One Song at a Time: Remembering a (failed) series on this blog

They can't all be winners, as this series proved.

When this blog started in 2009, it was a spinoff of a podcast called Mail Order Zombie to which I regularly contributed material. As such, for the first few years, Dead 2 Rights was mostly about zombie movies and zombies in general. In fact, I even wrote the blog in character, using my "living impaired" alias from the show. But MOZ went dark in 2013, and I'd already been experimenting with non-zombie material a little by then. Once the podcast was kaput, I decided to ditch the pseudonym altogether and write about whatever interested me.

And what was that exactly? Well, the Ed Wood Wednesdays series started in 2013 and is still going in 2026. For some people, that's all this blog is. Which is fair: there's a lot of Ed Wood stuff on here. Like it or not, there's been a lot of Happy Days stuff on this blog, too. So I'm not just the Ed Wood guy. I'm the Ed Wood and Happy Days guy. I'm fine with that. 

But there's other stuff on Dead 2 Rights, too. I've tried many different approaches over the years, hoping something will break through. Nothing really has. I regret that I dropped the Comedy Classics articles. It's just that they were a lot of work for very little response. I still owe you guys 22 more of them in addition to the 78 I already did. (Maybe someday.) Comics and cartoons have long been a part of this blog, too, but those are more for me than they are for you.

One of my biggest disappointments was a series called One Song at a Time. The premise was pretty simple. Rather than talk about whole albums or genres of music, I'd concentrate on individual songs that meant something to me. I'd relate a little about the history of the song and add a personal story from my own life related to that song. I really thought this series had a chance of connecting with readers, but it apparently didn't. The series lasted from June 2014 to October 2015, then disappeared without a trace. C'est la vie.

The thing is, I've occasionally thought of reviving One Song at a Time, namely because there are a couple of music-related articles that have done fairly well by the standards of this blog. One is about the 1950s duo Patience & Prudence. Another is about the song "Be My Baby." Those still get views every week. In retrospect, the "Be My Baby" article served as the pilot for One Song at a Time.

Anyway, if you're just here for Ed Wood stuff, none of this may interest you. But if you want to know your humble blogger a little better, check out One Song at a Time.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 259: Okay, fine, I'll talk about 'Vampire Zombies... From Space!' (2024)

Some moments from the genre-hopping comedy Vampire Zombies... From Space.

I try never to dismiss a whole genre or subgenre of movies. In fact, it irritates me when I hear people say things like, "I hate all musicals," "I don't like science-fiction," or "I never watch Westerns." Because it means that they've dismissed a huge number of movies they've (mostly) never seen in one fell swoop. To me, statements like that suggest a depressing lack of intellectual curiosity. You're telling me you won't watch a movie because it's in a broad category you don't like? As John Waters would say, that's "contempt without investigation." 

I've been down this road before.

Having said all that—and here I reveal myself as a total hypocrite—there is one subgenre of movies that I approach with extreme skepticism: the fake B-movie. You know, those self-conscious comedies that satirize the low-budget movies of the past while also paying tribute to them. I'm talking about stuff like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001), Buddy BeBop vs. the Living Dead (2009), and Frankenstein vs. The Creature from Blood Cove (2005). You'd be surprised how many of these movies there are, and I feel like I've sat through more than my fair share of them over the years.

More often than not, these movies make me feel vaguely guilty. They're labors of love, but I rarely love them back. The people who make movies like this grew up watching cheap sci-fi and horror flicks, and now they just want to honor their earliest influences in a fun, playful way. What's wrong with that? Well, nothing... in theory. 

But these movies are constantly elbowing you in the ribs, desperate for you to know that they're "in on the joke." They always make a point of emphasizing how shoddy the special effects are, how clunky the dialogue is, and how improbable the story is. They never trust you, the viewer, to figure out any of that on your own. Everyone in the cast seemingly has a license to overact with total abandon, too, as if their lines are somehow funnier if they YELL EVERY WORD! You can always count on plenty of in-jokes and pop culture references in these movies, and there's a good chance you'll be seeing some winking celebrity cameos along the way. It's all much of a muchness. 

