Ed Wood Look Back in a Angora

 

 

Create your own review

N.B.: This is mostly a ramble, not much of a real review, but the inspiration thereof is not only the infamous Oogla Smith, but also Ed Wood, to whom this VHS, among other video products, renders ironic tribute!

The short bio-documentary, so cleverly and aptly titled "Look Back in Angora", cannot match other films of a biograpical nature about the notorious but utterly marginal screen producer, screenwriter, director, and actor, Edward D. Wood, Junior. "Look back in Angora" is a mini-documentary, quickly thrown together, about this strangely deluded man; it did not take its subject, Wood himself, seriously enough to have invested the effort needed to cover Wood`s art (such as it was, paltry but ever determined to plow onwards) and his spotty and besotted life in any real depth.

For that, one looks to the far more comprehensive, even cinematically scholarly view of Ed Wood that director Brett Thompson directed, "The Haunted World of Ed D. Wood, Jr." (released in 1995). For this truly documentary coverage of the infamously low-budget bohemian who was Edward Davis Wood, Jr., Thompson and everyone associated with that film (including many of the surviving actors and others involved in Wood`s films), considerable effort even was made to restore fully Wood`s first effort at cinema, in which he acted (bit did little more than that), "Crossroads of Laredo". As for the film "Ed Wood", that marvellously entertaining motion picture is a biopic, not a documentary, and it stars the exuberant Johnny Depp in the title role.

While director and screenwriter Ted Newsom reveals, in the shorter documentary, some aspects (and Thompson`s team, in his longer and more in-depth documentary, far more) of the cross-dressing man, who is the subject of all three, which Tim Burton`s biopic with Depp did not choose to cover, especially since Burton`s film ends during the time of Wood`s prime years, before his decline; the years which followed the premiere of his "Plan 9 from Outer Space" entail Wood`s decline from mere marginality to ever more hard-pressed poverty and desperation, to making and hawking pornography (which was as strange as any of his other films!), and to alcoholic ill health, destitution, and death, as Newsom chronicles at least superficially. Newson`s documentary (like Thompson`s) even mentions, in passing, Tim Burton`s biopic (as having a budget that exceeded manyfold all of the budgets of all of Ed Wood`s own films combined).

Very largely "Look back in Angora" strings one sight gag after another, by showing footage from Wood`s films as the documentary`s narrator, Gary Owens, audibly enjoys the jokes that this, combined with the prevailingly derisory comments that he pronounces, makes for. There are appearances of a few of those who participated in Wood`s films and inclusion of their reminiscences; others are introduced by the narrator, Gary Owens, via moving image footage from various sources. Of course, there are brief scenes from Wood`s various films with remarks about the many grossly obvious and amusing defects and incongruities that beset them.

And, wow! One can say of Ed Wood, the pitiably inept but deludedly ambitious entrepreneur of cinema, that, yes, there really was a tatty, even less successful small-time celebrity who specialised in wearing angora sweaters, posing as a woman but being a man, i.e. Ed Wood, before the infamous Olga ("Oogla") Smith, a local, would-be celebrity of a Pacific coastal city in Southern California (Smith being her maiden name, which she habitually used long after marriage, as Hollywood starlets, whether young or, like Oogla herself, ageing noticeably, tend to do). Oogla, in her heyday of the mid-1960s, habitually posed in tiger skin tights with cheap angora sweaters, while resolutely devouring whole boxes, one after the other, of fancy-grade assorted chocolates and guzzling down "wine coolers"!

The problem is that Oogla was, indeed, a real woman (of the tackiest kind) whereas Ed Wood only pretended to be a woman (also of the tackiest kind). Oogla merely looked like a transvestite although she really was not one! Oogla never got to be filmed, alas, but her memory survives in an old time small time hit single on a primitive tape format (not even a 45 r.p.m. disc, apart from, as legend has it to be, one of those very 7 in. records reputedly released as an exceedingly rare "bootleg" disc in the Arctic stretches of the Dominion of Canada on the Polar Platters label), "The Tiger Skin Song", to be danced to the "Baltimore Bounce". I still can hear the refrain resounding in memory,

"Tigers wear tiger skin,
Panthers wear panther skin,
But that Oogla Smith
Wears tiger skin tights,
And panther skin panties."

Oogla Smith's hulking, high school football-playing son, "Moose", also appears in the novella, "Ooglatuk of the North: the Chungón Chronicles", wherein he attempts to restore honour to Oogla's name by destroying the giant Innuit she-Yeti, Ooglatuk, named after his kitschy mother.

