Book Club At The Beacon

The Beacon 443 Restaurant
Blakeslee Blvd - Lehighton, PA
Our final Mahoning Book Club meeting of the season was at an incredible diner that's just down the street from the drive-in.  I've known that this was here for a long time, but this was the first time that we had an opportunity to stop in.  It definitely will not be the last time.

When you see one of these on the door of a restaurant or a diner, you know that you're about to enter a time capsule of the 1980's, and you're probably in for an excellent meal.

This diner is very clean and well-kept, but it looks like nothing has changed since I was in grade school.  Places like this are an absolute treasure, and they've become increasingly rare after the pandemic when many restaurants either went out of business or were sold to new owners who have unfortunately remodeled them in a misguided effort to keep up with the times.

They even have their old candy counter at the cash register.  These used to be at practically every diner and pizza parlor that I've ever visited for the first twenty years of my life.  The only places that I see them these days are for sale on eBay or at an antique store.  Not only did The Beacon 443 still have this candy counter in place, but they also had it stocked with candy and gum that you don't see everyday.  The Peanut Chews and Chunky bars caught my eye at first, but I was shocked to find that they also had Teaberry and Black Jack gum.  I didn't even know they were still in production.

 

In addition to being a very cool, old-school diner, the menu at The Beacon 443 has at least a dozen different things that I'd love to try, including a hamburger eggs benedict that looked delicious!  I was wearing my Jake Blues costume at the time, so I didn't want to get anything as potentially messy as that.  I ended up getting the Reuben.  I know... big surprise, right?  It was delicious, and I'm going to have to resist the temptation to order when we come back so that I can try some other things from their menu.

The subject of our book club meetings is usually a novel that was adapted into a film that's being shown at the Mahoning that weekend.  This time, our book was the 1818 Mary Shelley gothic horror classic, Frankenstein.  I thought I had read this at some point in my life, but it became pretty clear to me after the first few pages that I hadn't.  There are so many differences between the novel and the 1931 Boris Karloff film (and every other screen adaptation of this story that I've seen) that they have very little in common.  The only things that I can think of that the movie has taken from the novel are the last name of the doctor and the fact that he has created a monster.  Everything else is different, and the differences aren't trivial.  If you love the Frankenstein movies and you haven't read it before, there's no better time to give it a shot than Halloween.

Catching Up On Regal Unlimited

It's getting close to the end of the drive-in season, so I'll have more time to take advantage of the Regal Unlimited plan to see some new movies on the big screen for the next six months.  I've gone to see a few movies over late Summer and early Fall that I haven't mentioned yet on here, so this post is to catch up on some of those films and what I thought of them.

Afraid
Blumhouse Productions (2024)
Artificial intelligence is the latest trendy antagonist in horror and dystopian fiction, and it's already getting a little old.  Afraid started off strong, but it blew most of it's potential about a third of the way into the movie.  That's when it became clear that the filmmakers aren't going for a deep or thought-provoking examination of the ways in which AI can get out of control, but instead shooting a popcorn horror flick.  There's nothing wrong with that, but M3gan already did it and they did a better job of it.  Afraid isn't bad, but I'm betting that you'll forget that you had a few weeks after you watch it.

Saturday Night
Columbia Pictures (2024)

Biopics and movies that are "based on a true story" are generally not my favorite kind of films, especially when I have some level of familiarity with the subject.  Whereas a movie like Killers Of The Flower Moon will command my attention because they're telling a story that I've never heard before, I struggle to focus on a film that has little to no element of suspense.  Movies like Oppenheimer and Ed Wood are true works of art and I appreciate them both, but I know how the story ends, so I have to make a deliberate effort to keep my mind from wandering.

I'm far from an expert on the history of Saturday Night Live, but I know enough to understand that calling its cast "the not ready for prime-time players" was more than just a marketing gimmick.  I realized going into this film that NBC expected this show to fail, and it became a massive success that is still going strong to this day, so I thought that Saturday Night would be another one of those "based on a true story" films that I'm going to drift in and out of paying attention to.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  The pacing of this film is absolutely brilliant.  It not only held my attention, but it gave such an intense feeling of being in a panic rush that I felt a little bit of panic myself at something as simple as running to McDonald's and back to the theater before the second movie that I saw that night.

