Title: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
Director:
Edward Wood Jr.
Cast: Bela
Lugosi, Vampira, Tor Johnson
Review:
“You are
interested in the unknown…the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you
are here...” with these ominous words, Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space opens,
inviting us to enter into his imagination, deep into the cheesy recesses of b-movie
territory. Some films are known for being bad; their call to fame is the fact
that they are terrible films, i.e. badly written, acted and produced. This is
the case with Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space. Though of course depending on who you ask; some will hail it as
the best example of how NOT to make a film, while others will tell you it’s
silly, campy, fun. I finally had the chance to see it after years and years of having
it on my must watch list; and yeah, it’s a bad film, but it’s not without its
charm. There are all kinds of mistakes left and right, every five seconds you
can either see a boom mike pop up somewhere, an actor reading the script
from his lap or the strings can be seen on the miniature flying saucers, but
again, this is part of what makes Plan 9 from Outer Space such a fun
film.
Story revolves
around a group of alien invaders who want to destroy the earth because they
fear that the humans will create a doomsday device that can destroy the
entirely galaxy, so in order to prevent this from happening, they put ‘Plan 9’
in motion. Plan 9 consists in resurrecting the dead so they can take over the
earth and annihilate mankind and their destructive inclinations. These aliens
are trying to protect the universe from us, so in a way, these aliens are
benevolent in nature; just not towards us humans.
I gotta hand
it to Ed Wood, the guy had his heart in the right place. He might not have had
millions of dollars to make his movies, but it’s obvious that he had the
creativity and the energy, the drive. He had a creative wealth of ideas. Here
was a guy who was always writing, directing or producing something. You just
get the feeling that he simply needed more money to put his ideas across in a
better fashion, but that passion for telling stories was always there. He might
not have been much of a filmmaker; but the guy wrote like a mad man! He didn’t
write masterpieces either, but the crazy ideas would never stop coming. I
personally think he was better as a writer of cheap sci-fi b movies and novels than at
directing films. He produced and wrote many more films like Orgy of the Dead (1965)
and The Bride of the Beast (1958), he even made some soft core porn! But it was
Plan 9 from Outer Space which would go down in history as “the worst film ever
made”. To be honest, I think calling Plan 9 worst movie ever is a bit harsh;
there are far worse contenders for this title out there in movie land.
I won’t lie
to you, yeah Plan 9 is badly produced and directed, not a second goes by that you don’t see some
incomprehensible image that has nothing to do with the film, a goof, a boom
mike, a false wall moving, sometimes this kind of thing just makes me bust a
gut laughing. For example in some scenes, Wood would mix scenes shots during
the day in exteriors with scenes shot in a set, with a pitch black background, it’s
moments like these that you begin to question his abilities as a filmmaker. There’s
this other scene where a bunch of people are coming out of a crypt, because
they were burying a friend, and it’s the smallest crypt I’ve ever seen! And if it’s
not the stock footage of Russian military tanks (which are supposed to be
American) that makes you laugh, then it’s the totally inane dialog. Now here’s
where the real fun of the movie lies for me; that crazy ‘written in five
minutes’ dialog! The film opens up with a psychic telling us that “future
events will affect us in the future!” and he ends every sentence by calling the
audience “my friends” about five times in less than a minute….now that’s some
funny shit right there my friends! My
favorite is a dialog between two characters in which one tells the other “This
is the most fantastic story I’ve ever heard!”
and the other guy says “And every word of it is true too” and the other
guy replies “That’s the fantastic part of it!” Like I said, the dialog is hilarious
stuff.
Obviously not Bela Lugosi!
