The Sinister Urge (1960)

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

Director:

Edward D. Wood Jr.

Writer:

Edward D. Wood Jr.

Stars:

Kenne Duncan, Duke Moore, Jean Fontaine

Cast

Cast overview:
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

Storyline

Someone is killing young women in the park. Police suspect it's related to the smut picture racket, and begin leaning on Gloria Henderson, a smut front woman for the "mob." Her right arm man continues to procure young women with stars in their eyes to submit to their heinous celluloid activities, and if the women try blackmail, they call in a specialist to take care of the problem.

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Plot Keywords:

police | actress | morality | naivety | female nudity | 

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Taglines:

Branded for Torture...A SMUT PICTURE!

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

8 December 1960 (USA)

Also Known As:

Hellborn

Filming Locations:

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

Box Office

Budget:

$20,152 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Headliner Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

71 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

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

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Goofs

In several shots in Lt. Carson's office, a microphone is clearly visible at the top of the frame as it moves back and forth to cover the actor's dialog.

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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.

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Connections

Edited into U2: Numb (1993)

User Reviews

Pornography: A nasty word for a dirty business.

One of Ed Wood Jr. lesser known works about the smut racket where Wood himself has a cameo role in it. Not as the cop in drag with a tight womens wool sweater, which would have been more like it for Wood, but as a smut peddler having it out with his rival at a pizza joint that fronts for a porno distribution site.

With a number of young women found dead in and around a local park their deaths are connected to a local smut ring headed by Gloria Henderson. Things get real bad for Gloria when the cops take into custody her top smut photographer Jaffe together with all the canisters of porno films, that he hid in his closet. Leaving her racket on the verge of being shut down not just by the cops but by the syndicate who are bankrolling her smut operation.

The weak link in Gloria's smut business is one of her enforcers Dirk Williams who becomes so hopped up and morally corrupted by having a hand in her smut racket. Dirk he goes bananas when he sees porno films and pictures that he's peddling supplied by Gloria's right-hand man in her business the former legit Hollywood film maker Johnny Ryde. Dirk's uncountable urge for sex and violence is touched off just by the sight of smut photos and that drives him to commit rape and murder. The local cops know all about Gloria's operation but need solid proof and evidence to put her,together with Johnny Ryde, out of business. In the end it's Gloria herself who provides all the rope that they need to hang her without Gloria even knowing it.

Director Ed Wood does the best he can to show the evils of pornography and how it effects naive and innocent young girls who come to Hollywood looking to make it big in the motion picture industry. Only ending up getting talked into making porno films by the likes of Gloria and Johnny Ryde to just pay off their bills. We see the tragic story of Mary Smith who ended up making smut films and photos for Gloria and finally fell victim to Dirks sinister urge. When he caught Mary alone in the park, by the duck pond, and ended up raping and murdering her. We also see in the movie "The Sinister Urge" how difficult it is to arrest the likes of Gloria Henderson and make the charges of the crimes she committed stick.

Admittedly a laughable venture, which of his movies aren't, of Wood's because of the cheap budget and in some cases non-actors in it. The movie "The Sinister Urge"is still years ahead of it's time thanks to the foresight and vision of it's director Ed Wood Jr, in showing the evils and horrors of the then, in 1961, underground and illegal smut business in and out of Hollywood. That destroyed the lives of thousands of young girls like Mary Smith in mind as well as body.