For generations, Ed Wood has been known as “the worst director of all time.” This sympathetic critical study repositions the director of Plan 9 from Outer Space as a maverick independent whose work challenges the boundary between “bad” and “good.” When Edward D. Wood, Jr. died in 1978 at fifty-four, just days after being evicted from his home, he was largely forgotten. Two years later, he was named “Worst Director of All Time”—a title that cemented his cult status. By the time a youthful Johnny Depp starred in an eponymous movie about the filmmaker in 1994, Wood’s low-budget films including Plan 9 from Outer Space , Glen or Glenda , and Bride of the Monster , had become beloved “so bad they’re good” classics. Since then, rediscovered works and shifting cultural attitudes have led new audiences to embrace his eccentric style and ahead-of-his-time takes on gender and genre. Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA is a critical reappraisal that takes Wood seriously, positioning him as a true independent who blurs the lines between high and low art. Will Sloan traces his marginal career—from Bela Lugosi collaborations to pornographic films—and explores how Wood’s chaotic sets, fading stars, and taboo subjects created something singular. Placing his films in their cultural context, Sloan reveals how Wood fused grindhouse with avant-garde, nostalgia with innovation, and failure with vision. Marking the centennial of Wood’s birth, this engaging take is both a timely investigation into the politics of taste and a loving tribute to a defiant outsider artist. "Beautifully written, intelligently funny, packed with surprising facts on every page, and composed with a sensitive love for his subject that is neither cultishly worshipful nor patronizing for the sake of a laugh . . . An astonishing achievement." —Guy Maddin "Will Sloan’s complex, deep-dive examination of this unique and eccentric filmmaker is now the definitive book on the often maligned Ed Wood." —Drew Friedman "Such thought-provoking analyses add up to a captivating portrait of an 'accidental avant-gardiste.' Fans of movies so bad they’re good won’t be disappointed." —Publishers Weekly  "The book we have always needed on Ed Wood. Will Sloan does away with easy distinctions of 'bad' and 'good' art and finds a much more useful category of criticism: 'fascination'." —Willow Maclay, co-author of Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema "A welcome addition to the Ed Wood, Jr. canon . . . fair and analytical." —Bob Blackburn, editor of Blood Splatters Quickly: The Collected Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. and heir of Kathleen O'Hara Wood "It's an extraordinary life and Sloane's amused, quizzical but deeply sympathetic approach catches just the right tone" — Sight and Sound "This vital monograph on Wood and his world is not so much a piece of cinephile revisionism as it is an example of a critic striving for some semblance of intellectual objectivity while also attempting to drown out the din of unhelpful legend" — Little White Lies "Will Sloan has masterfully constructed a truly compelling, humorous and scholarly appreciation of Ed Wood’s oeuvre, maintaining that his poverty-row productions represent surreal 'dreamscapes.' It’s the most important work on Ed Wood yet, and an immensely entertaining must-read for anyone who loves bad movies." —Harry & Michael Medved, The Golden Turkey Awards "An empathetic, critical analysis of Wood’s body of work." —The Globe and Mail "An affable and stylish writer, Sloan insists that Wood is worth taking seriously as an artist, not just as a phenomenon." —LA Review of Books "Will Sloan is one of the most entertaining and insightful cinema voices...so it is saying something when I tell you that Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA is his finest achievement yet." —The Film Stage Will Sloan is a Toronto-based writer and critic. His work has appeared in The New Yorker , Harper’s , Jacobin , NPR , Little White Lies , Cinema Scope , The Believer , and others. He is the cohost of two film and culture podcasts, Michael & Us and The Important Cinema Club A police car drives along a dusty road somewhere on the edge of the San Fernando Valley. It slows and parks next to a wooded area, where a cemetery is said to be just out of frame. Cut to the car halting in an entirely different area. Day has become night, the thick forest is reduced to a few shrubs and saplings, and so many cardboard tombstones are scattered so randomly on the ground that it’s impossible to imagine the coffins fitting beneath them. This sequence of events occurs many times in Plan 9 from Outer Space , and passing from the “real” world to Ed Wood’s fake one is like crossing over from our world to another. We spend a lot of time in that cemetery across Plan 9 ’s seventy-nine minutes. Strange incidents have been occurring there. Two gravediggers were found dead, and Inspector Daniel Clay (Tor Johnson) was killed during h