Some of these fake B-movies are tributes to Edward D. Wood, Jr., which, I guess, makes them my problem. Or my jurisdiction. And so, I've dutifully sat through John Johnson's Plan 9 (2015) and Andre Perkowski's Devil Girls (1999) and The Vampire's Tomb (2013). Generally, these movies are not a lot of fun for me. I appreciate what the directors are trying to do, but the forced wackiness becomes oppressive after a while. It's like being stuck in an elevator with a college improv troupe.

And that brings us to the movie I'm covering this week. I've known about Michael Stasko's Vampire Zombies... From Space! (2024) for a while now. I get Google alerts about Ed Wood on a daily basis, and there have been plenty of articles over the last year or so about Vampire Zombies and how it compares to Ed's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). I've been studiously avoiding Stasko's film for months, namely because of my previously-stated aversion to fake B-movies. I'd only gotten as far as the (admittedly kind of fun) trailer and didn't feel like exploring this matter any further. Yes, I was guilty of "contempt without investigation."

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 258: Have we been watching Ed's movies all wrong for decades?

This week, we focus on a certain, uh, aspect of Ed Wood's movies.

I'm sorry, you guys, but we have to talk about aspect ratios this week. I know, I know. I'll try to make this as painless as possible. But I'm going somewhere with this, and it relates to Ed Wood. Be patient. Keep in mind that I am not a filmmaker and not even a photographer, so you will have to forgive me if I am technically imprecise. If you can do better, please do.

Kylie does not approve.

As a kid, I honestly never gave much thought to the geometrical dimensions of TV screens or movie screens. (What kid notices stuff like this?) I knew that TVs were squares and movies were rectangles, but I didn't perceive that as a problem. Starting sometime in the mid-1980s, however, a few films—usually artsier titles like Amarcord (1973) and Manhattan (1979)—were released in what was called a "letterboxed format" on VHS and laserdisc. This trend continued into the 1990s, becoming well-known, if not well-loved, among consumers. Letterboxing meant that there would be black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, allowing the entire film frame (usually 1.85:1) to fit within the TV screen (usually 1.37:1 or 4:3) and not have the sides of the picture lopped off.

Letterboxing quickly became controversial, even hated. Film critics insisted it maintained the integrity of the original films and saved them from the indignity of the pan-and-scan process. Viewers, however, felt that letterboxing took movies that had already been shrunk down for television and then made them even smaller until they were difficult to see. And, besides, it meant that about half your screen was taken up by empty black space. How was that an improvement? You can see people's frustrations made manifest in the 1987 music video "The Loco-Motion" by Kylie Minogue. At one point, the familiar black bars appear at the top and bottom of the screen. Kylie scowls at them a little and flicks them away with her finger. The video then returns to its usual 1.37:1 or "fullscreen" aspect ratio.

It should be pointed out that this widescreen vs fullscreen issue generally only affects movies made from the 1950s onward. Before that, it was standard practice for movies to be filmed and projected in what was called Academy ratio, roughly 1.37:1. Classics like The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Casablanca (1942) were shot in this ratio, which meant that they did not have to be cropped when shown on television. We may think of Gone with the Wind (1939) as a widescreen epic, but it isn't. It's Academy ratio, too.

Eventually, TV sets became widescreen, and the letterboxing controversy all but evaporated. (Though we now have the exact opposite controversy, with old 4:3 episodes of shows like The Simpsons being cropped or distorted to fit newfangled TV sets.) Today, YouTube is able to accommodate videos of various aspect ratios. There are even numerous movies with multiple aspect ratios. This became semi-trendy in the 2000s and 2010s, thanks to directors like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson. Nowadays, most people watch things on their phones, so "cinematic integrity" is not exactly a top priority anymore. If you want to see a film the way the director intended (or whatever), you go to a movie theater or get it on Blu-ray or 4K. Otherwise, who cares?

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 257: Carl Anthony (1932-2021) [PART 2 OF 2]

Is there more to say about Carl Anthony? I'd better hope so.

Last week, as you'll recall, we were talking about actor Carl Anthony (birth name: Carl Anthony Wuco), who played prominent roles in two of Ed Wood's best-known movies, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and The Sinister Urge (1960). We discussed how Carl grew up the youngest of three brothers in a Croatian-American family in the suburbs of Cleveland before pursuing a career in show business, first as a daredevil pilot in Florida and then as a film and television actor in Hollywood. 

