Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

There is a scene in Tim Burton's Bio-flick/homage to Ed Wood where the director bumps into Orson Welles in a Hollywood watering hole-in-the-wall, and gets a brief spirit-lifting speech from the great one about remaining true to your vision and not letting the clerks and backers (who ARE clerks, regardless where they live or what fate finds them doing for a living) get you down. Maybe we should have to look at that scene before watching this film.

If Plan Nine is awful, it is probably so precisely because it IS so grandly ambitious. --If all ambition cannot culminate in a Citizen Kane or a Vertigo, maybe it gives us a moment to mourn quietly for the rest of us, the ones who worship genius –as Ed Wood no doubt did– without being geniuses ourselves. Bottom line, no matter what cards you get, you can laugh or you can cry at life. Ed Wood put on nylons and pumps and, making sure his seams were straight, marched into the fray of life like a true Hero Born. He stuck incongruous, obvious stock footage into his magnum opus, knowing the poetry would arise from the montage; he improvised long stretches, fully certain he would get the same results Welles could working under similar circumstances; he tried valiantly to coax performances out of wretched actors, or fatally self-conscious non-actors, like Criswell and Vampira, and put them in no matter how their work turned out ("No time to re-shoot!"). No matter what, you have to admire his staying in the game.

VanGogh is perhaps the best case scenario of a loser who cranked away, certain he was onto something, who is lucky enough to have the entire world one day concur. Ed Wood's is, sadly, the more often played scenario. He is positive attitude, high ambition and wishful thinking, unsupported. He was certain he was onto something. He could not have been more wrong about anything if he had tried to be.

Oh yeah baby. "Ich bin ein Ed Wood."

Fmovies: Often considered the worst movie of all time, Plan 9 From Outer Space does boast tombstones that are made of cardboard and tip over during the movie, it does feature one shot of Bella Legosi that is reused over and over and over, it does show a cop scratching an itch on his head with his gun, and stars a Swedish wrestler as a California cop, but it is not the worst movie of all time because the story is not that awful. The first 8 plans by aliens from some planet that doesn't really matter fail, so they employ their ninth plan for taking over Earth. At least I think they are taking over Earth, they say they are taking over Earth to save the Earthlings. All I know about the aliens is that they are dedicated to their cause, you would have thought they would have given up taking over Earth after 6 tries. You will have a good chuckle during the movie with the cheesy special effects and the silly acting and cheap props, but the entertainment value does make it better than some movies out there. Maybe 2 or 3 movies, at least. For more on the background to this movie and why it turned out the way it did, check out the 1994 film Ed Wood, and you will appreciate this film, at least a little more.

Ed Wood must have been a fascinating man. He had a burning drive and ambition to succeed in the film industry, yet his creative and directorial talents were infantile.

Plan 9 is his most famous film and has become a cult favourite. The film is an example of extreme amateurism which creates an assortment of unintentionally funny scenes. It's truly amazing this film managed to be funded and released to the public (then again, The Swarm was too Â…).

Within Plan 9's ridiculous and convoluted story are a number of silly subplots due to the fact that Ed had such a variety of interesting an un-related footage which he really, really wanted to use in the one film. One needs to pay close attention to understand everything that's going on in this mess (although, when you do understand everything that's going on, you may wish you'd have remained ignorant!)

Plan 9 has heaps of priceless quirks: hub-cap flying saucers, idiotic dialogue, the last gasp of the great Bella Lugosi, and the luscious Vampira (who apparently would have breached an existing contract if she uttered a word in Plan 9).

One of the most interesting aspects of Plan 9 is the great variation in performance techniques by the actors. Some speak their lines like they know the script is idiotic while some speak their lines like they don't understand them (which is possible because some of the dialogue uttered by the bumbling aliens doesn't make any sense). But my favourite character is the airline captain played by Gregory Walcott.

Greg's a real trooper and attempts to take his role very, very seriously despite the constant lunacy around him. How did he remain so professional? Did he imagine his role in Plan 9 would lead to greater things?

