Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) Valiant Pictures/Sci-Fi-Horror RT: 79 minutes No MPAA rating (some violence, mildly frightening scenes) Director: Edward D. Wood Jr. Screenplay: Edward D. Wood Jr. Music: (compiled by) Gordon Zahler Cinematography: William C. Thompson Release date: N/A Cast: Bela Lugosi, Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson, Vampira, Tom Keene, Duke Moore, Dudley Manlove, Joanna Lee, John “Bunny” Breckinridge, Criswell, Lyle Talbot, Carl Anthony, Paul Marco, Conrad Brooks, Tom Mason, Norma McCarty. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ****
Plan 9 from Outer Space is considered one of the absolute worst movies of all time and it definitely deserves that distinction. This movie is the complete antithesis of Citizen Kane, widely considered the best movie ever made. Everything that went right with Orson Welles’ masterpiece went completely wrong with Edward D. Wood Jr.’s “masterpiece”. It’s the most perfect example of utter cinematic ineptitude to ever grace the silver screen. It’s the movie for which director Wood (Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster) will be remembered. The gleefully untalented filmmaker holds a special place in the hearts of movie geeks everywhere.
Plan 9 from Outer Space is so bad it occupies a universe all its own. So why did I award this travesty four stars? Why indeed? I’ll tell you. It’s quite simple really. It’s so damn hilarious, I can’t help but enjoy the experience of reveling in the pure badness of it all. No filmmaker could intentionally have made a movie this bad. It proves Wood had a special gift. He loved his craft; he just didn’t have the aptitude. Still, he pushed bravely forward. He may have thought that he was making a sci-fi-horror masterpiece and he did, just not in the way he expected.
The plot of Plan 9 from Outer Space is actually not too bad. The problem is everything else and I’m not exaggerating. Everything about it is really, really bad. It opens with the famed psychic Criswell informing the audience that the events depicted in the film are based on fact. He says “future events such as these will affect you in the future.” Okay, yeah, right. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The best/worst is yet to come, my friends.
The movie’s credits list the late Bela Lugosi (Dracula) as the star. That’s not entirely true. The truth is Wood inserted footage of the actor and close personal friend that he shot around 1956. By this point, Bela was a full-blown drug addict and couldn’t get work outside of Wood’s films. The director filmed scenes of the washed-up actor leaving his house and running through a cemetery in full Dracula get-up. He died shortly thereafter. Wood used the footage in Plan 9 from Outer Space so he could pass it off as Lugosi’s final performance.
Anyway, aliens have invaded Earth after their attempts to communicate with the people of Earth have gone ignored. They’re trying to stop the humans from creating a weapon that would destroy the entire universe. After several ineffective attempts at communication, the aliens initiate Plan 9 which involves the resurrection of the recently deceased. The zombies (or “ghouls”, as they’re referred to in the film) proceed to wreak havoc in the San Fernando area.
The cemetery from which the aliens raise the dead is located right next door to the home of pilot Jeff Trent (Walcott) and his wife Paula (McKinnon). He already knows something’s up. He saw a UFO while flying. Naturally, he’s been ordered by the government to keep it to himself.
The first to be resurrected by the aliens are an old man and his wife. The former is played by Lugosi via the old footage shot by Wood. The latter is played by late night TV horror hostess Vampira. She took the role on the condition she didn’t have to speak. The local police, led by Inspector Clay (Johnson, Bride of the Monster), show up to investigate weird goings-on at the cemetery. Clay is killed by the two ghouls, a pivotal moment in the proceedings as it leads into one of the movie’s best/worst lines. Standing over the soon-to-be revived corpse, now lead investigator Lt. Harper (Moore, Night of the Ghouls) astutely observes, “But one thing’s sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody’s responsible!” And people say cops are dumb.
Meanwhile, the police and US military are looking into UFO sightings over Hollywood. It should be obvious that they’re somehow connected to the strange occurrences at the cemetery yet it never occurs to a single person. Unfortunately, the characters in Plan 9 from Outer Space aren’t terribly bright. They end up missing a few crucial things that would enable them to solve the case within minutes.
The aliens, represented by Eros (Manlove) and Tanna (Lee, The Brain Eaters), just want to be acknowledged as they attempt to warn the people of Earth about their eventual capacity for complete annihilation of the universe by way of “solarbonite”, something that harnesses the energy of the sun and its rays and would have a more devastating effect than the atomic weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Naturally, the military brass doesn’t want to hear it. They do everything they can to prevent the aliens from spreading their message. It’s an all-out war as the military brings out the big guns (pun intended!) to fight the interplanetary invaders. But at what cost to the human race?