Quite an intiguing character, this Carl Anthony. But I neglected to talk about the thing Carl's actually remembered for: his film career.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 256: Carl Anthony (1932-2021) [PART 1 OF 2]

It's time to shine a spotlight on a key player in the Ed Wood canon.

I have not been especially kind in my descriptions of actor Carl Anthony (1932-2021), a friend of Ed Wood who played prominent roles in both Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and The Sinister Urge (1960) and who later appeared as an interview subject in the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). Here are some of the adjectives I've applied to Carl's work over the years: "colorless," "pedestrian," "stiff," "dull," and "uncomfortable." Not exactly the rave of the century. Hey, at least Carl got his own trading card in Drew Friedman's Ed Wood Players set. 

Carl's trading card.

Look, if you're studying the work of Edward D. Wood, Jr., you're going to spend some time (vicariously) with Carl Anthony. Hearing his voice. Looking at his face. And Carl is maybe, just maybe, not the most fun actor to watch. Though they're on opposite sides of the law, his characters in both Plan 9 and Sinister are kind of the same: surly, impatient, and unimaginative. This actor has the demeanor of a man waiting for a bus that will never arrive. And he has a pebble in his shoe the entire time.

But Christmas is a time for forgiveness and reconciliation, and I thought I'd give Carl's work a more charitable evaluation this year. Perhaps it will help to learn more about the man himself. He was born Carl Anthony Wuco in Garfield Heights, OH, a suburb of Cleveland, on November 4, 1932. That makes him one of the younger members of the Ed Wood repertory company. Of his Plan 9 costars, the closest in age would have been Conrad Brooks, born in 1931.

Carl's parents, Anthony and Gloria, stayed in Garfield Heights while their son moved first to Florida and finally to California to pursue his show business aspirations. According to back-to-back obituaries that ran in the August 22, 1965 edition of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, both Anthony and Gloria died "suddenly" on Monday, August 16, 1965. Details about their deaths will be included in next week's article.

Carl Anthony Wuco had two older brothers: Walter (who died in 2004) and Raymond (who died on December 30, 2014 at the age of 86). Raymond's elaborate obituary in the January 7, 2015 edition of The Cleveland Plain Dealer is quite an entertaining read by itself. Raymond was a distinguished mathematics teacher who spent 25 years as a religious Brother in the Marianist Catholic order but left the order in the early 1970s and married a woman named Lynn Valin in 1975. The two met when Raymond was teaching at a college in California. His academic career lasted 50 years and spanned both the monk and non-monk eras of his life. The obituary also reveals that the family name Wuco was originally Vuco, which is Croatian in origin. If you're wondering where Carl Anthony got his dark wavy hair and strong jawline, it's his Croatian roots.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 255: Is this the most complete cut of 'Glen or Glenda' (1953) yet?

Austin Wolf-Southern has assembled the jigsaw pieces of Ed Wood's debut film.

Like Blanche DuBois, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. Well, maybe not always. Actually, when I started writing these articles in July 2013, I was pretty much on my own. I had two books, Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) and Rob Craig's Ed Wood, Mad Genius (2009), to use for reference, as well as the documentaries Look Back in Angora (1994) and Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). Other than that, I was flying solo. What did I bring to this topic? My own thoughts, my own ideas, my own... personality. I wrote Ed Wood Wednesdays by myself for myself. 

But very early on, people started emailing me. Some wanted to ask questions. Some wanted to make corrections. And still others wanted to share Ed Wood-related things with me—trivia, photos, sometimes even entire books, articles, and films. And then there were those who had Woodian projects of their own and wanted to tell me about them. Some were making music. Some were making films or comics. Several were writing or had already written books about Ed. And they sent much of this material to me to see what I thought of it. And, if I were feeling industrious that particular week, I told them. The main reason this column has lasted over 12 years (with no end in sight) is that my readers have supplied me with so much material.