Although Ed Wood has been voted by the US film industry as the worst director in history, he lives on as a kind of cult anti-hero. As a director then, he has achieved a level of lasting success.

6/10 – For fun value.

Plan 9 from Outer Space fmovies. What can I say! This is not a "1" or a "10" movie... and neither it deserves any grade in between. It's simply a guilty pleasure for me... watching the absurd sights... listening to the amazingly inept dialogue, worthy of George Lucas' "Episode II" (maybe it's a bit better ;), watching Bela Lugosi freeze for a couple of frames, then being replaced by someone else...

No, it's not the worst film ever made. No, it's not the best one, either. It is the testament of someone who wanted to leave his mark, made an honest effort to deliver the goods (Ed Wood, of course), and instead delivered a strange mix that works because it makes us perfectly identified with him. As in "if I made a movie, I'd surely make one as bad / good / unintentionally funny as this one".

Yep. Ed Wood is one of us. Long live "Plan 9" and his misunderstood director.

Plan 9 was made during the hysteria of Macarthyism. For this reason, there was a myriad of "invisible invaders" movies that permeated the landscape at the time Wood created this movie. While the script is flawed, the storyline one-dimensional, the special effects non-existent, stock footage galore, and the acting as cardboard as they come, this movie blends these aspects together in spectacular fashion. Had this movie had Tim Burton or the Zucker brothers names attached, and been released 20 or more years later, this movie might be considered one of the greatest spoofs ever made. There is so much to get caught up in, and so many different things to hit the rewind button for, that it may take upwards of 2 hours to get through this short film. This film is bad, but it could be argued that this film was created to be bad! From cut shots that move from midnight to midday and back again, to mattresses readily apparent as fall-aways, to the ever-popularly sighted man in the cape covering his face from the camera, this film has more Easter Eggs in it to search for than Oliver Stone has conspiracies.

We sometimes forget that films are created to be enjoyable. We don't always need to have to ponder the meaning of existence after every feature. This is a film from within the era is seeks to mock. Every cliché is used. It's not quite a horror film, and yet holds some of the well-worn clichés of the genre. Same for the Sci-Fi genre. This is a film that rises above it's own limitations to entrench itself upon the cinematic landscape it seeks to make fun of. Remember, this is Ed Wood's idea of the greatest film he could create.

This film has to be listed among mandatory viewing for anyone aspiring to work with the industry, as it is a mockery of both the big budget as well as the independent spirit.

This is one film you will not soon forget, and for all the right reasons. Is it right to be so wrong? Or is it wrong to be so right? Is this film a great parody? A masterpiece of a spoof? Or was it genuinely trying to be as good as it possibly could? This is all up to debate. The fact remains, your time viewing this film will seldom be thought of as a supreme waste.

A masterpiece? Maybe. The worst film of all time? Absolutely not.

First of all, how could a film that has brought so much enjoyment to so many people be called "the worst film ever made"? I have seen major Hollywood products with major Hollywood stars and some of these films are impossible to sit through even once. "Dick Tracy" comes to mind, as does "Caligula." The very first time I saw "Plan 9" in a NYC revival house, just hearing Tor Johnson's struggle with English pronunciation and watching him wriggle out of the ground was worth the price of admission! It was probably the hardest I'd laughed in a movie theatre in many years. I don't know what kind of movie the actor who plays Eros thinks he's in, but he seems to be having a lot of fun. We all know that the comedy of the film was unintentional, then why do we laugh? We laugh because Mr. Wood does everything conceivable to mask his non-budget to give the illusion of a grand sci-fi-horror epic. And he does it with such unabashed gracelessness with so little concern for time continuity or any other kind of logic, that we laugh at just how absurd the medium of film can become, if used in incompetent hands. Ed Wood gives new meaning to the word "schlock." The cinematic legacy he has left to enjoy should be called "pop-schlock." If the point of the film is to ultimately entertain, this is one of the best films of all time, not the worst.