Caught in the midst of a raging thunderstorm, two hunters, Mac and Jake, are forced to seek shelter at the Willows place, a supposedly deserted old house that has rumors of a monster living nearby. Arriving there, they find that it is not deserted; it is occupied by Dr. Eric Vornoff, who staunchly refuses to let them in. Vornoff's big, brutish servant, Lobo, chases them off when they're about to demand he let them in with their guns. Running to the shore of Lake Marsh, Mac falls in and is attacked by an enormous octopus that Vornoff houses there, while Jake is captured by Lobo and brought back to the house. He awakens in Vornoff's laboratory in the house, where the scientist prepares to use him in his experiments, saying he will either become a giant with incredible strength or he'll die. The latter ends up happening, the latest in a string of failures. Soon, news of the hunters' disappearances, which make twelve in the last three months, is in all of the newspapers, with one story having been written by Janet Lawton, a spunky reporter who happens to be dating Lt. Dick Craig of the local police. Determined to get more information for her story and reaching a dead-end with the police, including Craig, Janet first goes to her paper's file room, looking up real estate records of the Willows place from several years before. Finding what she's looking for, she heads out to Lake Marsh, only for another violent rainstorm to come up. Her car blows a tire and it ends up swerving off the road. The dazed woman is found by Lobo, who takes her up to the Willows place, where she is held captive by Vornoff. The next day, Craig and another cop, Martin, find Janet's car while searching for the missing and mysterious Prof. Strowski, who was supposed to help with the investigation. Desperate to find her, Craig has no idea that Janet is about to become a part of the mad doctor's scheme to create a race of atomic humans that he will use to conquer the world.
Vornoff is completely ruthless in his resolve to create his race of super beings, kidnapping anyone he can to use as his experiments, having his octopus kill any trespassers, treating Lobo like a slave and whipping him with a large belt in order to ensure his obedience, and making it clear to Prof. Strowski (whom he eventually gives to the octopus) that his home country has waited far too long to try to get him to help them. He also apparently has hypnotic and telekinetic abilities, as he twice puts Janet Lawton into a trance through his eyes and hand gestures and later, while again waving and gesturing with his hand (getting to show off his impressive double-jointed fingers and also doing one gesture that he did in the film, White Zombie), calls her into the laboratory to be experimented on. Why he doesn't use those abilities against those who threaten him, though, is anybody's guess. So confident is Vornoff that his experiments will prove successful that, when Janet tells him that her newspaper will mount a search for her when she doesn't show back up, he responds, "No one can ever touch me. I will make the law." And since Dick Craig ends up getting captured by Lobo when he attempts to save her and is shackled to the wall, it seems as though Vornoff will succeed. It's only when Lobo, due to his affection for Janet, turns on his master and makes him a victim of his own experiment that Vornoff's plan is foiled. However, his experiment happens to work this time, as he becomes powered up and tall enough to physically take on Lobo, managing to kill him. Once that's done, he grabs Janet and makes off with her into the woods (raising uncomfortable questions about what exactly he planned to do with her and why he had her placed in a wedding gown for the experiment)... until he sees the house get destroyed by a bolt of lightning and instead opts to simply leave her behind in the woods. He's then pursued through the woods and fired upon by the police, before being defeated when Craig rolls a boulder into him that knocks him into the lake and he's "attacked" by the octopus, with both of them dying in a random, nuclear-level explosion.
Once Vornoff becomes an atomic mutant, he's mostly played by a stand-in whose face is never shown, with Lugosi himself being used for some close-ups of his face with bits of makeup to simulate the effect of the radiation on him. Unfortunately, this is where the dignity that Lugosi managed to create for Vornoff falls apart, as when he's being fired upon by the police, he's simply shown making really silly faces in response, at one point bugging his eyes out, looking like he's holding his breath (also, he and the separately filmed policemen are looking in different directions, a common problem with the editing in this film). In addition, when he sees the Willows place get blown up and when he, apparently, sees the octopus approaching him (even though it's still underwater), he makes this face and puts his hand beneath his nose, looking like, "Oh, dear!" And his death is pathetic, as he knocked down by a boulder that is obviously too soft to hurt anyone and then, when the octopus "attacks" him, he's having to flail the tentacles around to achieve the effect (though, contrary to what the Tim Burton movie would have you believe, Lugosi himself did not do that; it was the body double). As everyone knows, it doesn't work at all.
