Devil Girls Read online

  Introduction

  It's hard to recall, as I write this, a time when the name Edward D. Wood Jnr didn't spring readily to the lips, but it's only over the last ten years that Ed, or more correctly, his films, have been dusted off, reviewed, reviled, and then reassessed as genuinely entertaining and surprisingly interesting pieces of work. Of course, the fact that Ed liked to hang around in tight pencil skirts, angora sweaters and long blonde wigs hasn't hurt any in winning him a little extra posthumous publicity, but then, when it comes down to it, you can't really separate the man from his films. Or indeed, as you are about to find out, from his books.

  The recently released Tim Burton movie starring Johnny Depp has done a lot to focus attention on one of the forgotten men of cinema, but although the line walked in that film was that Ed's work should be appreciated and enjoyed for what it is- a flawed but delight-filled labour of love and enthusiasm - the reappraisal started in a far less generous way. I guess the Medved brothers have a lot to answer for. When these smart young film critics launched their Golden Turkey awards, Ed was right up there in the number one spot - Plan 9 From Outer Space was, by their standards, THE definitive movie turkey. This one just about had it all, and then some. Cheap and shoddy sets. Cheaper and shoddier special effects. Off kilter acting - some bad, some merely indifferent. Weirdos. Second-rate writing. And a brief appearance by that old ham Bela Lugosi, now officially a movieland joke thanks to his overly stylised technique and gloomy one-note presence. Oh yeah, those Medved boys must have felt pretty comfy and safe when it came to nominating Plan 9 for the top spot. No one could actually find something to like in this piece of crud, right? Completely and utterly wrong, my little Medved chums, we can now chorus with immense and smug satisfaction.

  Rather than consigning Plan 9 and its maker to the celluloid dumpster, what the Medveds actually achieved was the complete opposite. Sure, we came to laugh but lingered for a second look. Then a third, then a fourth and maybe a few more.

  Plan 9 seems increasingly, in these days of mind-bogglingly convincing SFX, to embody the appeal of fantastic film making in its youth, and the desire. to create a world of wonder overruling the common sense dreariness that prevails when folks start pointing out that the spacecrafts are really paper plates and that none of the actors can act. And of course, once you've been piqued by Plan 9, you inevitably make your way to Ed's masterpiece- Glen Or Glenda. See, even though the basic premise - closet transvestite makes low-budget movie about closet transvestite and plays the lead role - even though it sounds on pap.er like a mildly amusing (for all the wrong reasons) journey into Hacksville, the film kind of stays with you. Glen Or Glenda makes you laugh but unlike say, Tango And Cash or Bird On A Wire, or even Kazan's The Arrangement or Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, it isn't forgotten completely and utterly the very next morning.

  Nowadays of course, Ed no longer suffers from the 'worst director' tag. It gets dragged up (no pun intended) occasionally, but in this weird end-of-the-millenium pop culture stew we all swim around in, words like 'good' and 'bad' no longer count for much: we can pretty much enjoy anything we fancy. ABBA are as hip as Nirvana, you can wear your trousers as flared or as tight around the ankle as you wish, and no one would blink an eye if you said that you think Glen Or Glenda is one of the ten best movies ever made. We live in a Burger King society -whichever way you want it, well, you got it.

  One thing I find weird about the whole Wood phenomenon is that on the surface at least, the films aren't actually that much odder or shoddier than many other shoestring efforts released about the same time. So why is it that Zontar, The Thing From Venus or Killers From Space have escaped both the derision and admiration currently attracted by Wood's movies? They too feature laughable premises and 'variable' acting, yet are forgotten, whereas Ed ... well, I'm writing and you're reading about him right now. It must come down to the man himself.

  If you're a cynical type you may conclude that it was his feeble and rather sad regurgitation of already tired bargain basement sci-fi cliches that make his films so extreme. If like me, however, you're an optimistic woolly-headed old pussycat, you will insist that his sheer love of movies and stars and fantasy and life itself shines right through every single badly composed frame of every one of his half-baked flicks. In return, you just have to love them.