Those who love Ed Wood`s films, for whatever dim and dark reasons, surely would revel in the lore of the erstwhile female (Oogla Smith) who could have been an imitator of that male imitator of females (Ed Wood), seeking out all that pertains to Oogla Smith, to her valiant but dim-witted son, Moose, and maybe to Ooglatuk of the North, too!

The world is happier, even if laughing at itself (as Wood`s low camp can provoke to do), that figures like Ed Wood, Dolores Fuller, or, for that matter, Florain(e) Connors realised their grandeur on the "silver screen", in a way that Oogla and Moose, alas, never had a chance to do to live out their own dreams of (relatively) Big Time Glamour and Glory.

When we slightly twisted fans of Ed Wood discuss the merits of his work, we must bear in mind that the very nature of it wreaks havoc on our grading scale. How does one actually assess anything having to do with Ed when best is worst and good is bad? -------- This very funny 50 minute documentary cleverly written and directed by Ted Newsom and featuring the narration of Gary Owens is excellent in that it fully achieves its goal. What is that goal? To take an irreverent snapshot of the life and "achievements" of Hollywood's Horrible Hack. And that's good! See, now yer catchin' on. -------- The instantly recognizable voice of Gary Owens, with his mock seriousness is a dog 'n' flea collar fit for LOOK BACK IN ANGORA. (The title alone tells you what to expect.) The slapdash style of this documentary mimics the slipshod ineptitude of our hero's best (meaning "worst") work. Is Owens disrespecting his subject? Well, yeah, of course he is - sort of. (But not in an overtly demeaning manner.) What do you want? A SERIOUS documentary about Ed Wood?! About ED WOOD?!!!! C'mon, get serious (meaning "loosen-up.") We who appreciate Ed for the RIGHT reasons, admire him because (as Owens says...) "Wood's films have become true cult classics; they triumph over all obstacles, including his own singular lack of ability." He refused to quit; he did what he loved doing. Ed Wood followed his dream: a ridiculous nightmare of inadvertent bad film-making which was "stupid, stupid, stupid" (meaning, "funny, funny, funny.") "His stream-of-consciousness dialogue," Owens tells us, "was like a ransom note pasted together from words randomly cut out of a Korean electronics manual." Now that's funny AND accurate! -------- HOW MUCH FILM WOULD ED WOOD CHUCK IF ED WOOD WOULD CHUCK FILM? HE'D CHUCK ALL THE FILM THAT ED WOOD COULD IF ED WOOD WOULD CHUCK FILM. Fortunately for us, however, Ed Wood would chuck no film; he used it all. And this little biography pastes bits 'n' pieces of it together to give us a hilarious overview. Sure, I liked Tim Burton's treatment, but a movie BY Ed is always going to be worse (meaning "superior") to a movie ABOUT Ed. So, for me, this goofy collection of clips and brief interviews is the perfect companion tape to my pink angora-covered Ed Wood boxed-set. -------- How's this for an amusing evening?: Invite your friends over; serve them hot sake in those authentic little Japanese sake cups; and show them PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and LOOK BACK IN ANGORA, in that order. You'll be immensely entertained and/or find out just who your REAL friends are - because your real friends will love ya for it, or they'll love ya anyway. -------- LOOK BACK IN ANGORA: Yeah, it's pretty bad (and that's "very good!")

Surely even Ed Wood deserves better treatment than this disappointing documentary from Rhino! Yes, it does look cheap and there are plenty of clips from Wood's films. But most of these excerpts act as if the actors are commenting on the Great Bad One's filmmaking abilities. Narrator Gary Owens is frankly annoying. Finding at least one well-known film critic, Leonard Maltin or Roger Ebert anyone?, to comment on Wood's legacy would have added immeasurably and given this effort a lot more depth. For now, I'll stick with Tim Burton's great film. This is definitely not the definitive Ed Wood biography.

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 6 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

 

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing -- could have been better
"Thrown together" is the right description. This was done on the cheap, with lots of stock footage of the 1930s-50s, to his Hollywood days (however, lots of Ed's early... Read more

Published on Nov 14 1999 by Lori Sampson

3.0 out of 5 stars As bad as Ed's films...
This video is real baaaaaaaaaaaaddddd... But, how silly would it be for this "Documentary" on Ed Wood to be good when it's about the worse director in history? Read more

Published on Oct 7 1999 by Douglas M. Morales

4.0 out of 5 stars Defending smarm.
Actually, it took nearly six months, and the director did it on a budget that Wood would've understood. "Smarmy sense of humor? Read more

Published on July 4 1999

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 6 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Search Listmania!