Prof. Strowski (George Becwar) first comes into the movie when he shows up at the police station and passes himself off as an "authority on the subject of prehistoric monsters" to Captain Robbins and Dick Craig. He tells them about how he was called in to investigate the Loch Ness Monster and, while that investigation didn't lead to anything, the similarities between it and the case of the monster of Lake Marsh have attracted him to it. He offers to use his expertise in helping them solve the mystery, promises to keep his findings secret, and is seemingly more than welcome to allow Craig to assist him. Strowski begins to come off as suspicious when, even though Craig says he can go out to the lake at any time and the monster has often been spotted at night, he suggests they wait until morning under the pretense that the preliminary investigation must be done in daylight. Before heading back to his hotel, he seems to try to insist that Craig wait, saying, "Until morning, Lt. Craig." Robbins is right in being suspicious about Strowski, as the next day, he heads out to the lake, driving up to the Willows place. Creeping into the house and looking around, he's greeted by Dr. Vornoff, who knows him. It's revealed that Vornoff is who Strowski has been searching for, including at Loch Ness, having been sent by their country to bring him home after he'd been exiled twenty years ago, as his theories about atomic energy have been proven correct. He acts sympathetic towards the pain that Vornoff suffered due to his exile but, when the good doctor makes it clear that he has no intention of returning home or using his experiments to benefit anyone but himself, Strowski pulls a gun on him to try to force him to come. However, he's grabbed from behind by Lobo and taken down to the laboratory, where Vornoff has him thrown to the octopus.
This is the first of three Ed Wood films in which Paul Marco plays the character of Officer Kelton, appearing again in Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls. Kelton is first shown being annoyed by a tough-talking drunk who he's trying to book, and then he harasses a newspaper man who comes in to bring Captain Robbins his paper, making him give it to him first and threatening to revoke his license if he doesn't. Upon giving the paper to the captain himself, Kelton is not only admonished for it but Robbins dismisses his asking to work on the case concerning the disappearances, telling him to get back to his desk. Two times in a row, Robbins calls Kelton back and the officer hopes it's some kind of acknowledgement, only for it to wind up to be anything but each time. Kelton isn't seen again until the film's ending, when he joins the police in a raid on the Willows place. Robbins tells him not to mess up the operation and Kelton goes, "Yes, sir... I mean, no, sir." He's stationed outside the front door while Robbins and another officer named Martin (Don Nagle) investigate the inside. Once the house starts burning and the cops are forced out, Kelton and the others spot Vornoff as he carries Janet off into the woods. He almost fires at him but Craig stops him, saying he might Janet. During the chase, Kelton tries to suggest something but Robbins doesn't want to listen to him, telling him to try to get up ahead of Vornoff. He says that's what he was going to suggest but Robbins just tells him to give him action rather than chatter. His action is to trip and fall down the hill, apparently breaking his leg and keeping him immobilized for the rest of the action. Kelton is a whole lot more memorable than that cop Martin, who literally does nothing, despite joining Craig in his going out to Lake Marsh, finding Janet's wrecked car with him, and aiding him in his continuing search for Prof. Strowski. The only significant thing he does is suggest that they try to find if Janet made it back to town, leading to them heading back to a small cafe and finding that she didn't. Other than that, also he does is comment on how spooky a place Lake Marsh and he and Craig separate before the latter heads to the Willows place, so he misses out on a lot of the action. Martin joins up with Robbins and the other cops on their way to the Willows place but, even though he and the captain investigate the house, they don't get too far into it before they're smoked out. And while Martin joins them in chasing Vornoff, giving Craig a gun, he completely disappears and isn't seen at all afterward, not even when the cops are firing at Vornoff or in the last shot. At least Kelton had a reason for not being there; what happened to Martin?