  Which is why, in certain circles, the long-awaited publication of Ed's novels will be greeted with much the same joy as the discovery of an unpublished Dickens manuscript might be amongst more conventionally academic quarters. At last we get the chance to sample the great one's tortured mind unleashed and unfettered - no longer bound by who and what he could throw together for his cinematic escapades. This promises to be pure Ed of the 100% unrefined bootleg hooch variety, churned out, if Wood historians are to be believed, on a battered old portable in a tiny flea-bag apartment on Hollywood Blvd for whatever meagre coinage was on offer from the cheap-bastard mob-connected porno publishers of the late sixties and early seventies, God Bless 'em. But does it stand up to the movie stuff ? Is it as 'good' or 'bad' as Jailbait or I Married A Monster ?

  A brief dip into the opening chapter of Let Me Die In Drag, in which Glen/Glenda makes a welcome return, will have any Ed Wood fan smiling broadly in anticipation of the pleasures to come - out and out sleaze, but with that unique personal touch. The style is pretty much classic Ed: terse, basic, straightforward but very, very strange. Who else would bother writing that the sound of a flushing toilet prevented someone from hearing part of a conversation? Where else would you find a fight breaking out between a transvestite and a hoodlum over the rough treatment of a sweater? The answer, my friends, is no one; the answer, you lucky dogs, is right here.

  Which is why, if you like Ed's films or you like pulp fiction of the cheesier type; if you like transvestites or you like to carry around paperbacks which actually scream "whoever reads me is hip, hip, hip!"; or if you just find yourself hopelessly drawn to the bittersweet poignancy of the starving, derided, tortured but eternally optimistic artist that was Ed D. Wood Jnr, these books deserve to be read.

  Ed, we've missed you. Welcome back.

  Jonathan Ross, London 1995

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sheriff Buck Rhodes sat cross-legged, smoking a cigarette in the open right-hand door of his patrol car. It was his third cigarette in the twenty minutes he had been sitting there, but he hadn't realized that fact. His eyes were hypnotically fastened on the great, black expanse of the Gulf of Mexico which sprawled out in front of him. He knew somewhere out there a ship was carefully propelling its way toward the Texas coastline, perhaps even to one of the many moorings at the edge of his own town. A ship which should have been flying the death-head and crossbones of the pirate from its mast head. But the death-head and crossbones would not be representing pirate activities. Rather, it would stand for the cargo of death the ship carried. Heroin and marijuana from deep along the Mexican coastline the rumble had it. And his town was numbered among the smaller, less patrolled ones which situated itself along the water's edge.

  There were a hundred or more places along the immediate coastline where a small boat could be hidden without fear of detection. Even the moorings, right out in the open, were comparatively safe. How many search warrants would it take, and how many men, to board every boat coming into and going out of the area? How could he hope to have any real success in such an operation when there was only a force of himself and four deputies?

  Buck shook his head hopelessly and stretched a foot over to crush his cigarette out on the ground as he thought back over the past two nights. His informant had been a lovely young school teacher, Harriett Long, who had overheard the information while she was being raped and fatally mutilated by a gang of sadistic juvenile delinquents. She died in the hospita
l before she could identify her assailants or give any more information about the expected drop. Two full days of questioning suspected juveniles had led him exactly nowhere, except to that lonely spot on the docks, watching the calm, dark waters.

  "Where and when will it happen?" he said aloud, then cursed under his breath as he snaked across the seat and got behind the wheel. He started the motor and jerked the car forward so that the right hand door snapped shut by itself. ''The teacher is dead and I haven't got a lead. What the hell can I do about it?" he shouted to the deserted road ahead, then snapped on the siren for no other reason than he wanted to annoy someone as his thoughts were annoying him.

