BAD MOVIE MONDAY: PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1957)

Today I’m going to review one of the granddaddies of cinematic garbage. Made famous by being called the worst film of all time in Michael and Harry Medved’s book THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS, Plan 9 from Outer Space has long been held as the benchmark of bad movies. Having watched it many times myself, I’d call that moniker more than a bit unfair, but writer/director Ed Wood would roll in his grave if he heard me bad mouthing some of the best publicity one of his movies ever got.

Quick Recap! When COVID shut down everything in early 2020, I started an online bad movie night get-together with some friends that we eventually dubbed “Bad Movie Monday”. The premise was simple: We’d torture each other every Monday with the worst trash we could find, tell a few jokes, cheer each other up, and in the process maybe discover some weird obscure cinema that we might never have seen any other way. This series of reviews will feature some of the highlights of those night, along with some of my favourite trash, so you can all share in the fun and maybe get some ideas for your own movie night.

Bad movies made before 1970 are not really the same as modern bad movies. Nowadays, the cost of making movies has gone down significantly. To the point where you could go out right now and film an entire movie on your phone using your friends as actors and it would look pretty good quality-wise. However, back in the old days you needed professional cameras and sound equipment, and people who could run that stuff, and you needed to buy film and tape for all of it, and you needed to have the film developed. Every second of footage that you shot cost money, so that footage had to be something that you could shove into the film somehow. That’s why older bad films tend to have so much filler. Because the more shots you can safely film in one easy take, the better. People walking. People driving. People dancing. People sitting in their living room and listening to the radio. It’s impossible to screw up shots like that. So you include as many as you can. It’s also why older bad films tended to have narration. Because there was no other way to tie together all this random nonsense, especially when you’re also using a lot of stock footage like Plan 9 does. Another thing that’s changed is that audience attention spans have plummeted to that of a squirrel on crack, so having characters playing Frisbee for five minutes is just not doable today. Modern movies simply can’t be that sloppy. To be fair, as much as I miss the old school flair, I think tighter editing is a good thing because even I get a little bored sometimes watching the older stuff.

So what’s the story Jeremy?

Human-like aliens trying to prevent Earth people from potentially inventing a doomsday device that could destroy the entire universe unleash their most diabolical plan of all. Plan 9! The plan to resurrect the dead. Which isn’t a really good plan because they only manage to resurrect like three people who do very little except prowl around one graveyard. The aliens also buzz Hollywood and Washington DC with their flying saucers for some reason. This gets even more convoluted when we discover that the aliens are actually trying to contact us, but that we’ve been ignoring them. Does any of this make any sense? No. Do I care? Also no. This is kooky banana bonkers story time, and I’m fine with it. We have our chiselled jaw hero in Airline Pilot Jeff Trent, played by Gregory Walcott. We have our villain-who-is-not-really-a-villain Eros, played by Dudley Manlove. We have scary undead monsters played by Bela Lugosi (with Tom Mason as his stand-in), Vampira, and Tor Johnson. We have drama and intrigue and dialogue that’ll straighten your pubic hair! What more do you need? Logic? An intricately woven plot with twists and turns? Pfft… you’re watching the wrong movie if that’s what you’re looking for. Just press play and go with it! Accept the mystery.

Ten thoughts I had during the movie:

#1 – Criswell, for all his mad dumb predictions, was a hell of a showman with a lot of screen presence. Having him appear as himself in the intro and then narrate the film is borderline genius.

#2 – Time has been very kind to Plan 9. Yes, the effects are cheesy. Yes, the sets are phony. However, at the same time, to modern eyes none of it looks that much worse than other far bigger budget sci-fi films of the fifties. There’s a fine line between cheap and low-budget, and I feel this film falls into the latter rather than the former. Well, mostly.

#3 – Bela Lugosi, or more precisely his archival footage ghost since he was dead by the time they started filming, is in this movie for less than maybe five minutes and never utters a single solitary word. Yet, he still manages to steal scenes from almost everyone else in the cast.

#4 – The part where Lugosi’s mourners pour out of a tiny and obviously fake “mausoleum” after his character’s funeral, like it’s a clown car, gets me giggling every time.

#5 – Despite what I said about the mausoleum, the cemetery scenes are actually kind of spooky and atmospheric. I mean, you’re not going to be hiding behind your couch or anything, but you’ll feel a little chill.

#6 – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Black and White films are just more beautiful to watch. I love crisp vivid colour, don’t get me wrong, but there’s just something so deep and dreamlike about Black and White.

#7 – One of the things that always has to be kept in mind with bad movies is that there is a gradient of badness. They don’t all fall into the same category. To me, a really really bad movie is simply one that is boring and lifeless. It’s by-the-numbers “content” that was made by lazy, artless, cynics in order to appeal to the most amount of people with the single-minded goal to make money. Plan 9 may be a lot of things, but it’s not that. Ed Wood was, for all his quirks, an auteur in the truest sense of the word. I will die on this hill defending him.

#8 – The third act does begin to drag a bit, because by then the film is meandering a bit, but it’s nothing ghastly.

#9 – The saucers look very very very fake, but so what? It’s not the quality of the effect that count, it’s how much heart and soul you put into the effect, and this movie is nothing if not sincere.

#10 – I think the only real gripe I have with the movie is the ending where Eros, the leader of the aliens, goes on this long ass explanation about what they fear the humans will invent and why it’s so dangerous. It really didn’t need to be that long and detailed. Sorry Ed, but “Doomsday Device” is so much simpler and more elegant than a five page speech comparing the sun’s rays to gasoline.

Was it actually bad?

Of course not. This was awesome! Ed Wood made something kind of cool with nearly nothing. One of the things I’ve noticed when people are critiquing this film, is that they get too caught up in listing all the goofs and inconsistencies. As if that matters at all. For God’s sake people, stop noticing these inane details and use your suspension of disbelief. Enjoy a movie for the journey it takes you on instead of nitpicking it to death. Movies are supposed to be fun, bad movies even more so. It’s not a hidden object game where the goal is to find as many errors as possible. You’re not going to win a prize if you list them all. This is a fun little film, and it needs to be appreciated it for what it is: A piece of 1950s era kitsch in the form of cinematic nonsense.

So with that in mind I’d like to end the review by saying this: Ed Wood Jr, Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Maila Nurmi, and all the rest of the cast and crew of this film, both living and dead, wherever you may be, I salute you. I’m proud of all of you for what you accomplished. This movie is too bonkers not to live on forever, and if that’s not success I don’t know what is.