There's not much to be said about Jake (John Warren) and Mac, whose name you learn was actually Blake (Bud Osborne), the two hunters who end up getting caught in the thunderstorm at the beginning of the movie. With no other options, they seek shelter at the Willows place, though Mac does so reluctantly, as he's afraid there might be a monster. Arriving there, they find that it's not as deserted as it seems, as they meet Dr. Vornoff, who refuses them shelter. They look as if they're about to threaten him with their rifles, when he seeks Lobo, who they believe is the rumored monster, on them. They take off running, with Mac falling into the lake and getting killed by the octopus, while Jake doesn't fare much better when he's taken prisoner by Lobo and experimented on by Vornoff, resulting in his death. Dolores Fuller, Ed Wood's girlfriend at the time, is said to have originally been meant for the role of Janet Lawton but Loretta King bribed Wood into giving her the role by promising to provide further funding for the movie. King always denied this but, regardless, Fuller, in her final appearance in a Wood movie, has the thankless, one-scene role of Marge, a co-worker of Janet's who tells her that their boss is looking for her, due to the uproar she's been causing through her monster stories. We then have another memorable exchange between them: "I didn't hear you." "I said..." "I heard what you said, but I didn't hear you." "I get it. So long." In the first scene in the police station, you have this drunk who's being extremely difficult and antagonistic towards Officer Kelton. He refuses to say his name, saying, "You find out," waving his cigarette in Kelton's face, and when asked why he was in the swamp, he says, "What's it to you?" He declares that the jail won't hold him and that he'll be out in 24 hours, before being carted away to be booked. He's played by Ben Frommer, an actor who would notably voice the role of Count Blood Count, the vampire that Bugs Bunny tangles with in the 1963 cartoon, Transylvania 6-5000. And finally, in the same scene, there's a newspaper man who gets hassled by Kelton. He's played by William Benedict, who was one of the Bowery Boys in that series of films produced by Monogram (which were still going on at this point, though Benedict had left the series in 1951).
It's really sad that, at a mere $70,000 (a paltry sum even by 1950's standards), this was the biggest-budgeted movie Ed Wood ever made. He made the most of it, though, as he was able to shoot in small studio sets, first at Ted Allan Studios and, after getting more financing following the shutdown, Centaur Studios. These sets, which mainly consist of office interiors at the police station and the paper where Janet Lawton works (there no scenes that take place in someone's actual living quarters, save for the old Willows house and an exterior shot of Janet's house), serve their purpose well-enough but their cramped, claustrophobic nature belies how cheap they are. They also shot some location footage for the building exteriors, likely without a permit, though I'm unsure if the elevated wide-shots of the town streets and the outside of the police station were actually shot by Wood or were stock footage. I didn't think Wood would have had the means to pull off those kinds of shots himself but, since they're not as scratchy as the very obvious stock footage that's utilized in the film, it makes me wonder. Plus, when Janet is leaving the police station, what you can see of the building exterior looks like what was scene in that establishing shot, so unless Wood found the actual building featured in the "stock footage" and it hadn't changed, I guess he did shoot it himself. The best location work in the movie, though, is the area meant to represent the woods and swamp around Lake Marsh, which I assume is Griffith Park, the spots where it's known that the notorious octopus attack scenes were shot. Most of the scenes shot there take place at night, often during a pounding thunderstorm, so you can't really see much of it, but during the scene where Dick Craig and Martin drive up there during the day while looking for Prof. Strowski, the place does have something of an eerie atmosphere to it (the stock footage shot of some river that Wood splices in not withstanding). It feels very closed in, with a lot of low-hanging palm tree branches, and the area where Janet wrecks her car reminds me a lot of the creepy, underbrush-filled ravines and washes where much of The Giant Gila Monster was filmed a few years later.
