This 3-disc Blu-ray set from Severin Films will be released December 3rd, 2024.
Review by James Jay Edwards
A filmmaker starting out in the adult film industry while they work towards their big break seems like a pretty common story, right? Well, a less common one is a filmmaker turning to adult content in their golden years. But that’s just what legendary low-budget B-movie icon Ed Wood (Plan 9 From Outer Space, Glen or Glenda) did to make ends meet in his self-destructive later life. And now, fans of Wood (pun intended) can see these semi-lost masterpieces in Severin’s new set Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood (also pun intended, I’m pretty sure).
The set includes the Wood-directed Necromania, The Only House in Town, and The Young Marrieds, all from 1971-72, along with, as an added bonus, the 1963 Wood-co-written Shotgun Wedding. And, as is always the case with Severin releases, the set boasts the usual batch of cool special features.
The first disc includes both the hardcore and softcore versions of Necromania (1971). The movie itself is about a young married couple that seeks the assistance of a necromancer to help solve their “marital problems.” And, of course, this leads to lots of sex.
Scanned for the first time here from original sources, the hardcore version runs about 3 minutes longer than the soft, having more…hardcore scenes.
Not to be outdone, the softcore version features an audio commentary with The Ed Wood Summit Podcast host Greg Javer and author/Ed Wood scholar Paul Apel. Both are very knowledgeable about Ed Wood, so it’s a bit like sitting through the movie while a pair of know-it-all dorks explain everything. That’s meant as a compliment.
Disc One also includes the oddball feature The Only House in Town (1971), which is more of an experiment than an actual film, full of sex, lust, sex, rape, and more sex. It barely qualifies as a coherent movie. This is the film in the set whose long “lost” classification seems justified; it is for Ed Wood completionists only. This movie also includes a commentary from Javer, this time joined by Capri Show World’s Spicy Goldman. Again, this commentary is an informative listen.
Disc One wraps up with a trailer for The Only House in Town.
All three features on Disc One (both versions of Necromania and the one version of The Only House in Town) are presented in mono with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1.
The second disc in the collection is The Young Marrieds (1972), which is the real gem of this set, as its status as “lost” had been so cemented over time that many people believed that it never even existed. It did and does, and this scan was again done from the original 16mm sources. This is a significant find in that it is thought of as Wood’s last directorial effort. Like Necromania, it is presented in both hardcore and softcore versions, the softcore for the first time anywhere here.
The plot of The Young Marrieds is about a young man who, while trying to get his wife to loosen up sexually, discovers that she is already much wilder than he could have ever imagined.
The feature presentation contains an audio commentary, again with Greg Javer and joined by Porn Archeologist and Collector Dimitri Otis, who discovered the only known surviving 16mm print of the long-lost skin flick. At this point, it’s kind of incredible that Javer has so much knowledge about Ed Wood. But he does.
This disc also includes nine sex loops (with subtitles) shot by Wood. These are essentially 8-ish minute silent mini movies that Wood produced for booze money in his later years.
Like the films on Disc One, The Young Marrieds is presented in mono and in 1.33:1.
Finally, the third disc in the set is Shotgun Wedding (1963), a film written by Wood from a story idea by Jane Mann and directed by Mann’s husband, Boris Petroff. This is the story of two feuding hillbilly families, and the scheme that one of the young girls comes up with to get one of the men to marry her.
The bulk of the bonus features in the set are contained on this Disc Three, and they include Season 2 Episode 4 of The Incredibly Strange Film Show, which is all about Ed Wood.
There’s also a conversation between Dana Gould and Bobcat Goldthwait about what they call Wood’s Twilight Era, his later years from which all of these features are culled.
Next, there’s The Mad Genius of Ed Wood, which is an interview with Carl Abrahamsson, the author of Inbetween the Lines – Essays on Occulture, Magic, and Seductive Zombie Strippers. This is a cool look into the mind and films of Wood.
Finally, there’s A Brief Encounter with Ed, an interview with Fred Olen Ray about his Ed Wood collaboration Beach Blanket Bloodbath. This is more about Olen Ray than it is about Wood, but he does have some fun stories and does draw some interesting parallels between Wood’s career and his own, particularly when it came to casting his heroes and friends.
Shotgun Wedding is in mono with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1.
Overall, these four movies are fun little side notes in what was an extraordinary career. Wood is and always will be remembered as being the best of the bad filmmakers, and the films in this set will do nothing to tarnish that reputation.
Make no mistake – this is smut. But it’s the best that this particular smut has ever looked. Way better than any seventies adult cinema fare has any right to look. This collection is not going to be for everyone. But for Ed Wood fans who are looking for output of his that they may not have seen, this is here for it.
But be warned – this is not Plan 9 From Outer Space.