— Criswell, opening linesnote Note that this is billed as "Criswell Predicts", and he doesn't predict anything.
In 1956, Ed Wood produced, directed and wrote a movie that was to change the world irrevocably, resurrect Bela Lugosi's ailing film career and be known forever as the greatest motion picture of all time. As it turned out, however, Bela Lugosi was dead and Ed Wood Jr. was a terrible writer and director, a man of unlimited drive and determination but absolutely no talent. But for just those qualities, it is often considered The Worst Movie Of All Time. Hey, in this case, one out of three ain't bad.A classic tale of aliens creating zombies via administering "long distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary gland of the recent dead". The police department investigate the mysterious rising of a dead old man (played alternately by Bela Lugosi and a much taller, younger man pretending to be Bela Lugosi, aided by a cape on his head), his suspiciously young wife and Police Inspector Clay, who's "a big boy now, Johnny". Meanwhile, "army brass" battles the aliens with a combination of Stock Footage of artillery and impressive looking-through-binoculars in front of a curtain, only to reveal that the aliens have sent them messages that are often cut off by "atmospheric conditions in outer space".The aliens land and meet with the police, the pilot and an army colonel and belittle the humans for their "stupid minds! Stupid, stupid!" The head alien, Eros, explains that humanity will "stumble across" a way to explode particles of sunlight, thus eventually destroying the universe. The movie climaxes with a fight between Eros and the pilot and the spaceship taking off, leaving the reanimated corpses as skeletons before exploding in mid air. As they leave, Criswell says:
My friend, you have seen this incident based on sworn testimony. Can you prove that it didn't happen? Perhaps on your way home, you will pass someone in the dark, and you will never know it, for they will be from outer space. Many scientists believe that another world is watching us this moment. We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aeroplane, the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television! And now some of us laugh at outer space. God help us... in the future.
Every year, at the 24-hour film festival known as B-Fest, this movie is screened at midnight. There are a set of actions a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show that are performed with the film (yelling "DAY!" for day shots, "NIGHT!" for night shots, "NOT BELA!" for Bela's replacement, "BANG" whenever someone displays poor firearm safety etc.).Strangely, despite the sort of So Bad, It's Good kitsch the show usually reveled in, this movie was never riffed on by Mystery Science Theater 3000. (There is a RiffTrax of it, though, and they chose it for the first of what became a series of live shows.) Perhaps that's because it didn't really need the help...Due to the expiration of its copyright, the film has fallen into the public domain, so check it out (either at the Internet Archive or Spike.com) and decide for yourself if this movie deserves its reputation.Two remakes are being made in honor of the film's 50th anniversary, and they are very different. One, produced by Drunkenflesh Films, will be known as Grave Robbers from Outer Space, and aims to be a dark and modernized version, but low-budget like the original and released direct-to-video in time for Halloween. Another, produced by Darkstone Entertainment, is simply called Plan 9 — based on the trailer, with James Rolfe in the cast. It looks to be the movie Ed Wood had in his head..Due to Small Reference Pools, Plan Nine From Outer Space is frequently used as a shorthand for "really bad movie", especially by film critics. For example, a movie review might read "Good Movie is Plan Nine compared to Excellent Movie."Also see “Manos”: The Hands of Fate, The Room, Troll2 and Birdemic for some of Plan Nine's biggest competitors for Worst Movie Ever. Contrast with Citizen Kane (though Tim Burton actually dared to comparePlan 9 with Citizen Kane in Ed Wood.) Not to be confused with the KonamiAdventure Game based on the movie.
Examples:
Age Appropriate Angst: The alien leader who looks like a man in his fifties. Both the dialog and the way the actor delivers it makes him come off like a ten year old who's just had his video games taken away. The actress playing his assistant can be seen laughing in the background during one of these tantrums.
Wood had to have known this was going to happen; the actor was a famous drag queen, and a good friend of Wood's.
America Saves the Day: Toy flying saucers menacing your world? Defeat it with some California town folk and military stock footage. Said saucers only menaced one military company for all of five minutes and seemed most interested in screwing with one specific cemetery in one California town. You can't blame the rest of the world for not wanting to get involved.
Artistic License - Nuclear Physics: It says something about the film's grasp of physics that the Eros's claim that an H-bomb works by "exploding the very air itself" is probably the least serious science goof on offer.
Broken Aesop: The aliens trying to stop humanity from accidentally destroying the universe are presented as the bad guys. One has to admit that reanimating the dead into brainless ghouls is a...less effective way to accomplish this purported goal.
Keep in mind, at this point, they've become desperate, as eight previous plans failed.
Camp Gay: The alien leader, played by Bunny Breckenridge, who was in fact openly gay.
Flying Saucer: Not hubcaps-on-strings as is commonly thought; they were, in fact, toys.
Though they are plainly saucers, and referred to as such throughout the film, the pilot refers to it as "shaped like a huge cigar," which is another common description of UFOs. Mike Nelsonclarifies that it was "A saucer-shaped cigar."
And then when they land they have right angles, like a shed.