The most memorable location, seeing as how most of the movie takes place there, is the old Willows house, which is a set that I actually really like looking at. There's not much to see, as it's just a dark, rundown house, without much detail to the art direction, and you only get a look at a few rooms, namely the small foyer just beyond the front door, the sitting room with the fireplace that serves as a secret passage to Dr. Vornoff's laboratory, the laboratory itself, and the room where Janet is kept prisoner (there's an upstairs area but we never see it), but I always like these kind of places. I guess it just takes me back to my childhood and the image I always had of haunted houses, thanks to my love of Halloween and everything spooky, but I smile whenever I see these old, dilapidated houses in the middle of nowhere, especially when the interiors are as small and confined as these are. Plus, there's often a storm raging outside, making it all the more classic. The laboratory is very typical of the old mad scientist movies, with beakers, test tubes, electrical devices, and a table in the center where Vornoff straps in his intended experimental subjects. This is the set with the notoriously flimsy, cheap-looking walls that shake when, during the climax, Tor Johnson gets knocked backwards through the door and he bumps the wall, causing it to shake. And there's also something weird with the windows on the right-hand wall, which is what the octopus dwells behind: one allows you to peer into the lake to see the octopus as it swims and hunts, whereas the other window, which is right across the wall from the other, peers into a dark room with but a foot of water on the floor. It's really unclear how the octopus is able to get out of that room and down into the lake, especially given the space between the windows and the apparent size of that chamber, making it one of those details that was farthest thing from Wood's mind and, in the long run, doesn't really matter. There's something of a mystery about the exterior wide-shots of the Willows place, as it's unknown whether that was an actual house or some sort of effect, like a matte shot or a miniature. An acquaintance of Wood, Scott Zimmerman, claimed that it was a real place and that a painted canvas was put up behind the house to make it look as if it were in the middle of nowhere, rather than in a busy neighborhood as it actually was. However, some question this explanation, and I personally wonder if Wood had the budget and means to pull that off. But, then again, I wouldn't think that he could have done any kind of miniature or matte paintings, especially one that looks as good as this does, so who knows? Whatever the explanation, it's a cool-looking, old house that's kind of become iconic in its own right.
As with all of Ed Wood's films, Bride of the Monster has been in the public domain for decades and it's very hard to find a really good-looking print of it (the screencaps that you see in this review were taken from a YouTube source called MST3K Cinema Editions, which is a playlist of HD versions of films that were featured on that show). When you do find one, though, you may be surprised to see that the movie was fairly well-shot, all things considered, especially since they didn't have the best film stock possible. Many of the scenes are more dimly lit than they probably should be, no doubt because they couldn't afford high-grade lighting equipment, and the exterior nighttime scenes do get a little too murky, which is compounded when it's raining and storming (those scenes had to have been a nightmare for people who watched this on old, low-grade VHS tapes), but the scenes inside the Willows house are dark and shadowy enough to have a bit of mood to them and the dialogue scenes in the offices don't look so dark that they're distracting. And, I must say, I think the lighting in that room where the octopus is kept makes it kind of creepy, in how only the center of it is lit, resulting in the octopus, and Prof. Strowski, when he's thrown to it, almost looking like a silhouette. Too bad the impact is ruined by the laughably lifeless prop.
Yeah, let's talk about that, shall we? Every one of Wood's movies has one or two elements that have become particularly infamous in and of themselves and, in the case of Bride of the Monster, it's the scenes involving the big prop octopus. Whether Wood legally rented this prop (which is said to have been made for the 1948 film, Wake of the Red Witch, starring John Wayne) or stole it and lost the motor that worked it in the process, as depicted in the Tim Burton film, is up to debate, but one thing that's undeniable is how ridiculous the moments are when it interacts with the actors. There's nothing more I can say about how stiff and dead the prop is that hasn't already been said: it is absolutely laughable. In fact, it gets worse as the movie goes on. When Mac and Prof. Strowski fall prey to it, there's some tentacle movement; very minute tentacle movement, mind you, but it's there, seemingly created by wires hoisting them around. But, when Vornoff meets his end by it during the climax, it's obvious that Bela Lugosi's stand-in is flailing the tentacles around himself as he struggles. I've read that the scene with Strowski was filmed first and Wood realized how bad it looked, so he asked his cinematographer if there was a way to improve the other scenes (there was no time or money to redo Strowski's death). The cinematographer, William C. Thompson, suggested using rain and allowing the attacks to only be illuminated by lightning flashes to make it hard to see the imperfections. It obviously didn't work, as you can still see the stiffness of the prop even when the lightning isn't flashing, and beside, low lighting didn't help the scene with Strowksi, either. But, of course, this is one of the major examples of what makes Wood's films so endearing and memorable. He may not have had the money or the talent to pull off what he wanted but, God bless him, he still tried!