Ed Wood was
a huge fan of the old Universal Monster movies, one of his favorites being
Dracula (1931) which is the reason why he ended up using Lugosi in Plan 9. I’m
sure Wood also wanted to have a star on his movie to pull in an audience and
Lugosi with his vast experience certainly had that star power. This was Bela
Lugosis’s final film, he doesn’t do much in it, in fact, he doesn’t even talk. Lugosi’s
role in this film functions like a silent film. He simply weeps for his dead
wife, who by the way according to the film was ‘Vampira’ and then he dies, off
camera, only to be reborn as a zombie wearing the same exact attire he wore for
Universal’s Dracula! I bet Ed Wood must’ve gotten a special kind of thrill having
Lugosi in his full Dracula regalia on his film. In a strange twist of fate, I
think there’s some sort of poetic justice that Lugosi dressed up as Dracula for
his last performance on film. After all, Dracula was his most recognized role. About
Lugosi’s participation in the film, it’s hilarious how Wood simply shot a bunch
of random stuff with Lugosi, and then somehow found a way to squeeze it into
Plan 9. Even funnier is that when he couldn’t use Lugosi, he would use this
actor who would cover his face with the Dracula cape, to hide the fact that it wasn’t
Lugosi! At the end of the day, the daftness of the production makes it endearing
to watch. You get the feeling that everyone involved knew they were making a
crappy movie, but they did it anyways. Or maybe it was all part of Ed Wood’s
desire to spoof big budget sci-fi films? Maybe he did it all on purpose and the
film is exactly what he wanted it to be? Watch the film and judge for yourself,
but one thing I can assure you, you won’t be bored for a second, it’s a funny
ride every step of the way.
Rating: 2
out of 5
9 comments:
I'm glad you finally got to "enjoy" Plan 9, Fransico!
Despite its technical ineptitude, what keeps Plan 9 from being one of the worst films ever made is its pure entertainment value. You too seem to understnd that Ed Wood's passion shows up in all his films and it makes his films genuinely enertaining despite their flaws (or maybe because of them).
Yes, Wood's bad diologue is some ot the best commited to film and also make them so terribly funny.
If you watched the X-Files, Plan 9 was Mulder's favorite film. In one episode, Scully walks into Mulder's appartment and sees him watching Plan 9. She asks him, "Haven't you seen that before?" To which he replies, "Sure, more than 50 times."
I haven't watched Plan 9 that many times, but I have seen it more than some other - much better films - because it still makes me laugh, smile and just aprecialte the wonder of the film medium.
I can't believe you just now got around to seeing this one. This is one of my all time favorites. Good... bad... such terms are meaningless when you're dealing with Ed Wood. I really don't think more money would have made much of a difference. Ed's writing style is just so inherently off kilter, it really doesn't matter if you have good actors and slick effects backing it up.
@Fritz: It's weird, but i ended up watching it again a day after I'd seen it for the first time, I just wanted to see how many more mistakes and jokes I could find, repeated viewings makes it even better.
@Bob: Let's see, he did Plan 9 for 60,000, maybe with 100,000 he could have afforded a better cemetery set or something...and interior of that spaceship, so obviously a set, and a cheap one at that, but hey it's these imperfections that I like about the film. Still, it makes me wonder what Wood could have done with a bigger budget.
I had not seen this one before because its one of those that simply slid through the cracks, but I finally caught it and I'm glad I did! Fun times, thanks for commenting!
I want to bugger Maila Nurmi/Vampira (as the bird was in 1940 when the bird was 18, not as the bird is now obviously, which is dead, unfortunately).
I wonder if the British film industry will ever produce anything that is even 100th as good as "Plan 9 From Outer Space" ?, i very much doubt it ! ! !
Francisco, i can guarantee you that EVERYONE involved in the making of this film (including Ed Wood himself of course) genuinely thought that they were making a GOOD movie, thats the number one reason why this movies absolute atrociousness is still so endearing 56 years after it was made.
@Teddy Crescendo: is that you jervaise brooke hamster? You sure change names a lot! ha ha
@steve prefontaine: Well, I've seen lots of british cinema, and I can I assure you they have.
@Eddie Lydecker: I agree with you, to me they were all giving it their all, but some of the dialog and situations are so inane that they make me think maybe Wood was just having fun with this one, which of course, he was, I mean making a movie like this one must've been fun as hell. Now I feel like re-watching Burton's Ed Wood!
Wood's BRIDE OF THE MONSTER is another rib-tickler, Fran. My first exposure to PLAN 9 was footage used in the 1982 ode to bad movies, IT CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD. If you can find that, check it out. Granted, some of the movies DO NOT deserve to be on there, but John Candy, Cheech and Chong, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner add some goofy value to the whole thing.
Worst best movie ever. I mean Best worst movie ever. Or... I'm not sure which way it goes.
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