{"id":40811,"date":"2023-08-28T00:00:41","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T04:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=40811"},"modified":"2023-08-27T19:37:59","modified_gmt":"2023-08-27T23:37:59","slug":"bad-movie-monday-plan-9-from-outer-space-1957","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/28\/bad-movie-monday-plan-9-from-outer-space-1957\/","title":{"rendered":"BAD MOVIE MONDAY: PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1957)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today I\u2019m going to review one of the granddaddies of cinematic garbage. Made famous by being called the<\/i> worst film of all time in Michael and Harry Medved\u2019s 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\u2019d 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.
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\nQuick 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 \u201cBad Movie Monday\u201d. The premise was simple: We\u2019d 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.<\/i><\/p>\n

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<\/i> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019re also using a lot of stock footage like Plan 9 does. Another thing that\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the story Jeremy?<\/b><\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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 <\/i>us, but that we\u2019ve 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\u2019m 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\u2019ll straighten your pubic hair! What more do you need? Logic? An intricately woven plot with twists and turns? Pfft… you\u2019re watching the wrong movie if that\u2019s what you\u2019re looking for. Just press play and go with it! Accept the mystery.<\/p>\n

Ten thoughts I had during the movie:<\/b><\/p>\n

#1 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

#2 \u2013 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\u2019s a fine line between cheap and low-budget, and I feel this film falls into the latter rather than the former. Well, mostly.<\/p>\n

#3 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

#4 \u2013 The part where Lugosi\u2019s mourners pour out of a tiny and obviously fake \u201cmausoleum\u201d after his character\u2019s funeral, like it\u2019s a clown car, gets me giggling every time.<\/p>\n

#5 \u2013 Despite what I said about the mausoleum, the cemetery scenes are actually kind of spooky and atmospheric. I mean, you\u2019re not going to be hiding behind your couch or anything, but you\u2019ll feel a little chill.<\/p>\n

#6 \u2013 I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again, Black and White films are just more beautiful to watch. I love crisp vivid colour, don\u2019t get me wrong, but there\u2019s just something so deep and dreamlike about Black and White.<\/p>\n

#7 \u2013 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\u2019t all fall into the same category. To me, a really really<\/i> bad movie is simply one that is boring and lifeless. It\u2019s by-the-numbers \u201ccontent\u201d 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

#8 \u2013 The third act does begin to drag a bit, because by then the film is meandering a bit, but it\u2019s nothing ghastly.<\/p>\n

#9 \u2013 The saucers look very very very fake, but so what? It\u2019s not the quality of the effect that count, it\u2019s how much heart and soul you put into the effect, and this movie is nothing if not sincere.<\/p>\n

#10 \u2013 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\u2019s so dangerous. It really didn\u2019t need to be that long and detailed. Sorry Ed, but \u201cDoomsday Device\u201d is so much simpler and more elegant than a five page speech comparing the sun\u2019s rays to gasoline.<\/p>\n

Was it actually bad?<\/b><\/p>\n

Of course not. This was awesome! Ed Wood made something kind of cool with nearly nothing. One of the things I\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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\u2019s not a hidden object game where the goal is to find as many errors as possible. You\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

So with that in mind I\u2019d 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\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

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Today I\u2019m 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\u2019s 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\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3070],"tags":[128,312,3268,3267,1149],"class_list":["post-40811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badmoviemonday","tag-bela-lugosi","tag-ed-wood","tag-flying-saucers","tag-tor-johnson","tag-vampira"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40811"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40820,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40811\/revisions\/40820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}