Neil Gray
Plan 9 from Outer Space is, if truth be told, dear reader, f*cking awful. It’s a mess. A hot piece of garbage. Utter tripe that should’ve seen Ed Wood exiled from Tinsel Town and told to never, ever return. Which is kind of what happened anyway. Plan 9 from Outer Space should’ve been rounded up, dragged out to the desert, and had a very large bomb dropped on it from a very great height, vaporising it from existence so that its stain could eventually be washed away from the glamour of Hollywood. Plan 9 from Outer Space should be seen as an insult to filmmaking and filmmakers everywhere, and I f*cking love it.
Everything about Plan 9 from Outer Space is the definition of so bad, it’s good, but more than that, it defines just who Ed Wood was. I’ve stated before that Ed Wood didn’t care what he had to do to realise his vision, and Plan 9 from Outer Space proves that more than any of the other movies that he had a hand in. If you look at everything that’s wrong with it, at each separate failure, then there is no way anyone should even waste five minutes of their life watching it.
The acting is as wooden as the furniture department of IKEA. The script is the nonsensical ramblings of a drugged-up madman, and the editing and special effects would’ve been better handled by a blind man with no fingers, but when you view it as a whole it somehow works. Instead of being something you’d use to torture criminals with, it’s a glorious disaster of a masterpiece.
Before Plan 9 from Outer Space had even started filming, Bela Lugosi decided that he’d had enough of life and up and died, leaving Wood with about 15 minutes of film that he had no idea what to do with. Never being one to let something as trivial as a dead leading actor get in the way of his art, Wood decided that the best way forward was to higher his wife’s chiropractor, Tom Mason, to replace the horror legend. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except Mason was about a foot taller than Lugosi and looked nothing like him.
Wood’s way around this was simple: have the replacement stoop over as much as he possibly could while covering his face in a replica of Dracula’s iconic cape. He’d have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s never explained why the character is full-faced in one shot and then in the next, his face is obscured for the camera. That and the fact that it’s so obviously not Lugosi in those scenes is just hysterical.
The whole acting department deserves special mention here, with performances ranging from players reading their lines off of cards that are taped to items on set, to such stiffness in delivery that you find yourself questioning if the zombies are real because only a corpse could deliver those words with less gusto, it truly is a masterclass in how not to act. Also, the brilliance of having someone as well known as Vampira (Maila Nurmi) in the film and then having her say nothing is either down to some inspired directing from Wood or, as I suspect, her straight-out refusal to repeat any of the lines he might have written for her. And, to be honest, that’s not surprising as the script is utter garbage.
It’s so convoluted that it’s almost impossible to explain, but it revolves around aliens coming to Earth to stop the human race from developing ‘Solaronite’ which they’re convinced these stupid bi-peds will use to blow up the universe, but when the governments of the world ignore their attempts at communication, they figure the best way to make their point is to enact Plan 9 from Outer Space and raise the dead from their graves. Why they do this, nobody knows. Neither does anyone have a clue why they can only raise three at a time, but I suspect that might have something to do with a very small budget and the fact that most people considered Wood completely and utterly bat sh*t insane at this point and flat out refused to work with him.
But Edward D. Wood needed nobody. He wore three hats on Plan 9 from Outer Space, as the writer, director, and editor, and I’m pretty sure when they have the climactic fight scene at the end of the film, he’s also Dudley Manlove’s stunt double. And yes, I sniggered at Manlove as well. This all goes to prove that Wood’s ambition was always a lot larger than his ability, as his work behind the camera and in the editing room leaves a lot to be desired.
There are boom mics in the shot, a graveyard that looks like it could fall over in a light breeze, and inexplicable scenes where it’s blatantly daylight one second before the cut puts us in a backstage lot with a black backdrop, leading us to believe that it has magically become night. This happens a lot. I lost count while I was rewatching this last night, not because there are hundreds of these incidents—though I’m pretty sure there are—but because I was howling with laughter at how Ed Wood just seemed to think we wouldn’t notice or care. His directing style makes Uwe Boll look like Stanley Kubrick and seems to revolve around the motto, “To hell with it, let’s just shoot it now and I’ll fix it later.”
Which he doesn’t, leaving every mistake in before doubling down on the ‘special’ effects. Every battle that isn’t stock footage—which is as I’ve explained before, a trick Wood used as often as possible as it didn’t cost him a penny—has explosions scratched onto the negative and the flying saucer he used is…well…I’ll let you be the judge.
But you know what, I don’t care. For all of its faults, of which there are many, I dare you to watch Plan 9 from Outer Space and not come away with a smile on your face. The whole exercise is a testament to a man who didn’t get the credit in his life that he deserved, and it’s a tragedy that he died a penniless alcoholic who was all but forgotten until a new generation of movie fans with incredibly bad taste re-discovered him. Ed Wood is the epitome of “Do It Yourself,” and an inspiration for those of us trying to make it on our own. I will never tire of re-watching Plan 9 from Outer Space, along with Wood’s other movies, as it stands as proof that you don’t need the talent to make it big, kid.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear something shuffling outside our door…