The use of stock footage in this film might be just as infamous as the octopus prop. Using stock footage was a very common practice for movies during this time, both low-budget and fairly big, studio films, but Wood took it to a whole other level, both her and in his first film, Glen or Glenda ("Pull the string! Pull the string!"). Some of it's reasonable, like the shots of flashing lightning, its striking stuff, and explosions, as there was no way he could have gotten those otherwise (though, one of those explosions is totally inexplicable in the context of the movie), but the footage of the real octopus is used very nonsensically. Obviously, he did that in order to give the creature of a more presence that was impossible with that prop but the footage does not mesh well with what Wood actually shot. Take when Mac falls into the lake, and I use the word "lake" very loosely, as he really falls into a ditch that's just damp and muddy, for instance. As they try to cross by the lake, we keep cutting to footage of the octopus, which is meant to be it moving in to attack, but when Mac falls in, he starts screaming while we see the octopus just flailing around amongst some debris. I think the implication is that the octopus has grabbed hold of him from below the water but it doesn't come off that way and it feels more like the guy's screaming because he's being a drama queen. Jake's sorry attempt at trying to pull him out doesn't help matters and he lets go for no reason, leading to the film suddenly cutting to Mac struggling with the prop. And like I mentioned earlier, near the end of the movie, they inexplicably cut from Vornoff looking off-camera to a shot of the octopus, as if he's somehow supposed to see that, even though the footage is underwater. We'll get into more instances of bad editing with the stock footage later but the stuff with the octopus is especially egregious.
Not only are Ed Wood's films celebrated for their sincerity and endearing badness but people have actually found deep meanings in them, as insane as that sounds. Like a lot of sci-fi/horror films of the 50's, the fear of nuclear energy is a big part of Bride of the Monster and not just in the main plot of Dr. Vornoff using it as a means to create a race of atomic supermen he plans to use for world conquest. There's also a small subplot concerning the violent thunderstorms that seem to roll in every evening, the pattern of which is said to have been going on every night for the past three months. During Dick Craig and Martin's conversation in the swamp when they stop while searching for Prof. Strowski, the latter suggests that it could be the result of nuclear tests having an effect on the atmosphere. Such a thing was a real fear at the time, as atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted quite regularly, with little regard to what they could be doing to the climate, and they went on until 1963, when all such tests, save for those conducted underground, were banned. Whether that is the cause or Vornoff's experiments are behind the phenomena is left unexplained. Another Cold War element that permeates the film is how foreign nations, especially European ones, are portrayed as dictatorial and bent on world power. It's not made clear what country Vornoff and Strowski hail from but it is obviously European and its government leaders want to bring Vornoff back to continue his research into atomic energy, which they now know can produce super-powered beings, in order to create super soldiers they can use to rule the world. Given how it was one of the most prevalent foreign threats at the time, Russia could very well be the unnamed country, but some have pointed out Strowski's use of the term "master race," which was often associated with Nazi Germany. (For me, I believe that it's likely Russia, given how Nazi Germany was long gone by the time this movie was made.)
In additional to these political statements, others have seen what they feel are examples of ideas that were more personal to Wood himself. The one that's very likely real is Lobo's apparent fetish for Janet Lawton's angora hat, given that it's now widely known that Wood was a cross-dresser with a fetish for the stuff himself. Another, much more solemn one, is the belief that Vornoff's "I have no home" speech, as well as his line, "One is always considered mad, when one discovers something which others cannot grasp," reflects Wood's feeling of never being accepted by the Hollywood mainstream and the way in which his movies were mostly rejected. And then, there are some who believe that the image of Janet dressed in a bridal gown and bound to the table by leather straps is a look into Wood's bizarre sexual desires, which he would indulge in later in life with all those sexploitation movies he worked on and perverse novels he wrote. The most unsettling part of this is how some interpret Vornoff telling Janet, as he prepares to experiment on her, "It hurts, just for a moment, but then you will emerge a woman of super-strength and beauty." Take off the part about super-strength and beauty and think about what else that could mean. Yeah.
