Alicia I love this movie so much

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Michael_Elliott The Sinister Urge (1960) * 1/2 (out of 4)Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s hard-hitting look at the smut business has Lt. Carson (Kenne Duncan) and Sgt. Stone (Duke Moore) trying to solve a couple murders where the victims had just taken part in the pornography world. They believe the victims can be traced to a certain woman (Jean Fontaine) but they need to find out who's actually doing the killing. THE SINISTER URGE is Wood's attempt to show how ugly and evil the porn business is so I guess it's kind of ironic that this would be his last directing job for ten years until he would start working in, you guessed it, the porn business. As you'd expect, this here is a pretty poor film that like most of Wood's stuff has an interesting idea but the story is all over the place and in the end it just makes no sense. It seems that Wood was wanting to do the story about a psycho turned on by porn and then mix in a detective tale and the two items just didn't mix very well. The film is certainly a tad bit sleazier than the normal 1960 production but this doesn't make up for the weak dialogue or bad performances. It's funny but the film really puts down those who take advantage of girls who come to Hollywood to become stars and the film also preaches that girls should just stay home. The first female victim has such a Southern accent that I'm guessing Wood found her as she stepped off the bus. Wood's regular outlaws (Duncan, Moore, Conrad Brooks) are all here and it's worth noting that this here was Duncan's last feature film. Fans of Wood's work will still want to check this out but it's certainly miles behind his classics.

hasosch When film was invented, the new medium was quickly compared to literature - written literature, to be absolutely clear. Accordingly, the first feature length pictures, in the silent time, were divided in scenes and acts like in theater pieces. Theater pieces too, although they simulate scenes of everyday life, are dominated by text which have be written first - like the scenarios of the movies. However, is this "logo-centrism" not astonishing? Simply the English word "motion picture" gives the much more appropriate comparison of film not with written text, but with painted (or photographed) pictures.Therefore, it makes much more sense to compare films with paintings. But what are the criteria according to which somebody can decide about its quality? Does it speak for bad quality if in a painting by René Magritte, there is day and night at the same time? Is this one a bad director who changes day and night in a short cemetery scene like Ed Wood did? Do we really believe in the reality of paintings so that we consider eyes being outside of faces pathological like in some early works of Picasso? Why do we scold Ed Wood when he forgets to take off the price-tags of his Walmart-plates that he used for UFO's? We know that eyes cannot be outside of a faces as we know that UFO's do not exist - where is there a border of credibility? Everybody know that humans with over-proportioned necks and empty eyes like the ones that Modigliani painted do not exist. But do we laugh at these works as we laugh at Ed Wood's Zombies? Peter Greenaway has recently said that in the near future we will be able to film what we think. Great! But before, I suggest, we should learn to accept that one can film what one SEES independently of criteria of literature whose relationship to film is about as small as the relationship of a technician to a physicist."The Sinister Urge" is an absolutely disgusting example of how pseudo-funny "editors" can destroy 71 min. of a movie that is 71 min. long, by uninterrupted "jokes" that strive racism (the comparison of a colored actress with Benazir Bhutto). As a matter of fact, most parts of the dialogs of this movie are completely not understandable because of the stupid sexual, political and other comments. I therefore suggest that the complete edition of "The Sinister urge" is confiscated and destroyed. Ed Wood's work deserves a critical edition without comic strip covers on the DVD hulls and disgraceful comments, but with introductions and commentaries by renowned American film historians. I would like to look forward to seeing soon Ed Wood's work edited in a dignified looking package of carefully crafted DVD-collections.

ametaphysicalshark "The Sinister Urge" is proof if any was ever needed that Ed Wood was a completely and utterly inept writer and director. He does, of course, have a surprising number of fans who actually like some of his work ("Bride of the Monster", I have to admit, isn't really all that bad of a film), but "The Sinister Urge" is so chock-full of Ed Wood clichés (redundant dialogue, amazingly bad acting, and taking hypocritical preaching to a whole new level are but few of the features of this film).I've seen "The Sinister Urge" several times in its "Mystery Science Theater 3000" version, which features some of the funniest and most seemingly random riffs in the history of that show- one scene features Mike and the bots breaking into song... but I won't spoil that for you. Tonight I watched this film without their aid and it is a prime example of complete cinematic incompetence. From start to finish the script is unbelievably bad, not even in an earnest "Plan 9" sort of way- there's only the occasional laugh here, unless you can find humor in something so pathetically horrid. Similarly, Wood is incapable of even a second of flair in his direction of the film.There are people in this world who will tell you with a straight face that this is a fine film, an indictment of the seedy world of pornography (oh let's face it, compared to what we have going now, the porn industry in 1960 was one big huge convent). These people are absolutely, unequivocally NUTS. One only has too look at Wood's filmography to see that he had already written several smut films, including notorious early nudie Western "Revenge of the Virgins", prior to this film's release."The Sinister Urge" is one of the most boring, plodding, miserable excuses for a film in all of cinema. I'm not a big fan of picking on Ed Wood, to be honest, but this is proof (along with the many other films of his that aren't widely known) that Wood is an astoundingly incompetent director.1/10

warterra After years of hearing how awful Ed Wood films are this example of his work really didn't seem so bad.I expected epic continuity errors, little to no plot and extremely low budget filming. However the worst thing about this film turned out to be just how dull it was. Unless you're watching the MST3K version you'll find this movie very boring.The continuity errors are there, but you can overlook them if you choose to. The story moves, albeit slowly, plot elements are there, and the story wraps up, but in a rather unbelievable way. It may be low budget, but the wooden acting hurts this movie far more than the budget. The sets, car crash, and fight scenes seem about on par with 60's TV.