I'm not entirely sure why Brett Thompson, C.J. Thomas, and Dolores Fuller thought this movie was worth "restoring", but I suppose if I had access to some Ed Wood memorabilia, I'd try to cash in, too.
It is perhaps typical of Ed Wood that he was absurdly proud of this jumped-up silent home movie, which he apparently intended to be shown on television (between 1953 and 1956, he actually listed this {misspelled} in his credits under "television features"). The mind simply boggles at the idea that the television industry, even in its infancy, would be interested in this.
The silly narration added by the "restorers" is sometimes useful to cover what Wood probably would have told us with terrible dubbed-in dialogue; more often it involves Cliffie Stone saying things like, "Two of the men bring a door to use as a stretcher," as we watch two men bring a door to use as a stretcher. The music, written by Fuller and sung by an Elvis impersonator, is just awful--as I suppose befits an Ed Wood film.
CROSSROADS OF LAREDO is mostly just boring. Plotwise, it's a Western melodrama, unimpressive even by the standards of the worst of the "Bs." The characterization is (as usual in a Wood film) both ham-handed and insufficient. The cinematography would have been impressive in the Griffith era, but looks ridiculously outdated for a film shot in 1948.
The movie does, however, contain a few genuine Edwoodian touches for the connoisseur:
The female lead's baby is played by a bundle of rags; apparently Wood couldn't afford a plastic doll.
The hero's girl dumps him, takes up with the villain, and marries him, all in less than two minutes.
Wood spends fully three minutes of his limited time on a moving, elegiac funeral scene...for the villain.
The cardboard coffin Wood came up with for the funeral scene is about four feet long and a foot wide. There's only room for four pallbearers.
All in all, this is a film that only needs to be seen by those interested in the life and career of Ed Wood (it's on the HAUNTED WORLD OF EDWARD D. WOOD, JR. DVD, which is a good buy, so you won't get ripped off).
12/17/04: Update posted 12/27/03 on the Message Board:
I didn't realize when I wrote my review that the HAUNTED WORLD (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0113270/) DVD contains a commentary track for this film. I found it quite amusing that people actually involved with the "restoration" were confused at the end about which character was the hero and which the villain.
I suspect the culprit is that stupid funeral scene. After all, who would spend three minutes of a twenty-minute film lamenting the demise of a thieving, murdering skunk?
Eddie Wood, that's who.
It is perhaps typical of Ed Wood that he was absurdly proud of this jumped-up silent home movie, which he apparently intended to be shown on television (between 1953 and 1956, he actually listed this {misspelled} in his credits under "television features"). The mind simply boggles at the idea that the television industry, even in its infancy, would be interested in this.
The silly narration added by the "restorers" is sometimes useful to cover what Wood probably would have told us with terrible dubbed-in dialogue; more often it involves Cliffie Stone saying things like, "Two of the men bring a door to use as a stretcher," as we watch two men bring a door to use as a stretcher. The music, written by Fuller and sung by an Elvis impersonator, is just awful--as I suppose befits an Ed Wood film.
CROSSROADS OF LAREDO is mostly just boring. Plotwise, it's a Western melodrama, unimpressive even by the standards of the worst of the "Bs." The characterization is (as usual in a Wood film) both ham-handed and insufficient. The cinematography would have been impressive in the Griffith era, but looks ridiculously outdated for a film shot in 1948.
The movie does, however, contain a few genuine Edwoodian touches for the connoisseur:
The female lead's baby is played by a bundle of rags; apparently Wood couldn't afford a plastic doll.
The hero's girl dumps him, takes up with the villain, and marries him, all in less than two minutes.
Wood spends fully three minutes of his limited time on a moving, elegiac funeral scene...for the villain.
The cardboard coffin Wood came up with for the funeral scene is about four feet long and a foot wide. There's only room for four pallbearers.
All in all, this is a film that only needs to be seen by those interested in the life and career of Ed Wood (it's on the HAUNTED WORLD OF EDWARD D. WOOD, JR. DVD, which is a good buy, so you won't get ripped off).
12/17/04: Update posted 12/27/03 on the Message Board:
I didn't realize when I wrote my review that the HAUNTED WORLD (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0113270/) DVD contains a commentary track for this film. I found it quite amusing that people actually involved with the "restoration" were confused at the end about which character was the hero and which the villain.
I suspect the culprit is that stupid funeral scene. After all, who would spend three minutes of a twenty-minute film lamenting the demise of a thieving, murdering skunk?
Eddie Wood, that's who.