This is an incredible movie.  Even if you have only the faintest interest in Saturday Night Live, I highly recommend it.  I can't say how much of this story is true and how much was manipulated for dramatic effect, but it's a hell of an experience to sit through.  

Terrifier 3
Bloody Disgusting (2024)
This was not only my first time seeing Art The Clown on the big screen, but the first time I sat through an entire movie in which he was one of the characters.  I'm aware of the existence of All Hallows Eve and Terrifier 1 and 2, but this was one of those things where seeing memes and references to the film online made me sick of these movies before I even had the opportunity to sit down and watch them.  I had a similar experience with the 2022 horror flick Pearl.  I had seen that end credit scene of Mia Goth smiling with a psychotic look in her eyes in so many memes and animated gifs in the months after that movie came out in theaters that I was annoyed at the very thought of it.  I finally sat down to watch it this year after all of the hype had died down, and even then I had a hard time pushing back the residual annoyance so that I could sit back and letting the film tell me a story.

I started to watch the first Terrifier movie on Tubi so that I had at least some understanding of this film before going to see it in theaters, but I was distracted by other things and I ended up seeing only about the first half hour.  I had considered skipping Terrifier 3 on the big screen altogether so that I didn't start with the fourth movie in the series, but my friend Donny convinced me that it wasn't the kind of film that I'd have to see all of the previous movies in the series to enjoy, so I gave it a shot.

The only thing I really knew about Terrifier 3 going into the theater is that it was extremely gory, and it certainly lived up to that hype.  However, it wasn't the least bit terrifying.  In fact, I'm not even sure I'd classify this as a horror movie.

I'm not opposed to gore when it tells a good story, like Saw and Hostel, but the story in Terrifier 3 was so nonsensical that the violence just came across as lazy comedy.  I've heard this film described as a live action Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, and whoever said that absolutely hit the nail on the head.  This movie is gore porn.  It's mildly amusing to see once, but that's the best complement that I'm going to pay it.

The scene at the end of the film was so completely ridiculous that I almost laughed out loud in the theater.  They put such little effort into storytelling that I don't mind spoiling it.  Ok, so the main protagonist is faced with a Sofie's Choice.  She can either kill Art The Clown with a sword, or she can save her little cousin who is barely hanging on from falling into a pit to hell.  She chooses to save her cousin... ok, fine.  She runs to the edge of this hole in the ground and reaches down, but her cousin's arm is just a centimeter away from being close enough to pull her up.  Now, picture this scene.  They are in a room surrounded by window curtains that go from the floor to the ceiling.  They're not subtle.  They're huge, and they're obvious, and there are several of them within arms reach of the protagonist.  She knows she has to throw something down to her cousin to help pull her up, so what does she choose to throw down to her?  The f*cking sword!  She throws the handle of the sword down for her cousin to grab onto while she wraps her bare hands around the blade and attempts to pull her up while cutting her hands to ribbons.  Naturally, this doesn't work, and the cousin falls into hell while the stupidest final girl in horror history looks on in shock and horror.

I'm going to check out the rest of the movies in the Terrifier series one of these days, but after seeing this movie, it got bumped to the back of my watch list... right after the Sharknado sequels.

Your Monster
Vertical (2024)
This past Monday was a Mystery Movie Monday screening at Regal, and the surprise movie was a romcom horror flick called Your Monster.  I hadn't heard anything at all about this film, but it has absolutely won me over.

Your Monster reminded me a lot of another Mystery Movie Monday flick that I saw earlier this year called Lisa Frankenstein, but not in a way that made me feel like one movie ripped off the other.  They have a similar tone, and the two films would make an excellent double feature.  If I had to pick a favorite between the two, I think I'd give the edge to Your Monster.  The story has a strong message, and it left me wondering if the monster really exists, or if it's a part of her psyche that is protecting her and helping to keep her strong.

Smile 2
Paramount Pictures (2024)
This has the potential to be the next great horror franchise.  The first Smile movie had one of the most creative and effective marketing campaigns that I've seen for any horror film that was released in my lifetime.  It delivered on the big screen with a horror masterpiece that was genuinely scary from start to finish. 

