Night of the Ghouls Reviews

Another low-budget masterwork of unintentional hilarity from Ed Wood, Jr.--the man who gave us PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, one of the greatest bad films of all time. NIGHT OF THE GHOULS doesn't quite live up to its predecessor. Emerging from a coffin to relate another horrifying tale, noted psychic Criswell returns to the screen as the narrator and star of the film (he, Tor Johnson, Maila "Vampira" Nurmi, and Bela Lugosi appeared in nearly all of Wood's little masterpieces). The story concerns phony spiritualist Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan), his lovely assistant (Valda Hansen), and a big brute (Tor Johnson) who perform bogus seances to scare money out of dim-witted customers trying to contact deceased loved ones. These ignorant crooks have been fooling with the supernatural, however, and one night they find that they really have brought the dead to life. The disturbed corpses--including Nurmi--exact revenge by burying the shady spiritualist and his crew alive. This was one of Wood's last efforts and it was never released theatrically, though local TV stations had no compunction about airing it as a late-night feature, much to the delight of Wood, who used to call his friends and tell them to stay up and watch it. On cassette as both NIGHT OF THE GHOULS and REVENGE OF THE DEAD.