Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) review

3. Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

Directed by: Ed Wood

Produced by: Ed Wood, J. Edward Reynolds, Hugh Thomas Jr.

Screenplay by: Ed Wood

Starring: Gregory Walcott, Béla Lugosi, Maila Nurmi, Tor Johnson, Lyle Talbot

Back in my first horror marathon, I reviewed the Ed Wood cult classic “Bride of the Monster,” since I considered it the closest to a horror movie in Wood’s filmography. But the one he’s known for is the pseudo-sci-fi epic “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” which was called the “worst film ever made” in the 1980 Michael and Harry Medved book “The Golden Turkey Awards.” Side note, Ro-Man from “Robot Monster” was named “most ridiculous movie monster” in the same book. This has the ambition and scale of a major Hollywood blockbuster at about a hundredth of the cost; that’s both the appeal and the fault of the movie in a nutshell. It’s completely inept in terms of acting, editing, dialogue, craft, story and overall suspension of disbelief; yet it’s so passionate and the mistakes so uniquely ludicrous, how can you not find it enjoyable?

The plot is basically about a group of aliens who start resurrecting the Earth’s dead to destroy mankind; there’s a Ghoul Woman (Maila Nurmi) in a cemetery, an old man (Béla Lugosi) recently deceased, and police Inspector Clay (Tor Johnson), murdered while investigating gravediggers’ deaths. Pilot Jeff (Gregory Walcott) sees a flying saucer, more of which start appearing around the world. The military assembles, as the aliens—having failed to contact Earth’s governments—explain that they want to stop humanity from creating a doomsday weapon that could destroy the universe, having witnessed their violent tendencies. It’s essentially the same “we’ll destroy you so you don’t destroy everything” situation from “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Will our heroes ward off the threat and gain a greater capacity for peace than war?

In short, the movie isn’t smart enough to address the latter, which is unfortunate because these are not bad themes; there’s a chance for good anti-war commentary given the time period, even down to the moment where alien Commander Eros (Dudley Manlove) speaks of the dangers of the weapon the humans will develop, and Jeff just comments on how strong a nation they’ll be if that happens. But what does it amount to? Eros insults the humans for how stupid they are, they blow up the saucer, and just remark that more aliens will probably return; so the message kind of gets lost. Like I indicated, this movie punches well above its weight class in terms of…well, pretty much everything, but specifically story depth.

But you want to know the more outlandish stuff, right? Well, it’s hard for me to do it justice in a text review, but here’s an example. One of the earlier scenes show the gravediggers after a funeral, and it’s still broad daylight; they walk towards a crypt, where the Ghoul Woman appears and walks towards them, but it’s now pitch dark, and the day/night visuals cut back and forth multiple times. Here’s another one; later in the film, while Clay is lying dead on the ground, Lieutenant Harper (Duke Moore) frequently taps the barrel end of his gun to his head and says, “One thing’s for sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody’s responsible.” Apparently, Duke Moore did his gun-tapping deliberately to see if Wood would notice and correct it; obviously, he didn’t.

That’s not even getting into the aesthetics; I’ll give the movie credit, there are legitimately good atmospheric shots, especially with the Ghoul Woman walking through the foggy cemetery, even though that’s pretty much all she does the whole movie. But when you think of the look of the film, you picture plastic toy saucers held up by strings, cardboard head stones falling over, visible boom mics, and random day/night transitions. Yet it goes even further, with a downright laughable sense of spacing between the characters to the point where there’s no visual awareness for how close everyone is to each other; they all walk through random locations, yet always seem to end up in the same place.

There’s just a surreal nature to the movie, made clear immediately with a mostly nonsensical opening narration by The Amazing Criswell. If you don’t know who Criswell was, he was basically a stage psychic known for making bizarre predictions, often in infomercials, magazines and syndicated television. Aside from Criswell, you have Maila Nurmi, better known as Vampira, playing the Ghoul Woman; the former horror hostess was recently fired from her TV show, so reportedly took this role but insisted on playing it mute. Nevertheless, she’s photographed really well, and has some of the more iconic imagery of the film. Clay’s played by Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, who had played henchman Lobo in “Bride of the Monster.” His English is practically unintelligible, but he spends most of his screen time as a zombie anyway; his face was the inspiration for a very popular latex Halloween mask. Maybe the most accomplished actor is Lyle Talbot as a general; he was one of the great character actors of all-time, co-starring alongside Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Mae West, playing Commissioner Gordon and Lex Luthor in various “Batman” and “Superman” serials, and almost never refusing roles.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the movie—and that’s saying something—is Béla Lugosi’s involvement, or lack thereof. Shortly before his death in August 1956, Lugosi filmed a handful of scenes with Wood, who he had become close friends with well past the prime of his career. These were originally intended for other movies, which Wood shelved following his death. When production for this film began, Wood used the remaining footage around the story, marketing it as “Béla Lugosi’s last movie.” I know that sounds vaguely exploitative, but from what I know about Wood, he didn’t like to see any footage go to waste. Anyway, for the Ghoul Man’s remaining scenes, Wood hired his wife’s chiropractor Tom Mason as a stand-in, despite being taller and bearing no resemblance to him; but it’s okay, they get around that by having Mason constantly covering his face with his cape—I don’t know why he has a cape, but that’s not important.

All these monumental deficiencies distract from the normal areas of cheap, shoddy filmmaking: obvious stock footage of the military, weakly written characters, numerous empty backdrops, amateurish set design, lame costumes and awkward plot exposition. But when you consider what kind of person Wood was, and how he so brazenly went in with the mindset of “Budget be damned, I’m making this movie,” just the fact that this movie exists is a huge accomplishment. One of my favorite films is the Tim Burton biopic “Ed Wood,” so feel free to check that out for more detail on the making of “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” or even the 1992 documentary “Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The ‘Plan 9’ Companion.” To me, the worst movie ever made is a movie with no redeeming or watchable value, something that contains no joy in experiencing; this does not fall into that category. It does so many things wrong, but there’s such enthusiasm and fervor in exactly how, it’s the kind of bad movie that other bad movies wish they could be; give it a watch and prepare to laugh.

My rating: 6/10