The story here is about a demon that travels like a virus.  It spreads from one host to another when the virus is finished with the previous host and takes control of its body, forcing it to commit suicide in a gruesome manner in front of an eyewitness.  Seeing this act opens up the witness to allow the demon to infect their mind and to take on the witness as their new host.  The demon then feeds off of their host's fear by terrorizing them with hallucinations that are targeted to the victim's deepest fears and insecurities.  After it has fed as much as it can off of this new host, it seeks another witness and the cycle begins again.

The previous movie was the story of a psychologist whose patient passed the demon onto her.  The demon has gone through various hosts between the first and second film, and the sequel tells the story of the demon infecting a world famous pop singer with a troubled past.  The pop star in question is played by actress Naomi Scott, who does a phenomenal job in the role.  The character's fashion choices are also exactly what I would gravitate towards if I were a woman.  I guessed how the movie was going to end at around the halfway point, but that didn't hurt the experience at all because everything about the way the story was told was brilliant.  The cinematography was stunning.  The performances were all excellent.  This is a worthy continuation of a modern horror classic, and the plot device allows for this story to go on in such a wide variety of settings that it could continue for many years.  I'm looking forward to seeing where the filmmakers go from here.

An 80's Horror Double Feature

2024 Patreon Screening #6
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Last night was the final in-person Patreon screening of the 2024 season in which we watched a double feature of 80's horror movies on 35mm that I haven't seen or heard of before this week.  The first film was an American slasher flick from 1980, and the second was an Italian horror film from 1983, which was released in the United States the following year under an alternate title.

I enjoyed the first movie.  It would probably be considered problematic by 2024 standards, but it told a good story and had an eerie vibe throughout.  The second movie had a pretty cool premise, but it wasn't really my cup of tea.  In fairness to the second flick, the story is a slow burn and I was very cold and very tired, so I wasn't paying close enough attention to keep up with what was going on.  We also got a print of the 1984 American release which was heavily edited, so there's a chance that the uncut film would have made more sense.  It was good enough that I want to give it another shot, but my first impression of it was that it was kind of dull.

The image on the screen in this picture is from a weird little bonus that we saw after the movies.  They bought a lot of film reels, and included in the mix was b-roll footage that was shot to create a grocery store commercial from the late 70's or early 80's (from Pathmark, I think).  There was also an Air Force recruitment video from around the same time.

Toucan Sam's Bagels

Froot Loops Mini Bagels
Thomas' (2024)
The latest brand mash-up in the bagel aisle is a partnership between Kellogg's Froot Loops and Thomas' Bagels.

These aren't bad when they're toasted and buttered, but I don't think I'd want to get them again.  Whatever they're using to give these a fruity cereal flavor came with an unpleasant aftertaste.  They really didn't taste too much like the cereal either.  It sort of reminded me of unsweetened or artificially sweetened fruit punch drink mix in the bagel.  They're not so bad that I'd call them gross, but they're not good either.

Even though I didn't really enjoy these too much, I appreciate the effort that went into making them.  I also applaud their decision to add this game to the back of the plastic bag they came in.  I'm sure that the overwhelming majority of folks who bought this product threw away the bag without even noticing that this was on there, but as an 80's kid who grew up reading the cereal box at the breakfast table, I found this to be charming.

Fernandomania

Fernando Valenzuela
1960 - 2024

The Los Angeles Dodgers will face the Yankees in the first game of the World Series on Friday.  Sadly, one of the icons of their franchise and a man who helped lead his team to victory the last time these two teams faced each other in the Fall Classic, will not be here to see it.  It was announced that Fernando Valenzuela has passed away yesterday at 63 years old.

In 1981, Fernando had one of the greatest rookie seasons of any pitcher in the history of the sport.  He was named the Dodgers opening day starter and rewarded the team's faith in him by going 8–0 with five shutouts and an ERA of 0.50 in his first eight starts.  He finished the strike-shortened season with a record of 13–7 record and a 2.48 ERA, and he won both the Rookie Of The Year and Cy Young award.  His success continued into the post-season as he helped lead the Dodgers over the Yankees in the 1981 World Series.

He went on to pitch 17 seasons in the big leagues, including a brief stop with the Philadelphia Phillies.  Fernando was a late signing with the team on June 24th, 1994.  He made his first start with the team four days later and started seven games for the Phillies.  His final appearance for the team was on August 11th, 1994, which was also the last Phillies game before the start of the 1994 players strike.  On that night, he pitched 8 innings in Veterans Stadium giving up just one run on four hits and a walk in the Phillies 2-1 victory over the New York Mets.

