Final Curtain

Final Curtain (1957)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This short film was originally meant as the pilot episode for a TV series that never got off the ground but the interesting thing is that this was actually made before The Twilight Zone and it's perhaps the best thing Edward D. Wood, Jr. did in his career. The setting is an abandoned theater where an actor (Duke Moore) begins to walk around and feels that he's not alone. This film was lost for several decades until a print recently turned up and until then the only thing really known about it was that rumor had it Bela Lugosi, who was meant to play the actor, died while reading the screenplay. I think it's safe to say that this is the best thing Wood ever did on a technical level. There's no question this has a very low budget but I thought Wood actually did a good job at building up some nice atmosphere. He also did a very good job with the editing as he's trying to do a psychological horror film and one clearly influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. I think this is a major discovery for fans of the director simply because it shows him doing a horror film and in a way that isn't seen in his other works. I'd add that the dialogue isn't nearly what you'd expect from Wood as it's actually decent! There are some major problems with the film though. For starters, at 22-minutes it's a tad bit too long for its own good as around the ten-minute mark you start asking yourself what the point is. You also keep wondering why the actor is walking around as it's never made clear as to why he doesn't just leave. I also didn't care for the narration by Dudley Manlove as at times it's way too over-the-top. With that said, overall this is a fairly impressive film by Wood's standards and something his fans will want to check out.