Jail Bait (1954)

Yes this is a terrible movie but I am watching it now for the 10th time. I just can't believe it was made. Script is beyond terrible, borders on a child like effort. But it does give on a good laugh. I would think it would be perfect for a film school, for the Chapter "How not to make a movie". And the insertion of a minstrel show was Unbelievable. If that was done today the resulting outcry would be insane. Plane Nine worst movie ever, no way! Of all of the Ed Woods movies that I have seen, this in my opinion was his worst. But do I recommend, yes. Does bring laughs which I do not think he was attempting.

This movie is a riot. I believe it is actually worse than Ed Wood's more famous classic "Plan 9 From Outer Space". This story is every bit as dumb as Plan 9 and the dialog is even worse - in fact it's a howl. I swear Ed Wood must have written this whole script in a day and never once looked back a second time at a line he had written. There are some really illogical parts to the plot here. 1. Why would the son of a famed plastic surgeon resort to being a stickup man when his wealthy father could give him anything he wanted in the whole world, easy as pie? 2. When the young man and his 'hardened criminal' pal are stealing the movie theater payroll (!) they get the night watchman to open the safe. Why on EARTH would a night watchman have the combination to the safe he is supposed to be guarding? What possible business could a night watchman have, opening a safe full of money he is guarding? It's ridiculous, but just another example of the depth of thought that went into this storyline. (When the young man and his criminal friend rob the theater, they relieve the night watchman of his holstered gun - and when they take it out, it looks like a little kid's tiny toy cap pistol, dwarfed against the holster. Hilarious.)3. At the end of the story the plastic surgeon grafts the face of his dead son onto the 'hardened criminal' so he will be arrested for murder. Other than that idiocy, amazingly the 'criminal' now has the height and build of the dead son! And everyone KNOWS that the face has been transplanted but no matter, that is the face of the guy who shot the watchman so the person who now HAS the face is the murderer! Ed Wood whipped these bizarre plot twists out left and right and seemed to think they were reasonable.4. The police detective asks the woman who works at the theater two or three times, is she SURE she saw Don Gregor actually shoot the night watchman, and she insists yes, she did. But she ran out of the room at least five seconds before the watchman was shot. There's no way she saw it happen!5. The watchman at the theater was a retired police officer who got 'bored' after he quit working so he took the job as the watchman. Yeah, that's a way to add some excitement to your life. Baby sit an empty building and a safe. Oh, and when he gets killed, even though he's just a night watchman now, it doesn't matter - the guys who killed him are COP killers.The musical background is also weird. The whole soundtrack consists of someone rapidly strumming a Flamenco guitar and someone playing random-yet-dramatic notes on a piano, no matter what is going on. The sets are stunningly cheap but the hardened criminal's girlfriend defends him to another woman by saying "Look around, does this stuff look cheap to you?" and the criminal himself points out how he has surrounded her with "all this luxury". The place looks just a cut or two above Ralph Kramden's apartment - totally cheap and spartan. Some luxury! And if I'm not mistaken, the tiny bungalow where the famous plastic surgeon lives is the same house Bela Lugosi walked out of in Plan 9, distraught over the death of his wife and "never to return." It's a pretty rinky-dink place for a famed plastic surgeon to live.Some great dialog lines from the movie: Marilyn Gregor: "You haven't failed, Dad!" Dr. Gregor: "Words, my daughter! Just words! The proof is in the FACT!"At the beginning of the payroll heist, with the watchman standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF the locked safe.... Watchman: "What safe? What combination?"Giving the police information of what she saw when the watchman was shot... Theater employee: "I'm afraid I wasn't very brave. I fainted early in the game."Sipping the drink his daughter made him.... Dr. Gregor: "Ahh. That's a good drink for a parched throat."Describing his phone call with the police... Dr. Gregor: "We had a long telephone conversation this afternoon, earlier in the day."Hoodlum Vic Brady bickering with his girlfriend: Brady: "He wants to give himself up!" Girlfriend "What?!" Brady: "What do I have to do, repeat myself all night? I said -" Girlfriend: "Yeah, yeah, I heard you. I heard you the first time." Brady: "Well then stop jibbering! I gotta think." Girlfriend: "What are you gonna do about it?" Brady: "Shut up!... Whaddya think it is I want to think about?"What else needs be said? It's a scream!