  Teacher Harriett Long was dead but her memory was still very strong in the minds of the three teenage girls who concealed themselves across from the house she had shared with her sister. Each wore tight-fitting sweaters, Levi's and dirty white sneakers which could cause any move to be as silent as a cat's tread. They were Dee, Babs and Rhoda, three members of a disreputable girl gang known as THE CHICKS. Their eyes searched both ways on the deserted street which surrounded a new model station wagon parked in front of the house. It was a long moment of studied silence before any of them spoke, and when they finally did speak it was in controlled whispers.

  "You sure that's the right set of bolts?" Dee,the leader, spoke as she turned to Babs, the girl on her left.

  "Sure. I double-checked it. The skinny sister is drivin' it now, but it was teacher's." Babs was a bit annoyed at being doubted, but she dared not defy her leader. Dee was tough when she was defied. She had left a good number of broken noses and split lips in the wake of her rise to power, and at the present there wasn't one girl in the gang who would attempt to question her authority.

  Rhoda Purdue, the third member of the party and by far the prettiest, leaned in close to Dee.

  "What's the reason?"

  "To burn the sonofabitchin' car, what else?" snapped Dee.

  "But why? The teacher bitch is dead! What good's it going to do to burn her car now? We can't hurt her anymore." Rhoda was honestly puzzled.

  It became immediately apparent Dee would have nothing she did questioned. "Maybe for kicks," she snapped more vehemently. "Look! Bluenose caused us ALL a lot of trouble. The boys knew how to take care of her, so now it's up to us to see they all remember and keep remembering, we don't stop just because they're in the grave. Nobody turns any of us in to the fuzz for any reason and gets away with it. We do our job and the boys do theirs. And we got a lot to do to catch up with the boys on this one... they did her up but brown ..."

  "They sure did," giggled Babs. "Probably the only piece of tail she ever got in her whole life. Oh boy, what a jazzin' she got! Jazzed her right outta' this world." Her eyes went wide in the ecstasy of exciting memories. "Man oh man, did she scream!"

  The sound of an automobile motor interrupted Bab's words, and the three girls ducked down into the thicker mesquite brush along the roadside. When the car stopped on the road near their position without cutting the motor off, Dee risked a look toward it. Immediately she snapped back and let the protection of the brush fold around her again. "It's that cop sheriff," she whispered, then she lay flat on the ground and with extreme caution parted some of the lower branches. Her keen eyes glowered as she watched Sheriff Rhodes light a cigarette and look to the house across from them for a long moment. Finally he once more put the car into gear and drove off.

  Dee stood up and watched the car until it was gone from sight. "He's gone. Okay! Let's get at it and make it quick!"

  Rhoda and Babs stood up, this time both of them held five-gallon cans of gasoline in their hands. In one quick move they raced across the street to the parked station wagon. Dee stood several steps away while both Babs and Rhoda sloshed gasoline over both the exterior and the interior of the vehicle. Then when Rhoda's can was nearly empty, Dee stepped in to take it from her hand. She started a long, thin line of the spilled fluid at the rear of the car and trailed it back some hundred yards or more along the road and there stopped. Babs emptied the remainder of her container into the inside of the car then raced along the road to join Dee and Rhoda.

  "You got the other can?" asked Dee.

  Babs lifted the container. "Right with me." "We don't want no fingerprints left behind." Then Dee leaned over the thin line of gasoline at her feet, studied it briefly, then lit a match and touched the explosive mixture off.

  The fire sped along the thin line until it hit the main pool under the car. The vehicle exploded as if in one giant sheet of flame.

  "Get out of here," ordered Dee. "That cop ain't so far away he didn't hear that blast." And they raced off into the darkness.

  There had been no reason for Buck to take that road past Harriett Long's former home. But there had been something he couldn't explain which drew him in that direction... a something which was all powerful enough to control his mind.

  When he was abreast of the house all looked serene, the station wagon parked for the night in its usual place. There was a light in an upstairs window denoting Harriett's sister, Millie, had returned from the funeral home and was preparing for bed. All certainly looked well enough.