As you can see, the story itself isn’t too bad. It’s pretty cool actually. It’s the incompetence with which it’s presented that makes Plan 9 from Outer Space crash and burn. It runs only 79 minutes, but it feels like an eternity as Wood tries and fails to tell a complex and coherent tale of an alien invasion.
Up until 1980, Plan 9 from Outer Space could only be seen on the late show on various channels around the country. The only ones who saw it were insomniacs. It wasn’t until Michael and Harry Medved named it “The Worst Movie of All Time” in their book The Golden Turkey Awards that people started talking about it. I can’t think of a bad movie more deserving of that distinction than Wood’s magnum opus.
The acting is absolutely terrible. The actors are forced to recite some truly heinous dialogue starting with Criswell’s intro. The whole thing is a hoot. That’s just for openers. Plan 9 from Outer Space is filled with dialogue that will tickle the funny bones of even the most serious filmgoers. Here are a few highlights:
Paula, when Jeff tells her what he saw from the cockpit: “A flying saucer? You mean the kind from up there?” [No, you ding-a-ling, the kind from the kitchen cupboard!]
Air Force Captain: “Visits? That would indicate visitors.”
Eros: “All of you of Earth are idiots!”
Eros (after being called “fiend” by Jeff): “I, a fiend? I am a soldier of our planet. I, a fiend? We did not come here as enemies.”
And check out these exchanges:
Jeff (as he’s about to leave for work): “Oh, forget about the flying saucers. They’re up there. But there’s something in that cemetery, and that’s too close for comfort.”
Paula: “The saucers are up there. And the cemetery’s out there. But I’ll be locked up in there. Now off to your wild blue yonders.”
Eros: “Your stupid minds! Stupid, stupid!”
Jeff (in typical action hero mode): “That’s all I’m taking from you!” [POW!]
Yeah, that’s the way the people of Earth are going to defeat the superior intergalactic beings. They’ll punch them in the jaw and make them bleed from the corners of their mouths. There’s so much dumb stuff in Plan 9 from Outer Space that if beings from another planet were to base their understanding of the human race from a single movie, they’d think that we are all blithering idiots.
The special effects in Plan 9 from Outer Space represent an all-time low. They’re cheap even by the low, low standards of cheap B-movies from the 50s. We’re talking dime store-level FX. The flying saucers are obviously paper plates and/or hubcaps suspended with wires you can actually see as they unconvincingly hover over California and Washington D.C. When they pass over the characters, it’s represented by a flashlight passing over the scene. Once again, Wood utilizes stock footage to depict scenes he couldn’t afford to do himself. It’s especially noticeable in the scenes where the military is mobilizing to fight the alien invaders.
Wood spent as much on the sets and props as he did the effects. Very often, the characters knock over cardboard gravestones in the cemetery. And is that a shower curtain separating the cockpit from the rest of the plane? Wood tends to use the same props in different scenes as a means of cutting corners. He never had much to work with. The budget for this little epic was a scant $60K. That means some corners had to be cut. The patio furniture at the Trent’s house is also used as bedroom furniture in Paula’s room. The same set is used to represent the airplane cockpit and the interior of the flying saucer.
Let’s talk about Bela’s stand-in for a moment. Wood hired his wife’s chiropractor (Tom Mason) because he thought they looked alike despite him being a whole head taller than the late actor. They do NOT look alike, not even a little bit. You can see this even though Mason covers most of his face with a Dracula cape every time he appears on screen. Did Wood really think nobody would notice?
The actors in Wood’s films are typically non-professionals, members of the fringe society of Hollywood, weirdos and wackos that Wood hung around with. Plan 9 from Outer Space was financed by a Baptist church even though they were horrified by the subject matter (raising the dead) and Wood’s predilection for dressing in women’s clothes. The original title of the movie was Grave Robbers from Outer Space, something that Criswell references in his opening narration. Wood changed it to Plan 9 at some point. In any event, the acting (ALL of it!) is uniformly and hilariously awful. That’s part of what makes Plan 9 from Outer Space so freaking great!
It’s hard to believe that a movie as utterly incompetent as Plan 9 from Outer Space received a theatrical release, but it did. The audience at a preview screening reacted exactly how you think they did. They hooted, howled, threw stuff and laughed derisively. It sunk into obscurity immediately afterwards and didn’t resurface until after Wood’s death in 1978.
Bad movie aficionados will agree that movies as transcendently bad as Plan 9 from Outer Space have a certain appeal. It’s avant garde in its complete ineptitude. Ed Wood really believed he was a talented filmmaker. This is proof positive of the man’s self-delusion. It’s worth watching because it’s the funniest unintentional comedy in the history of film. It’s so bad, it’s GREAT! It has stood the test of time and will continue to do so until the end.
