Hollywood has a way of taking the worst of its bad movies and redistributing them decades later as icons of its historic underbelly. Prominently lauded as some of Hollywood's worst films, the five surviving features directed by the horrific filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. are now available in a DVD boxed-set from Image Entertainment.

The set includes Wood's first feature, Glen or Glenda?, a 1953 film about a confused transvestite (that could have made a remarkable cultural impact if only it were any good); Jail Bait (1954), about a troubled cop-killer who gets plastic surgery to hide his identity; Bride of the Monster (1955), about a mad scientist trying to create a legion of "atomic supermen"; Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), infamously known as "worst Hollywood film of all time," about grave-robbing space aliens in skating skirts invading Earth; and finally Night of the Ghouls (1959) which is a Woodian ghost story of sorts.

Wood has been well-known since the '80s for being the worst Hollywood filmmaker of all time. What I was hoping for, but did not expect, was just how much fun it would be to watch them.

There is something enormously appealing about exceptionally bad films. These are the sorts of films that I can imagine my friends getting together to see on a cold winter break night, not for the quality of the film, but for the quality of the laughs.

Plan 9 from Outer Space, Wood's most infamous film, begins with the famous 1950s pop-psychic, Criswell, setting the stage with, "Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future."

At this early point in the film, I did not know whether to laugh or not-was it taking itself seriously? The film continues, and soon enough, pilots, in what looks like a cardboard cockpit right out of a middle school play, encounter something flying past them in the air. They see it, and we see...yes, a little toy flying saucer hanging in front of a backdrop on a string.

The funniest thing about Plan 9 from Outer Space-and all of Ed Wood's films for that matter-is that they are meant to be taken seriously. Wood saw himself as an artist and a visionary and kept hoping (in vain) for a budget as large as his vision. For Plan 9, Wood practically swindled an entire church congregation for the production funds, vowing to make Plan 9 a success that would finance additional biblical films like DeMille's The Ten Commandments.

Included with these films is an additional DVD of additional features, including a wonderful two-hour documentary, The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr. (1996) that explores Wood's complicated life through interviews with the oddballs and drama queens that were his occasional entourage. Wood was idiosyncratic and surrounded himself with the strange, quirky B-movie types that frequented Hollywood's lesser-known studios in the 50s and 60s. Maila Nurmi, who performed as "Vampira" in several films and television shows, and Bela Lugosi (Dracula)-the famous horror film star who worked for Wood when no one else would hire him-opine on Wood in various interviews. They are joined by a motley crew of Wood's former friends and lovers, all of whom speak not only of Wood, but of the world of sub-Hollywood Hollywood where the hefty Tor Johnson (Plan 9) was as big a name as he was in appearance.

Although Wood's films are marvelous to laugh at, there is a bittersweet poignancy to his story. He was ambitious beyond his means and abilities, but he never let that slow him down. At the end of his life, Wood could not afford an apartment. He died of a heart attack in 1978 while living with a sympathetic friend who had taken him in. It was not until the following decade that his films began to achieve the sort of notoriety Wood might have wished for them.