Up until the third act, where Ed Wood's legendary incompetence becomes very apparent, Bride of the Monster comes off mostly as a run-of-the-mill, B-level, sci-fi flick. However, there are sprinkles of his unmistakable touches here and there beforehand. In the opening, as the hunters seek shelter from the pouring rain and the stock footage destruction caused by the lightning, they meet Dr. Vornoff at the old Willows place. When he refuses to let them in, they look as if they're about to pull their rifles on him, when he sics Lobo on them. Lobo need only stand there and look intimidating to chase them off, with Vornoff laughing at their believing that Lobo is the fabled monster of Lake Marsh. Once they're gone, Vornoff heads into his secret laboratory and, after putting on his lab coat, looks in on his large octopus as it sits in that dark room. He then walks over to some equipment and fiddles with it, making lights go on and off. With that done, he walks over to the window that looks out into the depths of the lake and whatever he did seems to have spurred the octopus into action, as it's now swimming and floating around (Vornoff seems surprised by this, as if it's the first time he's ever attempted it, which we later learn isn't the case). Out in the woods, as the storm continues to rage, the hunters try to make their way to the main road, which leads into Mac falling into that ditch and the first octopus attack scene. I already went into detail about how laughable it looks and it doesn't improve when Jake starts shooting at it continuously, while Mac keeps on struggling and screaming for no reason (it's the same scream being looped over and over). Jake is then grabbed from behind by Lobo, who has a really goofy, overly happy expression on his face, the film suddenly cuts to an exterior shot of the Willows place, and the scene transitions to Jake strapped to the table in the laboratory. He struggles to get loose, when Vornoff comes in and talks about how, because of the weather, he wasn't sure if he would have any visitors (then why did he have Lobo chase them off in the first place?) After admonishing and slapping Lobo for being too rough with Jake, Vornoff prepares to get his experiment underway, throwing switches all about the lab. He tells Jake that he'll either become a powerful giant or die from the experiment and flips the final switch. Jake lets out a pained scream and then immediately stops moving, prompting Vornoff to shut down the equipment. Walking over and examining him, Vornoff realizes his experiments have failed again and he laments this setback. The scene ends with him randomly walking over to the underwater window, as the octopus returns, and he comments to how Lobo he always returns there following his long swims.
Janet Lawton's capture by Lobo is done in a pretty straightforward manner but there are some "Woodisms" to be viewed in this sequence, nevertheless. Despite seeing signs of an approaching storm, Janet still decides to drive out to Lake Marsh and runs into trouble as soon as she makes it to that bumpy road. Losing control in the storm (from inside the car, you can see rain on the windshield but, in the exterior shots, it's not raining at all), she ends up running the car off the road up on the side of a hill, though the editing makes it look as if she did it on purpose. Stumbling out in a daze, she collapses in a heap next to the car and looks up to see a large snake on a branch in front of her... at least, that's what you're supposed to take from it. In the wide shots, the snake is a completely lifeless, rubber toy, and the film cuts to a couple of shots of stock footage of a real snake, meant to be it slithering towards her. However, not only is this real snake either a python or a boa constrictor, rather than an American species, and it's coiled around a thick branch while the fake one is placed amongst some thin twigs, it and Janet's eye-lines don't match up when it cuts between them, as she's looking straight ahead while it's focused off to the right. In any case, she screams and faints, which is when Lobo comes in, grabs the snake, and slams its head against the tree trunk before slinging it to the ground. He then walks to the wreck, picks up Janet's discarded angora hat and, after kissing it, puts it in his pocket before going for her. The film cuts to the Willows house, where Janet awakens, only for Vornoff to use his hypnotic influence to lull her back to sleep.
When Prof. Strowski later finds his way to the Willows house and heads inside, he looks around the foyer before walking into the sitting room, unaware that Lobo has come downstairs and somehow senses that there's an intruder. He approaches the door to the sitting room, but when Strowski hears the door open, he's instead faced with Vornoff. This leads into their scene together and Vornoff's poignant speech, where he tells Strowski that he's not going to return to his home country. Hearing this, Strowski stands up and pulls a gun on Vornoff, telling him he was order to bring him back up. Little does he know about Vornoff's own ace, which is standing right behind him. Lobo grabs Strowski from behind, knocks the gun out of his hand, and Vornoff has him drag the professor through the passage and into the laboratory. As he struggles, Strowski tells Vornoff that others will follow but Vornoff merely has Lobo introduce him to the monster of Lake Marsh by tossing him into the room with the octopus. Vornoff watches the professor struggle with the octopus, saying that he's only the latest person he's made disappear and that the fame and fortune offered by his country is nothing compared to his real price. Once again, Vornoff activates a machine in the corner of the lab that I guess is meant to spur the octopus to life but I don't see much of a change, except that the water in the room looks like it bubbles.
