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More posts in the So Bad It’s Good Blogathon can be found at Taking Up Room, from February 21-23, 2025.

P.S. I didn’t realize Ruth at Silver Screenings had written about Bride in last year’s blogathon. I only chose it because it fits with my current theme of 1955. Ruth, if you’re reading this, I hope you don’t mind!

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Did you see Bride of the Monster? Leave a comment and let me know!

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