Lecture by Russell Merritt

Burton's biopic of the man often described as the world's worst filmmaker (Glen or Glenda, Plan Nine from Outer Space, etc.) may offer a somewhat favorably distorted account of the man and his films-it ends before his slide into porn, penury, and alcoholism and, while re-creating certain scenes from Wood's work with astonishing accuracy, manages to avoid showing his most tiresomely nonsensical sequences-but it certainly succeeds as a funny, touching tribute to tenacity, energy, ambition, and friendship. Affection shines through warm and bright, aided no end by Stefan Czapsky's evocative black-and-white camerawork, and by a host of spot-on lookalike performances. Martin Landau, especially, is superb, bringing fire, acid, pathos, wit, and real dignity to the role of the pitiful, occasionally deranged former horror hero Bela Lugosi; and, in the film's most conspicuous, outrageous, but surprisingly appropriate bit of fictionalization, Vincent D'Onofrio makes a notably beleaguered Orson Welles. Johnny Depp himself, all innocence, bright-eyed zeal, and itchy obsession, never really lets us get beneath Wood's skin, but gives such a good-natured performance that it's hard not to end up rooting for someone who was talentless, naive, and misguided in virtually everything he did.