A Frosty Halloween

Frosty Frights
Wendy's (2024)

A few weeks ago, Wendy's introduced a new line of spooky themed Kids Meal toys that remind me of the McDonald's Halloween McNugget Buddies from the 90's.

Frosty Frights are little Frosty toys that are dressed up for trick-or-treating.  There are six different characters: Frosty Bite (vampire), Franken Frosty (Frankenstein), Cold Spell (witch), Coolie Ghoulie (ghost), Brrr Beast (wolf man), and Junior, who I think is just supposed to be a kid, but I'm not sure.  

Each of the toys come in a standard color and a limited edition color variant that are going for ridiculous prices on the secondary market.  I'm not into chasing down a complete set, but I did pick up these four little guys from an eBay seller to put out as Halloween decorations.

Have A Popcorn and Wait For This Whole Thing To Blow Over

Shaun Of The Dead
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Sunday night at the drive-in was the 20th anniversary screening of a true masterpiece of horror comedy.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Show poster designed by Tom Bifulco

There are no more 35mm trailers in the Mahoning archives for the rest of the shows that are on the calendar for this season, so they showed a 35mm print of the 2002 Ice Age cartoon Gone Nutty.  We've gotten to see this on the big screen few times since we started coming to the drive-in, most recently prior to the September 12th screening of The Shining.  It's a fun short and an especially nice addition to a night of comedy.

Shaun Of The Dead was released in the UK on April 9th, 2004 and in the United States five months later on September 24th.  I can't think of any horror comedies that make me laugh as hard and as often as this.  I didn't get to see it on the big screen during its initial theatrical run, so the opportunity to see it on 35mm on the big screen at the Mahoning is yet another all-time favorite to check off of my bucket list.

Amok! Amok! Amok!

Witch Please: Hocus Pocus / Teen Witch
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
On Saturday night, the Mahoning hosted their annual family friendly Halloween event with a double feature of holiday classics from my childhood.

Show banner and poster designed by Andrew Kern

Show t-shirt designed by Tom Bifulco

Witch Please was about more than just the movies.  The gates opened at 4:00 pm for a spooky vendor market on the lawn under the big screen and around the concession building.  We picked up a couple of very nice Longaberger baskets from our friend and Mahoning projectionist Rob, and I managed to find this treasure at a very good price.

Warlords is an arcade game from 1980 that was ported to the Atari 2600 the following year.  It's a multi-player Pong style game in which each player takes control of a castle at one of the four corners of the screen.  The castle is represented in the game as a wall of bricks similar to what you'd find in a game like Breakout or Arkanoid.  Your king is protected inside this wall, and the character you control is a shield-shaped Pong paddle that can travel outside the perimeter of the wall.  When the game begins, a ball is released into the playing field.  The object is to use your shield to keep the ball from breaking the bricks of your castle, while at the same time hitting the ball toward your opponents castles.  The winner is the player who survives as the last person whose king hasn't been hit by the ball.  It's a very simple game, but it's a hell of a lot of fun and it still holds up over 40 years after its release.

The main vendor of the night was The Big Kid Store, which once again hosted an awesome scavenger hunt.  Everyone was welcome to play, but our group left this one to the kids because we were busy manning our cars to give out candy and rubber duckies for trunk-or-treat.

 

There was also a costume contest.  I was going to come dressed as a werewolf, but the costume is lost somewhere in the labyrinth of boxes that is my garage.  I have a costume specifically for this season, but that has to wait until next weekend because it's a two-person act and my partner-in-crime Ben was not able to make it out to the lot last night.

There was also a pumpkin carving contest and a Halloween Egg Hunt on the lawn about 20 minutes before the start of Hocus Pocus.  It wasn't really a hunt, but a mad dash to collect as many of the prize-filled eggs as possible on the count of three.  The kids all looked like they had a hell of a lot of fun... especially my friend Tom, who I think it's fair to say was the biggest kid in the hunt.  He signed up under the condition that I capture it on video, and the results are now my favorite piece of footage that I ever captured on the lot.  This tops Mr. Nasty singing church hymns to a group of largely inebriated folks at VHS Fest.  The boy that he is repeatedly egg-blocking throughout the hunt is his son, Jackson.

