Now this is what I’m talking about.  Why is Night of the Ghouls “undoubtedly” the worst film ever made?  In terms of technical skill it had no egregious continuity errors, non-matching night/day shots or wobbling tomb stones and the actors do reasonably good jobs within the context of the kind of movie they are in.  Night of the Ghouls has its problems and it’s certainly a bit more odd than a lot of the films from the era but Edward D. Wood, Jr. is still no worse than a lot of the other “bad movie” directors.

I guess the biggest “red herring” in Night of the Ghouls is the hilariously pointless detour to the shots of the teens hanging out and fighting; for a moment I thought it was going to turn into one of those “teenage monster” movies.  But nope, Wood never revisits the juvenile delinquency theme.  Instead the film turns into an enjoyable ghost movie involving a medium, a goofy cop, a cute as hell assistant, some police procedure, some shoot ’em up action, a neat twist ending and Tor Johnson wearing effectively grotesque horror make up.

Oh, one other thing; Criswel.  What’s cool is that while Criswel introduces the story by breaking the fourth wall from his coffin and becomes the narrator and later plays a role within the narrative, as if he’s telling you the story in flashback.  The story starts when a hysterical (both definitions of the word) old couple comes into a police station to report the siting of a ghost; this part gets confusing because apparently they saw the White Ghost (Valda Hansen) who didn’t exist in the main body of the story so clearly this is in flashback.  Also a teenage couple gets killed by the Black Ghost (Jeannie Stevens), who roams the graveyard at night.  Police Lieutenant Daniel Bradford (Duke Moore) goes to investigate and ends up at, what I guess is the same building that functioned as the laboratory in Wood’s previous film Bride of the Monster.

Thus Night of the Ghouls is sort of a sequel or continuation.  The building is now a creepy house where Dr. Acula (Kene Duncan) is a medium who is assisted by “The White Ghost” who I never heard addressed by any other name.  They hold a creepy seance where they have skeletons sitting in chairs and things float in the air and a corpse that speaks to the living; it’s actually pretty cool.  Most of the rest involves searching through corridors and investigating weird stuff.

But I’ll tell you this and it’s very important: if you watch this movie thinking, “haha, oh Ed Wood, haha” then you can easily write it off as a joke but if you suspend your disbelief and actively watch it like you would anything else, it’s got some neat twists which I’m not going to spoil!  Wood pulls off a creepy trick during one of the investigative sequences where the detective looks into a closet and sees a manikin, looks away then looks back and the thing is smiling at him!  It’s actually pulled off really well!

Do you want me to find problems with Night of the Ghouls?  Okay, fine.  Aside from the aforementioned pointless juvenile delinquent sequence, there’s an extremely annoying cop named Kelton (Paul Marco) who I guess is supposed to be funny when he acts like a buffoon the entire time.  Also that hysterical old couple are obviously not “trained” actors.  But who cares?  That’s all nitpicking nonsense!  Night of the Ghouls is pretty good so don’t be a hater and check it out.