George Lucas Altered Version: When the colorized version was produced, the makers of the colorization had a contest where two separate winners got a picture of them added to a scene in the pilot's wife's bedroom, and the other winner got their name added to the headstone seen in the closeup when Inspector Clay is found dead.
Handwave: The bizarre setup in which the Old Man is interred in a crypt while his beloved wife is buried away from him is explained as "a family tradition".
Just let that sink in. Of all the strange things that happen in the movie, this small detail is the one thing they had the foresight to try and explain away.
Humans Are Bastards: The humans respond to Eros's warnings about the dangers of creating a "solaranite bomb" by starting a fight and destroying his space ship.
Eros has it the worst, though. For one thing, he spends the entire movie trying to deviously avoid the humans noticing him, while simultaneously getting frustrated to the point of hissy-fits that the humans aren't paying attention to him. Also, his plan to destroy all of human civilization was apparently to use three zombies, possibly hoping that they would scare people to death.
Inferred Holocaust: Plan 9 is to stop humanity building a "solaranite bomb" and destroying the universe. Yet Plan 9 fails. What does this mean for the universe? Given that it's the Plan 9 Universe, total destruction may be merciful.
Informed Ability: The advanced nature of the aliens. The humans admit that they're "far ahead of us" as their spaceship screams flaming and exploding through the sky, thanks to their own stupidity.
Bill Corbett: Yeah, look at those crafty alien bastards; we could never do that!
Juggling Loaded Guns: The actor playing Lieutenant Harper purposely pointed at things with his revolver to see if Ed Wood would reshoot the scenes. He didn't.
Lost Aesop: "You know, it's an interesting thing when you consider... The Earth people, who can think, are so frightened by those who cannot: the dead."
Mondegreen: According to Kathy Wood, Ed had the Bible open when writing the screenplay, and came upon the phrase "soul of a knight", which is where "solaranite" came from. The rest of the cast keep mispronouncing it ("solernite", "solonite", etc.)
From the RiffTrax commentary: "I'mma go do Levytown."
Only under the direction of the director, which was a common theme among Tor's speaking roles in movies. In reality, he was also a businessman who eventually lost most, if not all, of his accent.
Oddly Small Organization: The entire alien fleet? Three aliens ships with, seemingly, three or four aliens inside. And the titular plan only succeeds in creating a mere three zombies.
Offscreen Crash: The explanation for the "old man" dying. Note that the old man's standing shadow is clearly visible and stationary when he's supposed to be getting hit by a car, not to mention that the trees blowing in the wind suddenly freeze.
(the scene cuts from the old man screaming to an ambulance racing by, with no sound effect indicating a car crash) Mike Nelson: Uh, did he die or did he get a job as an ambulance driver?
Please Wake Up: Tanna to Eros (who probably doesn't wake up because she's mispronouncing his name!)
Reckless Gun Usage: The cops seemed to be either retarded, suicidal or their characters are really supposed to be carrying toy guns. One cop keeps his finger on the trigger at all times, whips the gun around treating it like his pointer finger, he even scratches his head with it. Reportedly, the actor was doing this on purpose to see if Ed Wood would call him on it. Wood didn't.
Jeff fires at Eros' console when he goes over to use it, despite stating before he was going to show them the hostages with it. Jeff had no idea what might happen if he damaged ship components randomly.
Also done by Eros to Tanna when she is lecturing the humans...for no real apparent reason other than - according to Kevin Murphy - "'This is my bullshit lecture!'".
Spiritual Successor: Hilariously, this film, the legendary bad fifties sci-fi movie, has almost exactly the same plot as The Day The Earth Stood Still, the quintessential sci-fi film of the era, just without the budget, script, talent, production values, etc.
Stay in the Kitchen: One of the reasons the aliens are so incompetent is that Eros is willing to shout down Tanna, despite the fact that she's been assigned to his ship. The source of the aliens' food is never revealed, so one can only really assume that she's been put there on equal terms.
Stealth Pun: If this is Plan 9, it's left for people to wonder what Plan 8 was. Say it phonetically.
Step Three: Profit: Apparently Plan 9 goes "Step one: raise three zombies, two of whom think they're vampires, in a small town. Step two: ???? Step three: Earth doesn't destroy the universe." One wonders how much they paid the Underpants Gnomes.
Stock Footage: Lots, most notably the military firing at the flying saucers.
Then there was Lugosi's footage, filmed for a couple of unrealized Wood projects and then awkwardly inserted into Plan 9 after Lugosi's death.
Title Drop: Sort of. Criswell ends his opening narration with "grave robbers from outer space," the film's original title. It was supposedly changed from "Grave Robbers" to "Plan 9" at the request of the Baptist ministers financing the film.
Too Dumb to Live: Everyone in the entire Universe, but especially Eros, who seems to think that the way to convince mankind of the extreme danger a potential scientific discovery holds is to call a group of armed humans stupid. Repeatedly.
Not to mention his plan to take revenge for humans ignoring the existence of aliens by killing the few people who do believe in them.
And then setting your own ship on fire by using critical instrumentation as a blunt-force weapon.
or Spike.com
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