One such person is comedian and Ed Wood superfan Austin Wolf-Southern. He has embarked on a project that should be of interest to all Woodologists: assembling a "complete cut" of Eddie's debut film, Glen or Glenda (1953). I've long said that this movie is the Rosetta Stone for understanding Ed Wood's entire career—not just his other films but his literary work as well. But, to this day, there is no "definitive" or "authoritative" version of it. Over the years, through various theatrical and home video releases, Glenda has had scenes added to it and subtracted from it. And Austin has taken it upon himself to comb through all this material and assemble it, almost as a Frankenstein monster, into one movie.

Podcast Tuesday: "God Bless Us, Every Fonz"

Henry Winkler in An American Christmas Carol.

One of the most anxious nights of my childhood happened sometime in the mid-1980s. At the time, I was in elementary school and living at home in the suburbs of mid-Michigan with my family. We were Catholic and attended mass regularly. One December, it happened that a holy day of obligation, a midweek mass, fell on the same night that CBS was planning to rerun the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott. Mass was at 7:00; the movie was at 8:00.

I was already a Christmas Carol obsessive at this tender age, so this constituted a crisis. I didn't want to miss a minute of the movie, since it's so important to see this story from the very beginning. Luckily, there were a few things on my side. Midweek masses typically lasted only 45 minutes or so, and we did not live far from the church. Seeing the entire movie was still possible. We made it home just as the opening credits were starting, much to my relief. But I can tell you that I took very little, spiritually, from that midweek mass. I'm sure I did not hear a single word the priest said. I was too busy thinking, "Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up!"

Now, you might think that since both A Christmas Carol and Happy Days have played such important roles in my life, I would be extremely familiar with the 1979 made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol starring Henry "The Fonz" Winkler. I certainly knew of this movie's existence, but until 2025, I had never actually watched the darned thing from beginning to end. This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about our reactions to An American Christmas Carol. This'll be our last episode of 2025. We'll catch you again in 2026.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 254: Is 'Jail Bait' (1954) film noir?

A moody moment from Ed Wood's semi-obscure crime thriller Jail Bait.

"It has always been easier to recognize a film noir than to define the term."

-James Naremore, film scholar

If you look up Edward D. Wood, Jr. on the Internet Movie Database (as I have done many hundreds of times while writing this column) and sort his credits by genre, you'll see that only two of his films have been designated "film noir" by the site's users: Jail Bait (1954) and The Violent Years (1956). I'd have thought The Sinister Urge (1960) would qualify, too, but currently that one is designated simply a drama. Not moody enough, I suppose. Or maybe no one thought to label it as such.

Noir namer Nino Frank.

Whatever the case, we have just lived through another November or, as film writer Marya E. Gates has famously dubbed it, Noirvember. This is the time each year when cinephiles are encouraged to study and appreciate film noir (literally "dark film"), a genre first named by French film critic Nino Frank in 1946. Appropriately, in keeping with the gloomy spirit of the season, Mike White's podcast The Projection Booth just did four noir-themed episodes last month, and YouTuber James Rolfe posted a thoughtful 23-minute video essay called "Why I Love Film Noir" to his Cinemassacre channel. 

All of this material has been buzzing around in my brain recently, and I started to think about how Ed Wood fits into this whole picture. That's my curse. I have to apply everything to Eddie's career. It's become the prism through which I see the world. He's not thought of as a "noir director," but certainly these movies had an effect on him. It's a topic worth exploring. Should I have done this article back in November? Yes. But I had other articles I was working on at the time, so this one had to wait. I'm getting to it now. We'll call it Noircember, okay?

Since Ed Wood did not direct The Violent Years himself -- those duties were handled by one-and-done director William Morgan -- I am concentrating my attention on Jail Bait, Eddie's oft-overlooked sophomore feature. As I've said before, it remains the neglected middle child of his 1950s films, likely because it does not feature flying saucers, graveyards, or men in angora sweaters. Criswell, Bela Lugosi, and Tor Johnson are AWOL as well. (Since Bela was busy with his Vegas revue, his part was given to the wheezing Herbert Rawlinson.) Even though Eddie made this bleak crime thriller between Glen or Glenda (1953) and Bride of the Monster (1955), the biopic Ed Wood (1994) skips right over it, as if it never existed. Well, it did and does. But is it film noir?