  He lit a cigarette, then drove off. But a mile or so down the road that same overpowering feeling of something amiss hit him again. When the explosion slammed the airwaves, Buck's stomach sank. He knew immediately where the sound originated. He spun the car around and hit the siren in the same move.

  Millie raced to the window within seconds of the explosion which shattered several of her win dows. At first glance it appeared to her the whole street was on fire. The glare momentarily imbedded on her vision three dark shapes, some distance away, and running swiftly into the deeper blackness. The incident was but a fleeting moment, but a lasting one for Millie. Buck's siren, growing steadily closer, invaded her ears as she turned to put on a robe over her simple night gown.

  Buck burned rubber when he jammed on his brakes a safe distance from the blazing inferno. Millie raced across her lawn and met him at precisely the same moment.

  ''There were three of them." Millie was near hysteria. "I saw them off there!" she pointed. "In the dark."

  Buck looked off. He knew, like rabbits on the plains, they would be gone, swallowed up by the desert brush and the night. "Did you get a look at them?''

  "Three young boys."

  "Reckon as how you did get a good look at them?"

  "Only the three dark figures running off there." She pointed again.

  "How do you know they were boys?"

  "I could see they were wearing pants. They ran like boys."

  Another siren burst into being in the distance. "I radioed for the fire truck." He sighed and moved in as close to the flames as the heat would permit.

  He turned to survey the acres of dark, homeless desert land on all sides of the Long home. Had Millie not been home, or he passing, the fire could well have spread like wild fire across the desert, destroying the house and anything else in its path before it was discovered. The next closest house was more than five miles back along the road toward town, and no fire hydrant water supplies in between.

  Buck was thus engrossed as the fire truck with its self-contained water tank drew into position. The chief of the four man crew went immediately to Buck while his men jumped into action with the equipment.

  "Know what started it, Buck?"

  "Reckon that's something you 'll have to tell me, Herb," said Buck through tight lips.

  And while the firemen worked feverishly to quench the flames yet another incident was taking place. The shadowy figure of a teenage boy moved cautiously up to a schoolhouse window. He took a tire iron from his belt and broke the window, then reached up and unlocked it. He looked around to make sure no one had witnessed his actions, then shoved the window open. When this was done he looked back into the darkness and gave a low whistle which caused two more boys of about his own age to materialize from the darkness and walk in to join him. "You first Danny, then Rick."


  "Okay, Lonnie," whispered Danny, the first boy, and he hoisted himself up over the window sill and into the building.

  "Get going Rick, and watch the glass. I had to break the window."

  "Sure, Lonnie." The second boy hoisted himself up in the same manner and disappeared into the school room.

  Once more the third boy, Lonnie, looked cautiously around him, then gripped the window-sill and made his way in to join the others.

  The school room they had entered was much the same as any school room the country over, with the exception that since it was a small town school, the desks were a bit more crowded together. In the front of the class was a long blackboard which showed many years of continuous use and the teacher's desk, which was situated in front of it and to the right of the American flag.

  Lonnie moved to the teacher's desk quickly and with a sweep of his arm he knocked everything that was there to the floor: books, papers, blotter, a beautiful pen set and a glass of water containing one single rose. "Get to it," he said harshly.

  The boys jumped into action immediately, both taking short hatchets from their belts. They tore into the desks leaving a shamble of splintered wood and the metal frames. Lonnie hit the blackboard in several places with his tire iron, then he moved across the room to smash the several windows. Meanwhile Danny ran to the teacher's desk and slammed his hatchet into it with all his might. The fragile wood broke and splintered with each blow, and each blow contained all the venom Danny felt. Rick finished the last of the smaller desks, then raced in beside Danny. He let his hatchet fall once to a leg of the desk; then his eyes caught on something more interesting to him. He raced to the American flag and hoisted it out of its standard. He raised it over his head and there froze.

  "Don't touch that flag!" Lonnie's voice was harsh.

  "What's eatin' you?" snapped Rick, and Danny stopped his desk wrecking to look across to them.

  "I said, don't touch that flag."