I didn't take any video of the costume contest this year, but it was a lot of fun with a lot of creative costumes from children and adults.  My favorites were the boy or girl who came dressed up as Ultraman complete with light-up eyes, and the girl who dressed as a Hollywood Video clerk.

 

There was a Speedy Gonzales cartoons screened on 35mm prior to each of the films in last night's double feature.  Both were brought to the lot by a collector of vintage 35mm cartoons who often shares his collection with the Mahoning.  We saw both of these last year when they were shown on Night Two of Universal Monster Mash, and we both enjoyed them every bit as much the second time around.

The one that played before Hocus Pocus was the 1958 Robert McKimson short Tortilla Flaps.  It's one of the few Speedy Gonzales cartoons that I can recall that don't feature Daffy Duck or Sylvester The Cat as the antagonist.  This one instead features a bird named Señor Vulturo, who only appears in two Loony Tunes shorts throughout its entire history.  The vulture swoops down on a community of mice who are having a Cinco de Mayo festival in the hopes of making some of them his dinner, but he is thwarted by the fastest mouse in all of Mexico and is turned into one of their carnival games by the end of the cartoon.

The first feature-length film of Witch Please was the 1993 Disney Halloween comedy Hocus Pocus.  I would have bet money that I had seen this at the Mahoning, but this was my first time seeing it at the drive-in and my first time seeing it on 35mm.  What had me confused was the fact that my local Regal Cinema screened it during Fall 2020 when they briefly re-opened the theater during the Covid-19 pandemic.

I think this is my favorite family-friendly Halloween flick.  It's a fun story with a lot of laughs, and undoubtedly my favorite performances from Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker.  It's become an annual tradition to watch it in October since I saw it for the first time when I was a teenager, and it never fails to bring a smile to my face every time that I see it.

The Speedy Gonzales cartoon that was screened prior to Teen Witch was the 1959 Friz Freleng short, Here Today, Gone Tamale.  This one features Sylvester the Cat, who has been hired by a cargo ship to protect all of its cheese from a group of very hungry mice.  Naturally, our hero is able to get past the despicable cat and bring plenty of cheese to his friends.  After Sylvester gets tired of suffering for his efforts to stop Speedy, he adopts an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mindset and begins dancing with the cheese-munching mice.

The second half of last night's double feature was the 1989 high school comedy Teen Witch.  I know that I had watched this once before, or had at least seen part of it, but I didn't remember if I enjoyed it or anything about the plot other than what is obvious from its poster and title.  Having now watched it on the big screen from beginning to end, and having watched quite a few 80's movies in my life, I am prepared to unequivocally state that Teen Witch is the single cheesiest movie to ever come out of the 1980's.  The cheerleader's locker room song, and Polly's "Top That" rap to the boy that she likes are reasons enough to give it that title, but those are just the gourmet servings of fromage that this film has to offer.

Teen Witch stars Robyn Lively (the love interest in The Karate Kid: Part III) as Louise Miller, an awkward young girl who is tutored in witchcraft by Zelda Rubinstein (the medium that helps bring Carol Anne back in Poltergeist).  The cast also includes Dick Sargent (the second Darrin Stephens from Bewitched) as Louise's father, and Joshua John Miller, who made his film debut as Tom Atkins son in Halloween III, as her younger brother.

The plot follows Louise, who learns witchcraft and uses spells to become popular in her school and to date the quarterback of the football team.  It follows every trope that you're imagining from that description, complete with the after-school special worthy moral at the end.  I know that sounds cheesy, but trust me, whatever amount of cheese you're imagining this to have is not nearly enough.  I'm talking Olympic swimming pool amounts of liquid nacho flowing from a cheap gas station dispenser the size of a dump truck.

You can stream Teen Witch for free on Tubi, Pluto, and The Roku Channel, and it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch if you can handle the Fremdschämen.  Just know what you're getting yourself into.  If you can work a drinking game into the experience somehow, all the better.

And that's a wrap on Witch Please!

