The Sinister Urge (1960)

User Rating:

1.9/10   

Director:

Edward D. Wood Jr.

Writer:

Edward D. Wood Jr. (writer)

Release Date:

8 December 1960 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

Branded for Torture...A SMUT PICTURE!

Plot:

A flunky for a porno movie ring starts murdering the smut films' lead actresses.

Plot Keywords:

Police | MST3K | Naive | Murder | Cult Favorite

Cast

Kenne Duncan	...	Lt. Matt Carson
Duke Moore	...	Sgt. Randy Stone (as James 'Duke' Moore)
Jean Fontaine	...	Gloria Henderson
Carl Anthony	...	Johnny Ryde
Dino Fantini	...	Dirk Williams
Jeanne Willardson	...	Mary Smith
Harvey B. Dunn	...	Mr. Romaine
Reed Howes	...	Police Inspector
Fred Mason	...	Officer Kline
Vic McGee	...	Syndicate man
Harry Keaton	...	Jaffe (as Harry Keatan)
Conrad Brooks	...	Connie

Also Known As:

Hellborn
The Young and the Immoral

Runtime:

71 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Spain:T

Filming Locations:

Griffith Park Observatory, Griffith Park - 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Headliner Productions

Trivia:

The Pizza Joint sequences were shot in 1956 for the unfinished film Rock and Roll Hell, also known as Hellborn.

Goofs:

Continuity: Police leave the police station in a black and white Ford and arrive at the City Park in a black and white Dodge.

Quotes:

[Mary sees Ed Wood posters on pornographer Johnny Ride's office wall.]
Mary Smith: Are gangster and horror films all you produce?
Johnny Ryde: Those are made by friends of mine. I think you'll find my type of picture entirely different.

Movie Connections:

References Jail Bait (1954)

not made to be a bad movie, it just is, though not really 'classic' bad

Edward D. Wood Jr (or E.D. Wood credited for the film) is practically revered today as a filmmaker forgotten and neglected in his time as just another Shlock-Meister of B-movie (or Z-movie) cinema. His legacy is now, well, being the ultimate in bad schlock kind of movie-making, where you can almost see the sets about the tear at the seams, the actors going through their lines like they know they won't get any pay for it, and camera-work (and perhaps editing too) that becomes jarring in the worst possible ways. While the Sinister Urge, Wood's last 'real' film before diving deep into obscure porn directing (ironic considering the film's subject here), does not have a kind of classically bad way about it like Plan 9 From Outer Space. That film has since become a kind of cult classic where the actor in place of the late Bela Lugosi in the film, the various props and sets (including the 'saucers'), and horrendous narration becomes most of the ironic fun. The Sinister Urge in comparison doesn't have that impressive ambition to be something more than it can never be, as this film is nothing more than an under-cooked 'warning' film about porn movies, and the people who may kill to be apart of them.

The Sinister Urge is 71 minutes long, which doesn't overstay its welcome (though one may try and define 'welcome' with an Ed Wood picture) as a film with many static camera angles and very few moments of ingenuity. One of those- the scene where the brakes don't work with the car- is ironically successful, as it really shouldn't be at all workable as a scene, but as a little piece of suspense it could be worse. Most of the rest of the picture isn't so lucky- again, many, many actors who seem like they are not only content to not become stars, they're almost doomed to be in pictures like Wood's. Often the performances are wooden, but of course part of the real problem with watching such actors is the often silly dialog. It tries to be 'realistic', but Wood has no gripe with stopping somewhere to have a character (usually the lead cop character) to lay out a dull speech about the message of the story. On top of the story not really being too coherent, anyway, the director's method of the 'cut, print, perfect' method can be seen quite often with some laughable mistakes abound.

Now, does all of this make the Sinister Urge as astoundingly, amusingly bad as Plan 9? Not really; there's nothing too memorable about how the film is bad here, unless you're a die-hard fan of the director. He does try here and there to keep some storytelling merit, with his style being so uncomplicated and static it shows his ambition. But the lack of talent overcomes everything else, not to mention the cardboard-sided points of the film. It's also not too unworthy of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment either, which has now made the film available on DVD. The commentary is spot-on usually and funny, though as with Plan 9 you may still want to make wisecracks on your own. That's Wood as the mustached guy who fights at the Cafeteria in one scene.