Out searching for Strowski, Craig and Martin find his abandoned car on the road leading to the Willows place. Craig has Martin go back and wait for him, while he makes his way through the swamp and to the house. On the way, he falls into a shallow pit that's covered over by debris, sinking lower into it, even though it looks as though he could easily climb out of it. Stock footage alligators begin moving in on him and he starts shooting at them (as usual, the angles of the gators don't match with the direction he's facing and firing; moreover, the terrain they're on looks nothing like where he is). This sequence feels longer than it really is and it finally ends when Craig appears to realize that he can easily crawl out of that pit. He climbs up over the brush, taking longer than necessary to do so, and then continues on to the house. In a later scene, Vornoff is shown in his laboratory, firing up the equipment, and then uses his influence to bring Janet into the room. Following some gesturing with his hands, the entranced woman walks in, now dressed in a bridal gown, for whatever reason. Lobo seems quite taken with her, as is Vornoff, who describes her as lovely before leading her to the table. Upstairs, Craig makes it the house and walks in, finding his way into the sitting room, while in the lab, Vornoff has to whip Lobo in order to get him to strap Janet to the table. Craig finds the briefcase that Strowski left up in the sitting room earlier and, looking through it, pulls out a file on Vornoff. Putting it on the fireplace's mantel, he accidentally discovers the lever that opens the passage to the lab and makes his way into it, the entrance politely staying open until he crawls through. In the lab, with Janet awake, Vornoff sends Lobo to prepare his equipment. He tells her that, should the experiment be a success, she'll be the "Bride of the Atom." (On a side-note, that original title makes more sense to me than Bride of the Monster. Who's the monster she's meant to be the bride to? Lobo? The octopus? Vornoff himself?) As she struggles to get free, Craig comes in through the door and, at gunpoint and introducing himself as a policeman, demands that Vornoff release her. However, Lobo comes in from the other room and, despise Janet's attempt to warn Craig, knocks him out, although it looks more like he ducked and then fell over. Vornoff tells Lobo to take care of him.
Down the road, Captain Robbins, Officer Kelton, and some other cops meet up with Martin and they all head towards the Willows place. In Vornoff's laboratory, Craig is now shackled to the wall, while Vornoff acts creepily towards Janet, saying that he hopes the straps aren't too tight since, "Such lovely skin should not be marred." Heading over to the machine, he begins firing them up, while Lobo takes out Janet's angora hat that's still stuffed in his pocket. Looking at it and petting it, he places it beside her head and then turns around and roars at Vornoff, approaching him in a threatening manner. Vornoff tells him to stop and fires a handful of shots into him but Lobo grabs him and flings him to the floor, knocking him out (Ed Wood chose to shoot this in a manner that's way too distant, with the equipment blocking a lot of it). Lobo unstraps Janet and then reaches for her in a gentle, curious manner but she's still scared of him. While Lobo heads towards the unconscious Vornoff, Janet grabs the gun he dropped and heads to unshackle Craig, putting the gun in his holster. For over a full minute, we have to watch Lobo slowly lumber around the lab, picking up Vornoff, dragging him to the table, strapping him to it, and walk over to the equipment and engage it, while Janet takes almost as long to unlock Craig's shackles. This slowness has been a problem in a number of sequences in the film but it's particularly grating here. Once free, Craig stupidly tries to stop Lobo, demanding he turn the machines off and firing a shot, which does nothing more than slightly annoy him when it hits his head. Realizing he just used the last bullet, Craig charges at Lobo but gets grabbed, whipped around, and flung to the floor, his punches doing nothing and his shirt getting ripped up. With that taken care of, Lobo throws the final switches, while Janet drags the unconscious Craig away. Vornoff awakens to see Lobo about to do it and yells for him to stop but to no avail. The process begins and Vornoff screams in pain while stretching his arms out. As Lobo watches, Vornoff appears to die from the experiment like all of his other subjects, and the brute walks over and powers down the machinery.
