(Review originally written at 22 April 2005)
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Most of Ed Wood's movies are so bad that they make you laugh. "Night of the Ghouls" is so bad that it's not even funny!
At least other Wood movies are fun to watch because they have a certain campy feeling and goofy characters and dialogs. "Night of the Ghouls" doesn't have any of that. Everything about the movie is a failure and the story has more holes than a Swiss cheese. For instance the police are making fun of it and don't believe in ghosts but yet they have a much respected officer who is entirely specialized in hunting down ghosts, ghouls and women in white. And neither does Dr. Acula believe in ghosts and other things like that but yet he has Lobo as an henchman, who is about the biggest monster you can imaging. Oh and Dr. Acula, next time you're trying to escape don't run directly towards your enemies.
The movie is just completely bad as an horror movie. I mean why would you be scared of a woman who all she does is stare. I don't know with what Ed Wood intended to scare the viewers with this one. Nothing in the movie was even close of what I would define as horror.
The movie also has about the worst scene I've ever seen. The whole séance scene with 3 people sitting at one side of the table and 3 fake skeletons on the other while a trumpet flies around on a wire and some wacky 'comedy' music can be heard and a white ghosts comes by every now and then, while a guy with a what appears to be a good old pisspot on his head make weird faces and speaks incredibly irritating...Oh wow, that was really the most awful thing I've seen since my neighbor stopped closing his curtains at night. It was really embarrassing to look at, it was so awful and sad that it didn't even made me laugh. Seriously the most awful scene I've ever seen in a movie as of yet.
Well, at least Lobo is in it again. It seemed like the make-up was really blinding Tor Johson, he bumped in to a lot of things. And apparently he survived all of the events in "Bride of the Monster" but yet a few bullets from a police officer kills him? As for Tor Johson himself, he was acting horrible but he is such an icon that he still maybe was the best thing about the movie. It was also kind of fun to see patrolman Kelton (Paul Marco) once more but seriously did they really had to give him such a large role?
The crazy narration by Criswell was also completely lame, although not as wacky as Bela Lugosi's in "Glen or Glenda". Criswell also plays himself and the leader of the dead in this movie.
It was a movie I did not enjoy watching and I was seriously bored at times. Even the Ed Wood fans will end up disappointed by this. There is not a lot to enjoy in this mess.
1/10
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