Jail Bait [1954] Edward D Wood Jr

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Jail Bait (1954)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047127/

Jail Bait is a 1954 American crime film directed by Ed Wood, with a screenplay by Wood and Alex Gordon. The film stars Timothy Farrell as a gangster who undergoes plastic surgery to elude the police. Famed bodybuilder Steve Reeves made his first screen appearance in the film.


Lyle Talbot ... Inspector Johns
Dolores Fuller ... Marilyn Gregor
Herbert Rawlinson ... Doctor Gregor
Steve Reeves ... Lieutenant Bob Lawrence
Clancy Malone ... Don Gregor
Timothy Farrell ... Vic Brady
Theodora Thurman ... Loretta
Bud Osborne ... Night Watchman
Mona McKinnon ... Miss Willis
Don Nagel ... Detective Davis
John Robert Martin ... Detective McCall
La Vada Simmons ... Miss Lytell
Regina Claire ... Newspaper Woman
John Avery ... Police Doctor

The film was inspired by producer Edward Small’s 1935 ’’Let 'Em Have It’’ which told the story of a gangster undergoing plastic surgery to elude the police. ’’Jail Bait’’ was originally titled ’’The Hidden Face’’. Herbert Rawlinson, whose role as Dr. Gregor was originally intended for Bela Lugosi, died the night after shooting the film.

A year after Glen or Glenda, Wood made Jail Bait (1954). This minor noir has many of the Wood trademarks – rigid actors who seem more like mannequins than people ("bits of business" seems to be a foreign concept to the director); a pumped-up but misleading ad campaign ("DANGER! These girls are hot!"); a bizarre score in the form of relentless Spanish classical guitar music; stock Wood players like Dolores Fuller, Timothy Farrell, Mona McKinnon, and Lyle Talbot; and of course hokey dialogue ("Love … I don’t think you know what love means.") This is also surely one of the few films to devote a closing credit to a lingerie company ("Chic & Pandora").

Released by Howco (a low-budget company slightly more respectable than usual for Wood), the film is less interesting than Wood's other work in part because it’s simply too straightforward and coherent. There’s none of that rushed, ragged feel of Plan 9 or Glen or Glenda, where the narrative is skewered with strange, seemingly unrelated interludes that make these works compulsively watchable as we await the next surprise. Inevitably, there are Wood touches. One amusing scene occurs when Steve Reeves (in his first film) walks through the police station with his shirt off and is castigated by his superior for not shaving at home. Reeves is practically catatonic here and throughout, staring fixedly at something the audience can’t see and, in classic Wood style, seeming to have little to do, physically or in any regard, with the other actors. (He doesn’t even look at Lyle Talbot during their dialogue exchanges.)