Tuesday, November 15, 2016

I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998)

How bad is it? Intentionally bad, but also unintentionally bad.
Should you see it? Maybe for the cast.


This used the script of an Ed Wood Jr. project planned as a silent film (which would've eliminated Wood's famous circular dialogue). It's low-budget, but has a cast that is amazing: Billy Zane, Abraham Benrubi, Sandra Bernhard, Karen Black, Conrad Brooks, Tippi Hedren, Eartha Kitt, Ann Magnuson, Andrew McCarthy, Ron Perlman, Christina Ricci, John Ritter, Rick Schroder, Nicollette Sheridan, Jonathon Taylor Thomas, Vampira, Steven Weber, Carel Struycken, Bud Cort, Kathleen (Mrs. Ed) Wood and Summer and Rain Phoenix. Zane plays a cross-dresser who loses the loot from a crime - dropped in a coffin being buried - and spends the film trying to recover it. Most of the other actors have little to do. The film splices in footage from other films (much stock), perhaps as Wood would have done and that provides the only laughs of the film; e.g. while a woman strips in an empty room, footage of an audience of inappropriate age is added. It was a good idea, ineptly executed and the ineptitude isn't endearing as it would've been in the hands of people who were trying valiantly and failing.

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