Idiot-Deluxe "ANOTHER SEX MANIAC MURDER! - SMUT PICTURE RACKET BLAMED!" - The Hollywood Chronicler reports.1959's "The Sinister Urge" was the last movie Ed Wood Jr. would ever direct, so it serves as his directorial swan song and all I can say is, Ed went out in style! So what's to be said about it, sure it's a bad movie, but all of his movies are bad, but for me The Sinister Urge is one that endures and here's why. First of all the film comes loaded with several memorable and highly amusing characters, in which when these six characters (Lt. Matt Carson, Randy, Johnny Ryde, Gloria Henderson, Yaffe and Dirk Williams) interact with each other, the screen is absolutely flush with character and charisma. The Sinister Urge - a quickly-made cheapy, clocks in at just over 70 minutes, so as you might expect there's little in the way of wasted time and things get interesting in a hurry. I find that when the hour grows late The Sinister Urge is a perfectly charming little flick to wind down your day with - which in my experience, does not diminish with repeated viewings. Plus (and to brilliant effect) this film has the dubious distinction of being the -one and only- Ed Wood film to be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's my opinion that this film gels together and that's primarily due to how good most of the casting is. Well maybe "good" isn't exactly the right word, "effective" may be more suitable.So what's it all about? Well unlike most of Ed Wood's work, The Sinister Urge actually has a very tight and cohesive plot, which for once seems to be rooted in reality.... for the most part at least. This charming Ed Woodian-tale takes us back to the late 50's, at a time and place, where you could find your friendly-neighborhood-smut-peddler's (Johnny Ryde and Gloria Hendersen) busy at work plying their wares and when backed by the local syndicate, the duo of Johnny and Gloria, along with "Yaffe", a quirky little business associate, this team of three makes for an A-1 smut-running racket. You see what these pioneering pornographers are vying for, is for a complete saturation of the local market and then to expand their operations from there. And as the queen bee, Gloria Henderson herself said "I've got a tremendous busy going here and it's getting bigger every month." But before the dastardly duo of Henderson & Ryde can ascend to the ranks of pornographic super-stardom (in Smut Town and beyond), there's a formidable obstacle in their path: Lieutenant Matt Carson and his side-kick Randy.To make the movie something a bit more involving than the production and distribution of softcore smut, schlockmeister Wood wisely included something that actually is a crime: Murder (or more accurately - serial murder). Which as it turns out, is very bad for business. Whose to say, if it weren't for the serial-killings which were happening on a routine basis, that Lt. Matt Carson and Detective Randy wouldn't of, in time, become regular customers of the smut picture racket. But however it's a string of serial murders, that gets the wily, veteran, policeman on their case. While I'm fond of all the great casting that's seen in this cheap n' trashy piece of schlock (but of course isn't that all that Ed Wood EVER made), but for me, in what was her one and only film appearance, it's the performance of Jean Fontaine who stands-out the most. She was simply a natural in the role as the witchy and conniving Gloria Henderson, who conveniently ran her dirty picture business from the comfort of her suburban home - her very own hive of sin. But in reality this woman seemed to be little more than an aging, sand-paper-voiced, cigarette-hag, who probably wasn't straying to far from her own personality.The films simply a riot and Ed Wood has some insanely crazy ideas about the affects of porn on society, which you'll hear in detail throughout the movie. But as I see it, the movie is at it's most stupendously ridiculous 20 minutes in, during a scene where Lt. Carson is conversing with Mr. Romaine, an elderly "concerned citizen" and tax-payer, whose all in a flutter, but leaves somber after Lt. Matt Carson "educated" him on all things smut. With such ludicrous claims as "The dirty-picture racket can be directly connected to a good percentage of the major crimes in this city." or "The smut-picture racket is worse than kid-napping or dope peddling." Then a little latter on we have a scene where some of Gloria Henderson's models, posing in panties and bras, in a privately-owned photography studio mind you, are arrested by Lt. Carson and his goons, for what was essentially, nothing more than a series of glamour shots. However and here's where it get's outlandishly out-of-wack, the bail for each model was set at $5,000 a piece. That's in upwards of $60,000 in today's money!!! For the crime of: glamour shots.With all these wild claims one can easily conclude, that Ed Wood had some incredibly bloated (even downright errant) idea's on the corrupting influences of porn (or "smut" as they call it - their product, quit tame by today's standards).Released in 1959 The Sinister Urge came at the end of what was truly an awesome era for bad movies, the late-50's and from what I've seen over the years, the only era that was better at producing bad movies was the mid-80's. An era, which at the same time, also has many of the very best movies as well - the 80's were an incredible time for movies.

