A biographical masterpiece

Without doubt this is a Tim Burton masterpiece. Johnny Depp is superb as Ed Wood, the B-Movie director and transvestite who struggles to make a name in movies due to the fact he's pretty hopeless at it. However for me the show is stolen completely by Martin Landau's role as Bella Legusi, golden star of Dracula and 20's-30's horror movies now a drug addicted has-been in his seventies. For me the story was as much about how fickle the movie business can be and how it can discard it's former stars into dereliction. I was deeply moved by Legusi's story in Ed Wood and how in his last days he used Wood's ridiculous, budget movies to eek out a living and to fund his morphine addiction. Woods is portrayed as a talentless yet ambitious and relentless writer who dreams of becoming the next Orson Wells. Making full use of his friendship with Legusi he cons businessmen and small-time movie producers to fund his films. Eventually he cons the Baptist church into funding his film 'Grave Robbers From Outer Space' eventually renamed 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' even going to the lengths of having himself and his crew baptised in the church. Using private footage of a by now deceased Legusi and a body double he fools the public into believing it is Legusi's last film and delivers for him his only real semi-success as a filmmaker. This is a superb biographical film and shows Depp's and Burton's undoubted talent in a new light and is both moving and hysterically funny. However for me Landau's Legusi left me feeling deeply moved and his portrayal of that aging, sad Hungarian fallen star will always

be the thing I remember this film for.