Meek aspiring criminal Don Gregor (a hysterically twitchy portrayal Clancy Moore) gets drawn into the seedy underworld of gangland crime by no-count hoodlum Vic Brady (a pleasingly slimy turn by Timothy Farrell). After Don accidentally shoots a cop during a bungled hold-up, he finds himself in deep trouble that not even his rich and illustrious plastic surgeon father Dr. Gregor (played with surprising dignity by Herbert Rawlinson) can get him out of. Writer/director Ed Wood's typically cheap and clumsy foray into film noir shows a bit more competence than usual (William C. Thompson's stark black and white cinematography makes nifty occasional use of fades and wipes), but nonetheless is still silly and laughable enough to size up as an amusingly inane piece of schlock. For example, the characteristically overripe dialogue boasts a few choice hard-boiled howlers (sample line: "I don't like dead men cluttering up my place"). The ratty sets and lurid back alley locations add to the pervasively tawdry atmosphere. The hit-or-miss acting is likewise a lot of fun: Lyle Talbot does well as no-nonsense Inspector Johns, lovely blonde Dolores Fuller ain't half bad as Don's concerned girlfriend Marilyn Cooper, and legendary muscleman Steve Reeves in his less-than-sterling film debut as Johns' hopelessly stolid partner Lt. Bob Lawrence gives a performance that's so incredibly stiff and wooden you could use it as an ironing board (Steve even goes shirtless once to show off his admittedly impressive six-pack for no real credible reason as well!). Wood handles the sporadic action with his customary ineptitude; the climactic shoot-out in particular is uproariously fumbled. As a nice added bonus a voluptuous showgirl struts her sizzling sexy stuff on stage in a nightclub. Best of all, there's a wildly inappropriate score with a pounding piano and jittery flamenco guitar blaring away constantly throughout the whole picture. A total crummy riot.

This is Ed Wood's film noir. The jail bait of the title is a gun. Go figure. But this is a Wood film after all and these kinds of anomalies just happen. It is, after all, a movie populated by people living in houses with curtains for doors.The story is about a young guy who ends up in bad company and winds up killing a security guard in a heist. The police pursue him but he is killed by his evil partner. This bad dude subsequently forces the dead guy's father – a plastic surgeon – into giving him a new face, and hence different identity.Many of the cast from Wood's earlier Glen or Glenda return here. And like that movie the acting and dialogue is reassuringly atrocious. When Dolores Fuller and Theodora Thurman engage in a conversation towards the end of the film it's a bad acting master class; at moments like this Wood's movies create their own hyper-reality of the absurd, where almost anything ridiculous seems possible. The ending is a case in point. It's truly and utterly ridiculous. The doctor knows that his son is dead, so gives the bad guy his son's face. This is so that he will get arrested by the cops for the murder his son committed. But what makes the scene so insanely stupid is that everyone, including the cops, knows that the guy has had plastic surgery, therefore, his face is false! This kind of illogical plot-line is par for the course in the weird world of Ed Wood.Another notable aspect of Jail Bait is the soundtrack. Imagine a 50's crime thriller set to the music for a spaghetti western and you will be in the right ball park. The persistent strumming guitar is used everywhere irrespective of what is happening on screen. Another thing that seems to be used everywhere is the small brass plated picture that seems to adorn almost every room in the movie. A drinking game could be based around the appearances of this picture. It's hilariously omnipresent.Jail Bait is full of the kind of things that make Ed Wood movies fun. It might not be as enjoyable as the full of nonsense camp classic Plan 9 From Outer Space but it's still quite hilarious. Rotten production values and negligible talent behind and in front of the camera it may be but it's myriad of failures all add up to something entertaining. This is just what usually happens with Wood films for some reason. Go figure.