This is the story of a man, his giant, and an Octopus. And the man’s experiments involving kidnapping people and turning them in to—something. I think giants. Let’s go with giants. Said doctor also has a fondness for his giant octopus which, whenever he decides to leave his lab, comes across the octopus that seems to gleam at him from behind his glass. The doctor often smiles and waxes poetic about his friend that he hopes will never murder him in a shallow pool of cold swamp water. The thing I like about Ed Wood’s movies is that his villains just aren’t very smart.
The aliens in “Plan Nine” invented a reanimation device that could barely control the walking dead, and often malfunctioned. This time around Bela Lugosi’s mad doctor is in the company of a barely conscious hulking giant prone to bouts of rage, that he has to whip in to submission. Not to mention the octopus. It must be a statement about Ed Wood Jr. that his villains are essentially him. They all bite off more than they can chew, and their results for their ambitious convoluted projects turn disastrous. I’m not too certain what the mad doctor Eric Vornoff plans with his assembly of his atomic giants. He lives in a mansion in a swamp and is basically a feeble old man. Does he plan to take over his field of science with monsters that hold the mentality of a four year old? Is he attempting to farm octopi?
And what is so “atomic” about Vornoff’s Atomic Men? Tor Johnson plays Lobo, a barely audible beast of a man who grunts and growls, not to mention gets every one of Vornoff’s orders incorrect. When Vornoff kidnaps the nosy reporter Janet Lawton, Lobo forms a love for her and this creates a rift between the once psychotic pairing. Most of “Bride of the Monster” involves a convoluted plot, a lot of rambling droning dialogue, over explanation, and high tech machinery Vornoff uses that explodes at a single bump, in the climax. And what would an Ed Wood horror film be without your patented Bela Lugosi body double? “Bride of the Monster” is a classic Ed Wood oddity filled with gripping romances left and right. A reporter and her cop boyfriend, Dr. Vornoff and Lobo, and a detective and his pet parakeet. It’s got something for everyone!