'Jail Bait' (1954) – Ed Wood, Jr. 

If Ed Wood Jr. is the Otto Preminger of D.I.Y cinema then the cordite-sharp, back alley blood-spiller 'Jail Bait' is arguably Ed Wood's greatly descended 'Fallen Angel'. After privileged rich kid on the make Don Gregor (Clancy Malone) is readily tempted by greasy-looking, smack-talkin' sack of small time potatoes, micro-moustachioed, half-baked hoodlum called Vic Brady (Timothy Farrell), being hyped into working a misbegotten heist, the bloody, inevitably bungled aftermath ends up with draughty flatfoots clumping lugubriously on their fearfully absconding, double-crossing tails. While buff, boil-in-the bag beefcake Steve Reeves, and sugar sweet, perky peroxide cream puff Dolores Fuller are both squeezey on the eyes, they stodgily make a TV Dinner of Ed Wood, Jr and Alex Gordon's triumphant, thrift-store trashy, rat-a-tat-tat syntax!

'Jail Bait' is a matchstick mean, corkscrew twisted, poverty-row potboiler, loosely held together with little more than a lurid smear of lipstick, used gum ball wrappers, and a shoebox-stuffed full of unpaid IOUs. Ed Wood, Jr's earnest attempt at directing a more mainstream B-Thriller is a deadpan, drop-dead delight, scuzzier than a stevedore's spittoon, blacker than a royally busted toenail, 'Jail Bait' remains a seamy, turgid trawl through the wilder side of midnight movie noir. While it frequently looks cheaper than a carny stag reel, moving slower than pig in aspic,'Jail Bait' nonetheless remains a spine-tinglingly spirted tribute to the maverick, low budget film-making chutzpah of Ed Wood, Jr, wherein low-brow bar-room substances triumph over glitzy, high-blown Hollywood schmear that mysteriously maintains rigorous interest due to having oodles of naive, cornball charm. 'Jail Bait' boisterously remains a beloved psychotronic classic that deliriously delivers a dizzy-doozy double take in its wickedly warped WTF finale!