You Can't Buy The Necessities Of Life With Cookies

Depp Dive: Edward Scissorhands / Ed Wood
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
We're closing in on the end of the season at the drive-in.  This is the second to last weekend of the year before we go into our Mahoning hibernation for the winter.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Show poster designed by Tom Bifulco

Last night's double feature could have been marketed in a number of ways.  It was two movies from the 90's that were directed by Tim Burton, and two movies whose main character is named Edward.  The direction they went is to highlight the fact that both movies star Johnny Depp.

The first movie of the night was the 1990 classic Edward Scissorhands.  We saw this at the Mahoning for the first time three years ago on the first night of The Weird World Of Tim Burton weekend.  I'm not going to be able to improve upon my thoughts on this movie from when I wrote about after seeing it then, so I'm going to be lazy and just copy and paste it again here.

I think that some of the magic of this movie has been forgotten or overlooked in the decades since it was released, but it truly is one of the most beautiful and engaging films of the 20th century.  It is a story of isolation and rejection, and how someone can never really feel like they belong among other people, despite the occasional burst of acceptance they might experience.

The story is set in a unique universe of a mid-century ticky-tacky community that exists in the shadow of a gothic mansion on the hill.  I've often heard it said that the movie is set in the 1950's or early 60's, but that isn't the case.  The story includes answering machines and references to taping something on VCR, and the vehicles driven in the community are primarily from the 70's and 80's, including the 1977 AMC Gremlin driven by Peg Boggs as she brings Edward home, the 1971 Chevy Van with flames painted on the sides that Kim and her boyfriend Jim ride around in, and a 1985 GMC Vandura that is driven by the news crew who attempts to interview Edward after his arrest.  These aren't the kind of decisions that a director like Tim Burton makes by accident.  They give the film a timeless quality that hints at several decades in the latter half of the 20th century, almost as if the older Kim Boggs is retelling the story in her dreams, where things from various time periods in her life mix together randomly into a surreal world.

 

If you haven't seen it before, it's currently available to stream on Hulu.  I highly recommend it.

 

During the intermission between the two films, they screened a 1968 Woody Woodpecker cartoon called One Horse Town.  This cartoon was part of Jeff's 35mm collection of animated shorts, and we've gotten to see it a few times on the big screen at the Mahoning since we've started coming here.  It's a fun cartoon and always brings a smile to my face.

The second half of the double feature was the 1994 biopic, Ed Wood.  This is a movie that I haven't watched from start to finish since I was a teenager when its VHS tape was still on the new release wall at video rental stores.

I'm not an especially big fan of biopics or movies that are "based on a true story".  I find that these films either stray from the truth so much that it becomes a distraction, or they stick to the truth so closely that the finished product, while informative, isn't all that fun to watch.  I am, however, a big fan of Ed Wood as a person and as a writer/director.  His movies were terrible and he knew it, but they're also a lot of fun.  If you can't watch Plan 9 From Outer Space without laughing your ass off, frankly I feel bad for you, and I say that without an ounce of meanness or sarcasm intended behind those words.  I also find him fascinating as a human being.  He was a filmmaker, a WWII veteran, an unapologetic crossdresser, and his life in the decades after the events of this film are tragic to the point that a sequel to Ed Wood the film might be even better than the original.

My feelings on this film are kind of complicated.  The performances are excellent, particularly Johnny Depp as Ed Wood and Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi.  The black-and-white cinematography is brilliant, and the people that the film is based on are fascinating.  However, despite all of the positive things it has going for it, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't find the movie to be a little boring the first time that I saw it.  I gave it three stars on Letterbox based on my memories of having watched the film in the mid 90's, and with all of the praise it gets, I was almost expecting that seeing it at the Mahoning would inspire me to revise that rating.  It's happened plenty of times before.  Sometimes I look back on my initial screening of a movie and see that I was too young to fully appreciate it the first time.  Sometimes, the distraction-free atmosphere of seeing it on 35mm at the drive-in helps me to lose myself in the story and see it from a different perspective.

After the credits rolled last night, I found myself in the same mindset that I was at 15 years old when I first saw it.  It's a good movie, but not a great movie.  I like it, but at the same time I found it to be slightly boring, and I believe that my lack of connection to this film on a deeper level is more of a problem with me than the film itself.  I want to like Ed Wood more than I do, but ranking it any higher than the three stars would be faking it to fit in, and that's something that I don't think the real Ed Wood would not have wanted anybody to do.