613-The Sinister Urge

Film Year:  1960
Genre:  Drama, Crime
Director:  Edward D. Wood Jr.
Starring:  Kenne Duncan, James "Duke" Moore, Jean Fontaine, Carl Anthony, Conrad Brooks
MST Season:  6
Featured Short:  "Keeping Clean and Neat"

The Short

Children are nothing but low down dirty pigs and you know it.  To help them get in line and look like actual human beings this short presents a bossy narrator to harass a pair of children, Don and Mildred, and force them to clean until their hands bleed!  And then they have them clean up the blood!  And it better be spotless!

The movie is meant to be shown to children in classrooms in hopes that they would learn good grooming habits from it.  It's actually pretty informative, with some neat tips like clipping toenails after bathing being easier.  It's hard to find much fault in it at all, because for what it is it's effective.

The Movie

"This smut picture racket is worse than kidnapping or dope peddling."

If you didn't think pornography was the most evil industry of all, Ed Wood is here to convince you with his most startling and chilling tale yet.  The Sinister Urge tells the story of an exotic studio surrounded by violence and murder.  It seems that every girl who works under Gloria Henderson's studio winds up dead and the police investigate.  Meanwhile, Henderson continues to swindle young girls into posing promiscuously for her.

In a stunning case of irony, The Sinister Urge is the last film Ed Wood directed for about ten years, turning to pornography to pay the rent in the 1970's.  But if Wood were to heed his own warning he would have been corrupted by such a move, leered at women, and maybe even killed them for becoming too aroused or turning his back on such a murder should it have occurred.  I don't know what the porn industry was like in 1960, though I have my doubts that Ed Wood was authoritative on the subject either.

Trademark Ed Wood stamps are seen throughout:  Cheap sets used over and over again, wooden and poor acting that possibly stems from a lack of alternate takes, and a zealous approach through filmmaking incompetence.  I haven't seen all of Wood's films, though I haven't seen one that isn't entertaining yet due to his negligent craftwork.  The Sinister Urge wasn't one of the films whose filming was recreated for Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood, but as goofy and different as it is, it probably should have been.

Note:  In a cute little Easter Egg that Ed Wood popped into his own movie, an office in this film features posters for Bride of the Monster and The Violent Years, both of which Ed Wood wrote and in the case of the former directed.  These two films ironically are also the other two films Wood made that were featured on Mystery Science Theater.  Less predominantly featured in the scene is a poster for Jail Bait.

The Episode

After directing Bride of the Monster and writing The Violent Years, bad movie legend Ed Wood assaults us for the third and final time with The Sinister Urge.  I knew I was in for a fun one when right out the gate we see a girl running in terror in her undergarments and Servo pipes up with the winner "Hey, she's trying to give someone the slip!"  This line and ensuing scene sets the tone for this episode, as the film gives them such a failed attempt at being alluring and erotic, which is different than what they usually do.  Still, this is Ed Wood, so mocking this thing is easy, so it's not too far outside of the box.  There's bad acting, long sequences of dialogue that lead nowhere, and erotica that isn't very erotic, and it's all skewered well.  This episode is a blast.

Even funnier than the film is the short.  Keeping Clean and Neat is a wonderful short for the series, and one of my personal favorites.  It is so fast-paced and Mike and the Bots go in full on sprint to keep up with it.  They're often putting precise riffs in to take advantage of small moments and facial expressions that last just a moment.  They work these in with some steady and hilarious riffs on a bossy narrator talking about clean underwear, kooky music, and obsessive compulsive cleaning habits.

The host segments take aim at a guilty pleasure of mine, 90's action movies.  Frank has seen one too many mad bomber flicks of late, including Speed, In the Line of Fire, and Blown Away, and has decided to blow up Deep 13.  Mike and the Bots turn into 90's movie cop cliches in an attempt to stop him.  As someone who has grown up on movies like this, these segments delight me and never fail to make me laugh.

The Sinister Urge is a strong, steady, and overall really fun episode.  It doesn't quite stand out from the pack and single itself out as a series best, but whenever I find it on my television I laugh like a goon and enjoy myself.  If one wishes the venture outside of the norm of sci-fi and monster movies that the show normally showcases, one can do much worse than to start here.

Good

The DVD

The Sinister Urge seduced us from the comfort of Rhino's Volume 9 collection, with terrific audio and video.  The DVD's sole special feature is a three minute intro by actor Conrad Brooks, who mostly just relates how he felt like James Dean holding a knife in the film and how he regretted doing his own stunts.

The short, Keeping Clean and Neat, was released in the Shorts Volume 2 compilation featured on Rhino's Volume 3 set.  This set was re-released by Shout Factory.