Michael_Elliott The Sinister Urge (1960) * 1/2 (out of 4)Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s hard-hitting look at the smut business has Lt. Carson (Kenne Duncan) and Sgt. Stone (Duke Moore) trying to solve a couple murders where the victims had just taken part in the pornography world. They believe the victims can be traced to a certain woman (Jean Fontaine) but they need to find out who's actually doing the killing. THE SINISTER URGE is Wood's attempt to show how ugly and evil the porn business is so I guess it's kind of ironic that this would be his last directing job for ten years until he would start working in, you guessed it, the porn business. As you'd expect, this here is a pretty poor film that like most of Wood's stuff has an interesting idea but the story is all over the place and in the end it just makes no sense. It seems that Wood was wanting to do the story about a psycho turned on by porn and then mix in a detective tale and the two items just didn't mix very well. The film is certainly a tad bit sleazier than the normal 1960 production but this doesn't make up for the weak dialogue or bad performances. It's funny but the film really puts down those who take advantage of girls who come to Hollywood to become stars and the film also preaches that girls should just stay home. The first female victim has such a Southern accent that I'm guessing Wood found her as she stepped off the bus. Wood's regular outlaws (Duncan, Moore, Conrad Brooks) are all here and it's worth noting that this here was Duncan's last feature film. Fans of Wood's work will still want to check this out but it's certainly miles behind his classics.

hasosch When film was invented, the new medium was quickly compared to literature - written literature, to be absolutely clear. Accordingly, the first feature length pictures, in the silent time, were divided in scenes and acts like in theater pieces. Theater pieces too, although they simulate scenes of everyday life, are dominated by text which have be written first - like the scenarios of the movies. However, is this "logo-centrism" not astonishing? Simply the English word "motion picture" gives the much more appropriate comparison of film not with written text, but with painted (or photographed) pictures.Therefore, it makes much more sense to compare films with paintings. But what are the criteria according to which somebody can decide about its quality? Does it speak for bad quality if in a painting by René Magritte, there is day and night at the same time? Is this one a bad director who changes day and night in a short cemetery scene like Ed Wood did? Do we really believe in the reality of paintings so that we consider eyes being outside of faces pathological like in some early works of Picasso? Why do we scold Ed Wood when he forgets to take off the price-tags of his Walmart-plates that he used for UFO's? We know that eyes cannot be outside of a faces as we know that UFO's do not exist - where is there a border of credibility? Everybody know that humans with over-proportioned necks and empty eyes like the ones that Modigliani painted do not exist. But do we laugh at these works as we laugh at Ed Wood's Zombies? Peter Greenaway has recently said that in the near future we will be able to film what we think. Great! But before, I suggest, we should learn to accept that one can film what one SEES independently of criteria of literature whose relationship to film is about as small as the relationship of a technician to a physicist."The Sinister Urge" is an absolutely disgusting example of how pseudo-funny "editors" can destroy 71 min. of a movie that is 71 min. long, by uninterrupted "jokes" that strive racism (the comparison of a colored actress with Benazir Bhutto). As a matter of fact, most parts of the dialogs of this movie are completely not understandable because of the stupid sexual, political and other comments. I therefore suggest that the complete edition of "The Sinister urge" is confiscated and destroyed. Ed Wood's work deserves a critical edition without comic strip covers on the DVD hulls and disgraceful comments, but with introductions and commentaries by renowned American film historians. I would like to look forward to seeing soon Ed Wood's work edited in a dignified looking package of carefully crafted DVD-collections.

counterrevolutionary Some people believe that Ed Wood knew exactly what he was doing: that he *intended* to make "bad" movies in order to make people laugh. There are plenty of good reasons not to buy into that theory, and THE SINISTER URGE is Exhibit A.PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, GLEN OR GLENDA, and BRIDE OF THE MONSTER are endearing in their goofy lunacy. This one, though just as bad as the rest of Wood's oeuvre, is mostly just plodding and dull.Not that there isn't entertainment to be had here, at least for the bad movie connoisseur: my personal favorite is the obvious use of pre-existing (and completely unrelated) footage, shoehorned in on the waste-not want-not principle and "justified" through the use of atrocious dubbing and risible expository dialogue (which takes place *after* the inserted scene, making it even more ludicrous). But that's not the sort of thing calculated to make a mainstream audience roar with laughter.I can imagine someone trying to make a movie like PLAN 9. I can't imagine anyone trying to make a movie like this.