Review: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957/59)

Friends and acquaintances often ask me, "What's your favorite movie?" I don't just have one, because I'm way too greedy to limit my love to just one film--I have a whole list. Some of the titles are obvious classics, like Citizen Kane or City Lights. Some are more modern critical hits, like Pulp Fiction. Still others are foreign landmarks, like Pandora's Box or Ran.

Buy whenever I get to Plan 9 from Outer Space, the listener invariably stops me and says," Wait, wait, wait...have you lost your damn mind? You can't be serious."

But I am. Plan 9 from Outer Space is one of my all-time favorite movies. And I'm not the least ashamed to admit it.

I'm not arguing that Plan 9 from Outer Space is a good movie. It's not. In fact, it's a very, very bad movie. But it's not the worst movie ever made. There are many more movies made by much more talented directors, writers and actors that have entertained me far less than Plan 9 does. However, since it sprang from the fevered brain of writer/director Edward D. Wood, Jr.--who had already crafted memorable bombs like Glen or Glenda?, a sensitive plea for understanding for transvestites (Wood was one in real life); Jail Bait, a hard-boiled crime thriller; and Bride of the Monster, a science-fiction monster show starring Bela Lugosi and Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson--Plan 9 from Outer Space may well be the most incompetent movie ever made.

The basic idea of the story is a good one: Aliens land in a graveyard and try to take over the world by reanimating the dead and attacking the living. (A similar story was used for the only-marginally-better Invisible Invaders, released the same year as Plan 9, which had been shot a couple of years earlier.) It's the execution, on all levels, that elevates Plan 9 so far above all of the merely mediocre sci-fi/horror movies produced in the 1950s.

This movie goes wrong with the first lines of narration, delivered by faux psychic Criswell: "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." Much of the dialogue is similarly overblown, with much philosophising about life, death, science, outer space and war. The basic intelligence of human beings is even questioned: "...Because all you of Earth are idiots!" bellows the provacatively named Eros, played by the even more provocatively named Dudley Manlove, at airline pilot Jeff (Gregory Walcott, the only one who gives even the semblance of a professional performance in this movie), who spots a flying saucer while trying to bring his commercial airliner in for a safe landing one morning and subsequently winds up involved in intrigue involving the military, the undead and the extraterrestrial.

One of the undead is The Old Man, "played" by Bela Lugosi in unrelated footage Wood shot just before Lugosi died and repurposed for this movie. It's sad to see the once-great horror icon frail and obviously ill. It's even more sad to see him toddle off screen, grief-stricken (or so narrator Criswell tell us) because of the death of his wife (TV horror hostess Vampira, a.k.a. Maila Nurmi, who refused to speak any dialogue--good for her) and run over by a car (with an obviously fake scream and screeching of tires, and a freeze frame that holds Lugosi's shadow on screen even while the car is supposedly running him down). There are other shots of Lugosi inserted, but much use is made of a supposed "look-alike" stand in (played by Wood's wife's chiropractor)--who doesn't look a thing like Lugosi.

There are bad decisions and inconsistencies everywhere. The funeral for the old man's wife takes place at sundown. When Lugosi walks off, the gravediggers start their work, at which point, Criswell tells us, strange things begin to happen. We immediately cut to Jeff in his airplane (and the most unconvincing cockpit set ever)--at sunrise. And then we cut back to the gravediggers still working. (Did they dig all night?) Shots go from night to day back to night again. The flying saucers are plastic models held up by very visible strings. (They also cast shadows on outer space.) Tor Johnson plays the lead detective investigating the murders of the gravediggers (who get torn up Vampira, even though shots of her are obviously in a studio while shots of them are obviously are on location), but his dialogue is nearly unintelligible due to his thick Swedish accent. In the graveyard, grass is made of paper and tombstones are cardboard (and knocked over easily). Stock footage is used liberally.

I could go on and on, but you get the point: Plan 9 from Outer Space is one lousy movie. Yet every time I see it, I find myself wildly entertained by the whole ungainly mess, and I appreciate all the good movies I've seen that much more. I also appreciate the passion with which Wood approached his "craft." Maybe he wasn't competent as a writer, director or actor, but he got his "vision" up on the silver screen for all to see.

Ed Wood got to live his dreams, such as they were. And how many of us can say that?