Bride of the Monster is a 1955 American independent science fiction horror film, co-written, produced and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr., and starring Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson with a supporting cast featuring Tony McCoy and Loretta King.

They find Willows House occupied, and the current owner, scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff, denies them hospitality.

Officer Tom Robbins and Lieutenant Dick Craig, Janet's fiancé, talk to Professor Vladimir Strowski, an intellectual from Europe who agrees to assist in investigating the Marsh but not at night.

The partners discuss the strange weather and mention that the newspapers could be right about "the atom bomb explosions distorting the atmosphere".

Two decades prior, Vornoff had suggested using experiments with nuclear power, which could create superhumans of great strength and size.

[2] The first incarnation of the film was a 1953 script by Alex Gordon titled The Atomic Monster, but a lack of financing prevented any production.

Actual shooting began in October 1954 at the Ted Allan Studios, but further money problems quickly halted the production.

[3] According to screenwriter Dennis Rodriguez, casting the younger McCoy as a protagonist was one of two terms Donald imposed on Wood.

An actor friend of Wood's, John Andrews, said in an interview: "Eddie hated, loathed, despised, wanted murdered, George Becwar ....I'm not overdoin' it man, I'm telling you straight.

Wood took scissors and physically cut the man out of an 8 X 10 group shot that was taken that night after the premiere as a publicity photo.

The Atomic Age influences the film in its ominous implications concerning nuclear weapons and the threat they posed towards human civilization.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) uses silent archive footage of Lugosi, since he died prior to the creation of its script.

[10] According to Rob Craig, in Bride, Lugosi for the last time plays "a charismatic villain whose megalomania leads to downfall and destruction".

Craig considers this to be one of Lugosi's finest roles, citing the surprisingly energetic performance of the aging actor.

[12] The hunters of the opening scenes, Jake Long and Blake "Mac" McCreigh, were played by John Warren and Bud Osborne.

Contradictory accounts claim that Wood either stole or legally rented the prop from Republic Pictures, which produced the earlier film.

According to Fuller's recollections, Loretta King bribed Wood into casting her as Janet, with promises of securing further funding for the film.

Fuller was thus reduced to playing a cameo role, "Margie", and this led to her later breakup with Ed Wood and her moving to New York to start a songwriting career with Elvis Presley.

[8] In the context of the film, the strange weather is implied to be a side-effect of the experiments of Vornoff which apparently release radioactivity into the atmosphere.

One of his reassuring lines to Janet concerning the experiment, "It hurts, just for a moment, but then you will emerge a woman...", sounds as if he is preparing her for the loss of her virginity.

Craig views this scene as implying that supposedly "dumb" servants can have a capacity of learning the secrets of their masters.

[8] The final scenes, with the mushroom cloud of the nuclear explosion, use stock footage from the blast of a thermonuclear weapon ("hydrogen bomb").

In 1961's The Beast of Yucca Flats, Johnson strangely pets and hugs a rabbit as he dies in that film's finale.

[5] Tor Johnson also plays a character called Lobo in The Unearthly (1957) who also serves as a henchman to the main villain.

"[18] A review by Bruce Eder in AllMovie noted that the film "is ineptly made and it has seams - including mismatched interior and exterior sets and scenery that shakes during the fight scenes," that it has "some of the strangest incidental dialogue that anyone had ever heard," and that "there is a lot to laugh at in the movie, most of it unintentional.

"[19] A review of the film in TV Guide described it as a "masterpiece of involuntary farce," that the "marvelously idiotic dialog keeps things moving along without stopping for breath [or] logic," and that the "final images of poor old decrepit Lugosi struggling in the arms of a motionless rubber octopus are incomparably bathetic.

The late 1990s dream trance track "Alright", by DJ Taucher, sampled a monologue from Bela Lugosi during the interlude of the song.

[23] In 1980, the book The Golden Turkey Awards claims that Lugosi's character declares his manservant Lobo (Tor Johnson) is "as harmless as a kitchen" [sic].

[24] However, a viewing of the film itself reveals that Lugosi said this line correctly, the exact words being, "Don't be afraid of Lobo; he's as gentle as a kitten."

Rudolph Grey's book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr. contains anecdotes regarding the making of this film.