Upstairs, the police have reached the house. Robbins has Kelton guard the front door and the other cops surround the house, while he and Martin investigate the inside. It doesn't take them long to find the sitting room and the same clues that Craig did. Down in the lab, Vornoff revives, now far larger and stronger than before. He rips the straps off and begins approaching Lobo, who has his back turned. He grabs him from behind and Lobo manages to shove him off, only for Vornoff to do the same to him, almost causing him to knock the set walls over. Lobo smashes something over his head and then picks up and does the same with a small, wooden table, but Vornoff flings him backwards over the experimental table. Getting up, he stumbles backwards as Vornoff approaches him and then grabs and smashes a glass beaker over his head. Dazed, he stumbles backwards into the equipment, which starts sparking and burning instantly. Lobo collapses to the floor, while Vornoff grabs Janet and takes her away. Craig wakes up in time to see her being dragged out through one of the other doors and chases after her (he tries to look slick by hopping over the fire but he ends up tripping and falling on his ass in the process). Upstairs, smoke starts filling up the sitting room and Robbins and Martin run out, the former coughing in a melodramatic fashion, as there isn't that much smoke yet. They join Kelton out on the porch and watch as the monstrous Vornoff carries Janet into the woods (they're seen walking from across the house, so I don't know where the hell they come out from the laboratory). As they try to figure out what they just saw, Craig shows up and they join him in the chase, with Martin giving him a gun. Vornoff stops and sets Janet down on the ground, turning to see the house get struck by lightning and explode in a bad example of superimposition. The place is now engulfed in flames and Vornoff makes his, "Oh, dear!" face before heading off alone. The cops then come across Janet and Craig stays with her, while the others continue the chase, Kelton being ordered to get up ahead of Vornoff.
Now, we get that sequence where the police open fire on Vornoff when he stops atop a hill, responding to the shot by making silly faces (once again, the shots don't line up at all). Vornoff then runs down past a boulder on the side of it, followed by Kelton, who trips and overacts falling and hurt himself, stopping beside a small tree. Seeing this, Craig, finally ripping off his shredded shirt, leaving only his suspenders, runs to Kelton's aid, while Vornoff is still fending off shots with his expressions. Though it looks like he could have run straight towards him, Craig instead decided to take the same up-and-over path Kelton did, and after checking on him, runs up to the back side of the boulder. Vornoff starts approaching him and, after he sees the octopus heading their way (again, how does he see that?!), Craig, very easily, pushes the boulder towards him. Vornoff falls backwards and, even though the thing rolls over his legs, his biggest concern is falling into a wet ditch, where the octopus is now waiting for him. Craig runs back to Janet, while Robbins watches Vornoff flail around amidst the lifeless tentacles, when some lightning flashes and appears to strike both the doctor and the octopus, causing them to explode. They don't just explode, they turn into a gigantic, fiery mushroom cloud, which looks like it's miles away even though Robbins was only standing a few feet away from where Vornoff fell. The captain joins Craig and Janet and, looking back at the mushroom cloud once more, he laments, "He tampered in God's domain." Apparently so, as that's the only possible explanation for what just happened. To be fair, though, it's said that ending the movie with a big explosion was the other stipulation Donald McCoy imposed on Wood in exchange for additional funds to complete the movie. (I've also read that he wanted that to be in there to serve as a warning against the use of nuclear weapons but God knows if that's true.)
You would think that a micro-budget movie like this would have relied on stock music to fill out its score but that doesn't seem to be the case, as all of the music is credited to composer Frank Worth, a Hungarian-born composer who only did one other actual movie after this; otherwise, he did music for documentaries and television (though Wikipedia links his name to the photographer of many stars of classic Hollywood but it's not the same guy). The music for Bride of the Monster is mainly pretty standard of 50's monster flicks but there are some more distinctive parts of it, like this hollow drumming which is what you first hear when the film starts up and becomes something of a theme for Lobo; a low, rumbling sort of piece that creates something of an ambience, such as in the scene where Dick Craig and Martin stop in the swamp to have a cigarette; a surprisingly sad, melancholy string bit for Dr. Vornoff's "I have no home" speech; an odd, rolling sort of theme that you hear when Craig and Martin find Prof. Strowski's abandoned car; and, during the climax in the laboratory, you sometimes hear this very harsh, buzzing sound that I actually thought was being made by the equipment.
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